Browsing by Author "Dennis R. Bahler, Committee Member"

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    HabilisDraw: A Tool-based Direct Manipulation Software Environment
    (2004-07-26) Horton, Thomas Eugene; R. Michael Young, Committee Member; Dennis R. Bahler, Committee Member; Robert St. Amant, Committee Chair
    Direct manipulation interfaces already employ a weak analogy to the use of physical tools in the real world. Despite certain tradeoffs, a stronger application of tool-using principles can lead to improvements in the design of software interfaces. I outline here some of the theory behind such an approach, and describe the design of systems that follow these principles, with emphasis on a tool-based drawing application called HabilisDraw.
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    Specifying and Resolving Temporal Commitments
    (2002-12-18) Mallya, Ashok Ullal; Dennis R. Bahler, Committee Member; Peter R. Wurman, Committee Member; Munindar P. Singh, Committee Chair
    Commitments are a powerful representation for modeling multiagent protocols, especially for applications such as electronic commerce, where contracts are a natural component of the desired interactions. Previous approaches have considered the semantics of commitments and how to check compliance with them. However, these approaches, although valuable, do not capture some of the subtleties that arise in applications of commitments in real-life settings. In particular, practical contracts and institutions have subtle temporal properties. The present thesis develops a rich representation for the temporal content of commitments. This enables us to capture realistic contracts and institutions rigorously, and avoid subtle ambiguities. Consequently, this approach enables us to reason about questions of great practical import, for example, whether and when exactly a commitment is satisfied or breached and whether it is or ever becomes unenforceable.