XML-Based User Interface Design For Models

With the increasingly close combination of computer technology and other industries, the importance of models has become increasingly apparent, especially mathematical models are most widely used in the decision support process. But many models only focus on the accuracy of the algorithm, and draw less attention to the user interface, some models even have no user interface. This problem will become magnified when models run on specific application platforms because of the high requirement on the user experience, which depends largely on the design of the user interface. So designing user interface for models is imperative, and has great practical significance and theoretical value.The main works of the paper include:(1) with respect to the characteristics of usual mathematical models, a XML-based language SUIL is proposed, which is appropriate to describe models’ user interface, and the problem of data connection between the user interface and the program of models is researched, the solution is to save the names of data files and options that have been selected and set by users with a data interface file, which will be parsed by the entry function of the model program.(2) UIScripter, a tool for visually designing user interface for models is implemented, which is based on SUIL and the format of data interface file. With UIScripter, users can design user interface for models independently, save the user interface as an interface script which meets the rules of SUIL, and open the saved script in design mode or runtime mode to reappear the design.(3) A set of programming interfaces are provided. With the integration between UIScripter and a specific platform, users can design interface for models on the platform, and run models through the user interface designed by themselves. The successful integration efficiently improves the user experience of the platform, and fully proves the practical value of the paper.