Penbuilder: A Toolkit for Pen-based User Interfaces

Penbuilder's event model was specifically designed for pen devices. It allows developers to program based on continuous stroke input and allows the pressure and orientation input of a pen in addition to 2D positions. It supports digital ink as a first-class data type for constructing pen-based applications. The toolkit employs a Scenegraph-based structure for rendering and attaching interaction semantics. For flexibile and simple to use as well as for performance, Penbuilder also employs a flat structure for managing both ink objects. An event tree is used to parse low-level pen input into high-level interaction events.

I designed and built the first version of the toolkit in C++ in 1999, and redesigned and reimplemented it in Java in 2001. I did this work when I was a graduate student at the Institue of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

Publications

• Yang Li, Zhiwei Guan, Youdi Chen and Guozhong Dai, Penbuilder: Platform for the Development of Pen-based User Interface. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces: ICMI 2000. Beijing, China, October 2000. Springer Verlag: LNCS, pp. 534-541.
• Yang Li, Guan Zhiwei and Dai Guozhong. Research on Development Tools of Pen-based User Interfaces. Journal of Software, 2003, 14(3), pp. 392-400. (in Chinese)
• Yang Li, Zhiwei Guan, Guozhong Dai, Xiangshi Ren and Yong Han, A Context-aware Infrastructure for Supporting Applications with Pen-based Interaction. Journal of Computer Software Technology, 2003, 18(3), pp. 343-353.
• Yang Li, Zhiwei Guan and Guozhong Dai, Modeling Post-WIMP User Interfaces Based on Hybrid Automata. Journal of Software, 2001, 12(5), pp. 633-644.