Your Wish Is My Command: Programming by Example (Paperback)

As user interface designers, software developers, and yes-as users, we all know the frustration that comes with using "one size fits all" software from off the shelf. Repeating the same commands over and over again, putting up with an unfriendly graphical interface, being unable to program a new application that you thought of yourself-these are all common complaints. The inflexibility of today's computer interfaces makes many people feel like they are slaves to their computers. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why can't technology give us more "custom-fitting" software?

On the horizon is a new technology that promises to give ordinary users the power to create and modify their own programs. Programming by example (PBE) is a technique in which a software agent records a user's behavior in an interactive graphical interface, then automatically writes a program that will perform that behavior for the user.

Your Wish is My Command: Programming by Example takes a broad look at this new technology. In these nineteen chapters, programming experts describe implemented systems showing that PBE can work in a wide variety of application fields. They include the following:

• Text and graphical editing
• Web browsing
• Computer-aided design
• Teaching programming to children
• Programming computer games
• Geographical information systems

The renowned authors and their editor believe that PBE will some day make it possible for interfaces to effectively say to the user, "Your wish is my command!"

Authors:

Henry Lieberman has been a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory since 1987. From 1972 until 1987, he was a researcher at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His work focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence and the human interface. Dr. Lieberman began his career with Seymour Papert and the group behind the educational language Logo. A member of the Software Agents group, he holds a doctoral-equivalent degree from the University of Paris-VI and has published over fifty papers on a wide variety of research topics.

Table of Contents:

Foreword
Ben Shneiderman

Introduction
Henry Lieberman

1) Novice Programming Comes of Age
David Canfield Smith, Allen Cypher, Larry Tesler

2) Generalizing by Removing Detail: How Any Program Can Be Created by Working with Examples
Ken Kahn

3) Demonstrational Interfaces: Sometimes You Need a Little Intelligence; Sometimes You Need a Lot
Brad A. Myers, Richard McDaniel

4) Web Browsing by Demonstration
Atsushi Sugiura

5) Programming by Demonstration for Information Agents
Mathias Bauer, Dietmar Dengler, Gabriele Paul

6) End Users and GIS: A Demonstration is Worth a Thousand Words
Carol Traynor and Marian Williams

7) Bring Programming by Demonstration to CAD Users
Patrick Girard

8) Demonstrating the Hidden Features That Make an Application Work
Richard McDaniel

9) A reporting tool using programming by example for format designation
Tetsuya Masuishi and Nobuo Takahashi

10) Composition by Example
Toshiyuki Masui

11) Learning Repetitive Text-editing Procedures with SMARTedit
Tessa Lau, Steve Wolfman, Pedro Domingos and Daniel S. Weld

12) Training Agents to Recognize Text by Example
Henry Lieberman, Bonnie A. Nardi and David J. Wright

13) SWYN: A Visual Representation for Regular Expressions
Alan Blackwell

14) Learning Users' Habits to Automate Repetitive Tasks
Jean-David Ruvini and Christophe Dony

15) Domain-independent programming by demonstration in existing applications
Gordon W. Paynter and Ian H. Witten

16) Stimulus-Response PBD: Demonstrating When as Well as What
David Wolber and Brad A. Myers

17) Pavlov: Where PBD Meets Macromedia's Director
David Wolber

18) Programming by Analogous Examples
Alexander Repenning and Corrina Perrone-Smith

19) Visual Generalization in Programming by Example
Robert St. Amant, Henry Lieberman, Richard Potter, and Luke Zettlemoyer

Web-Enhanced:

• figures from the text
• a QuickTime demonstration file for Chapter 12

Related Titles:

Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence

作為使用者界面設計師、軟體開發人員，以及使用者，我們都知道使用「一刀切」的現成軟體時所帶來的挫折感。一遍又一遍地重複相同的指令，忍受不友好的圖形界面，無法編寫自己想到的新應用程式-這些都是常見的抱怨。如今的電腦界面的僵化使許多人感覺自己成了電腦的奴隸。難道不應該是相反的嗎？為什麼科技不能給我們更多「度身訂造」的軟體呢？

一種新技術正在崛起，它承諾給普通用戶提供創建和修改自己的程式的能力。以示例編程（PBE）是一種技術，其中軟體代理記錄用戶在交互式圖形界面中的行為，然後自動編寫一個能夠為用戶執行該行為的程式。

《你的願望是我的命令：以示例編程》廣泛探討了這項新技術。在這十九章中，編程專家們描述了實施的系統，證明了PBE在各種應用領域中的可行性。這些應用領域包括：

- 文本和圖形編輯
- 網頁瀏覽
- 電腦輔助設計
- 教授兒童編程
- 編寫電腦遊戲
- 地理信息系統

這些著名的作者和他們的編輯相信，PBE有朝一日將使界面能夠有效地對用戶說：“你的願望是我的命令！”

作者：
- Henry Lieberman自1987年以來一直是麻省理工學院媒體實驗室的研究科學家。從1972年到1987年，他在麻省理工學院人工智能實驗室擔任研究員。他的工作集中在人工智能和人機界面的交叉領域。Lieberman博士與Seymour Papert和Logo教育語言背後的團隊一起開始了他的職業生涯。作為軟體代理小組的成員，他擁有巴黎第六大學的博士學位，並發表了五十多篇關於各種研究主題的論文。

目錄：
- 前言
- 引言
- 第一章：新手編程的時代來臨
- 第二章：通過刪除細節進行泛化：如何通過示例創建任何程式
- 第三章：示例界面：有時需要一點智能；有時需要很多
- 第四章：通過示例瀏覽網頁
- 第五章：用於信息代理的示例編程
- 第六章：終端用戶和地理信息系統：示例值得千言萬語
- 第七章：將示例編程帶給CAD用戶
- 第八章：展示使應用程式工作的隱藏功能
- 第九章：使用示例編程進行格式指定的報告工具
- 第十章：通過示例進行組合
- 第十一章：使用SMARTedit學習重複的文本編輯程序
- 第十二章：訓練代理通過示例識別文本
- 第十三章：SWYN：正則表達式的視覺表示
- 第十四章：學習用戶習慣以自動化重複任務
- 第十五章：...（省略）