Author: Michael Sannella
Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, August 1994. Revised version published as UW Tech Report 94-09-10.
(1) The SkyBlue constraint solver. SkyBlue is an incremental constraint solver that uses local propagation to maintain a set of constraints as individual constraints are added and removed. If all of the constraints cannot be satisfied, SkyBlue leaves weaker constraints unsatisfied in order to satisfy stronger constraints (maintaining a constraint hierarchy). SkyBlue is a more general successor to the DeltaBlue algorithm that satisfies cycles of methods by calling external cycle solvers and supports multi-output methods.
(2) The Multi-Garnet user interface development system. Garnet is a user interface toolkit that incorporates a constraint solver to maintain one-way constraints between object fields. The Multi-Garnet package extends Garnet to support multi-way constraints and constraint hierarchies. Multi-Garnet has been used to construct complex user interfaces that would have been difficult to construct just using Garnet's constraint solver.
(3) The CNV user interface builder and debugger. CNV includes a set of debugging tools to help programmers understand the behavior of complex constraint networks. One tool uses a new algorithm to generate alternate constraint solutions that would have been produced if SkyBlue had chosen different methods to satisfy the constraints.
full version (this is a directory containing postscript files for the dissertation, one file per chapter).