1998 Second International Conferenceon Knowledge-Based Intelligent Electronic Systems, 21-23 April 1998, Adelaide, Australia. Editors, L.C. Jain and R.KJain Interactive Animation for Visualisation of Mapping of Parallel Programs into Parallel Processors Joanne E. Zucco Bruce H. Thomas Elena Trichina School of Computer and Information Science Information Science Information Science University of South Australia The Levels, SA, Australia 5095 zucco@cs.unisa.edu.au thomas@cs.unisa.edu.au trichina@cs.unisa.edu.au School of Computer and University of South Australia The Levels, SA, Australia 5095 School of Computer and University of South Australia The Levels, SA, Australia 5095 Abstract editor is a tool used in a visual parallel programming environment. Extending the use of animation techniques will have a two fold effect, it will determine the ability to implement such techniques outside their current domain and improve the editor's interface. Techniques of cartoon animation, when applied to the inteflace, provide the user with greater visual cues, and convey a feeling of substance to the objects being manipulated. This paper describes the efJects used to animate many of the interactions in a structured graphical editor. The editor is used as a tool in a visual parallel programming environment, and provides a new large application to test the effectiveness of the concept of animated direct manipulation. Also described are the implementation issues in order to provide animated graphical feedback for direct manipulation. Keywords: interactive, parallel programming, animation, visualisation 1. Introduction Thomas and Calder [16] examined how techniques borrowed from cartoons and computer animation can enhance the experience of interacting with a computer. In particular, applying animation to the interface itself in order to enhance, or augment the effectiveness of human interaction with applications that present a graphical interface. Their ideas are demonstrated in a graphical editor [ 151, which was extended to incorporate animation techniques into the direct manipulation of graphical objects. To date, these animation techniques have not been implemented outside the context of a drawing editor. In light of this, and the success of incorporating animation to the graphical editor; we have set out to extend the use of these animation techniques to a different domain. Thomas and Calder [16] discovered that the most compelling animations were found to be those which enhanced the notion of constraints. For this reason, the chosen domain is a structured graphical editor which has a large and varied set of constraints. The 1.1. The Problem hedominantly, user interfaces are based on static representations of the state of a system. Static user interfaces, as Chang and Ungar [5] point out, are not suited or appropriate for conveying change. Consider the common operation of moving an object by dragging. The application must provide continuous feedback during the drag so that the user knows where the object is at all times. Simple feedback techniques based on drawing object outlines tend to give the impression that the operation is happening to a surrogate object rather than the real thing. Although drawing the full- featured object during the drag gives the object solidity, it can still fail to convey a sense of substance; somehow it seems too easy to manipulate the object. These feedback techniques provide the user with little information as to what is actually taking place. 1.2. Previous Work If cartoon animators were asked to address this problem, they would portray such behaviour by applying certain animation techniques to the objects in the interface. For example, to suggest movement caused by someone dragging an object, an animator could show the object distorted in the direction of the pull. The Self programming environment developed by Chang and Ungar [51 supports cartoon-style animation techniques. They describe three principles (solidity, exaggeration, and reinforcement) in order to make applying cartoon animation to the user interface meaningful and 0-7803-43 16-6/98/$10.00 01998 EEE 386