CoCoon: designing graphic user interfaces using space allocation

CoCoon is a tool embodying the idea of space devoted to a function for the specification process of graphic user interfaces (GUIs). The functional space is called widegap, standing for conceptual widget, being the user interface designer reasoning about logical components of the user interface. Using interface designers partition the work space by using widgepts and specify them in terms of their attributes. In so doing, they exploit some cliches, or stereotypes, called k-stereotypes, representing the CoCoon level of abstraction. A translator module builds a hierarchical tree which records spatial relations between widgepts and then maps k-stereotypes onto a library of reusable modules, called M-stereotypes. The overall result is the automatic generation of code, by merging M-stereotypes. The authors discuss the motivation, the approach, the architecture and the operation of CoCoon