Introduction to the Serpent User Interface Management System
March 1988 • Technical Report
Len Bass, Erik Hardy, Kurt Hoyt, Reed Little, Robert C. Seacord
This 1988 report provides an overview of Serpent, its components and the editor used to construct the user interface.
Publisher:
Software Engineering Institute
CMU/SEI Report Number
CMU/SEI-88-TR-005
DOI (Digital Object Identifier):
10.1184/R1/6574868.v1Abstract
Serpent is an example of the class of systems known as a User Interface Management System. It uses the X Window System to interact with the end user, and is useful both as a portion of a production system and as a separate prototyping tool. Serpent supports the development and execution of the user interface of a system. It provides an editor with which to specify the user interface and a runtime system that communicates with the application to get the data to display. The system then uses the specification previously output from the editor to decide how to display that data. This report provides a technical overview of Serpent, its components, the module used in specifying the user interface, and the editor used in constructing the user interface.