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A context-aware infrastructure for supporting applications with pen-based interaction

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Abstract

Pen-based user interfaces which leverage the affordances of the pen provide users with more flexibility and natural interaction. However, it is difficult to construct usable pen-based user interfaces because of the lack of support for their development. Toolkit-level support has been exploited to solve this problem, but this approach makes it hard to gain platform independence, easy maintenance and easy extension. In this paper a context-aware infrastructure is created, called WEAVER, to provide pen interaction services for both novel pen-based applications and legacy GUI-based applications. WEAVER aims to support the pen as another standard interactive device along with the keyboard and mouse and present a high-level access interface to pen input. It employs application context to tailor its service to different applications. By modeling the application context and registering the relevant action adapters, WEAVER can offer services, such as gesture recognition, continuous handwriting and other fundamental ink manipulations, to appropriate applications. One of the distinct features of WEAVER is that off-the-shelf GUI-based software packages can be easily enhanced with pen interaction without modifying the existing code. In this paper, the architecture and components of WEAVER are described. In addition, examples and feedbacks of its use are presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, Institute of Software, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080, Beijing, P.R. China

    Yang Li, ZhiWei Guan, GuoZhong Dai & Yong Han

  2. Department of Information Systems Engineering, Kochi University of Technology, Tosayamada-cho, 782-8502, Kochi, Japan

    XiangShi Ren

Authors
  1. Yang Li
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  2. ZhiWei Guan
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  3. GuoZhong Dai
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  4. XiangShi Ren
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  5. Yong Han
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yang Li.

Additional information

This research was initiated in a project with Grant No.863-03-01 of the National Hi-Tech R&D 863 Program of China. Then it was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.60033020) and Microsoft Research China. It was also supported by Grant No.2001AA114170 of the National Hi-Tech R&D 863 Program of China. This research was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant No.14780338) in Japan.

LI Yang is a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science Division of the EECS Department at the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests include human-computer interaction, sketch-based user interfaces, context-aware computing and user interface software engineering. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer software from Northwest University in China and his Ph.D. degree in applied computer technology from Institute of Software, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the ACM and SigChi. Contact him at the Computer Science Div., Univ. of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1776; yangli@cs.berkeley.edu; http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~yangli.

GUAN ZhiWei is a postdoctoral researcher in National Academy of Sciences, US. Her research interests focus on human-computer interaction, software engineering, user interface design and usability. She received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in precise instruments and mechanics from Hefei University of Technology in China and the Ph.D. in applied computer technology from Institute of Software, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is a member of the IEEE. Contact her at the Computer Science Div., Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 93940; zguan@nps.navy.mil.

DAI GuoZhong was born in 1944. Now he is a professor of Institute of Software, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests focus on human-computer interaction, computer graphic and CAD.

REN XiangShi is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems Engineering at Kochi University of Technology. He received the B.E. degree in electrical and communication engineering, M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in information and communication engineering from Tokyo Denki University, Japan, in 1991, 1993 and 1996 respectively. He was an instructor in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering at Tokyo Denki University during 1996–1999. His research interests include all aspects of human-computer interaction, in particular, pen-input interface, multimodal interaction and usability. he is a member of the IPSJ, the IEICE, and the Human Interface Society, all in Japan, the ACM, the ACM SIGCHI, the IEEE Computer Society, and the British HCI Group.

HAN Yong was born in 1974. Now he is a Ph.D. candidate in Northern Jiaotong University in China. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China. His research interests focus on human-computer interaction and multimodal interfaces.

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Li, Y., Guan, Z., Dai, G. et al. A context-aware infrastructure for supporting applications with pen-based interaction. J. Comput. Sci. & Technol. 18, 343–353 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948904

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