Visual Syntax Analysis for Calligraphic Interfaces

This paper presents an approach to analyse sketches of user interfaces by means of Visual Languages. To this end we use a shape recognizer, CALI [Fonseca00], and build on the ideas presented in JavaSketchIt[Caetano02] where the parsing is done by recognizing pairs of sketched symbols using a restricted visual syntax. The present paper presents our ongoing work on Visual Language Analysis to expand the possibilities afforded by JavaSkecthIt in a more flexible manner. Our approach provides more flexibility with the ability to describe an increasing number of visual symbols, and making use of more complex productions which wouldn’t be so simple to handle with previous pattern recognition techniques employed in JavaSketchIt, such as recursive productions and ambiguous arrangements involving more than two symbols.