Inishell 2.0: semantically driven automatic GUI generation for scientific models

Abstract

As numerical model developers, we have experienced first hand how most users struggle with the configuration of the models, leading to numerous support requests. Such issues are usually mitigated by offering a graphical user interface (GUI) that flattens the learning curve. Developing a GUI, however, requires a significant investment for the model developers, as well as a specific skill set. Moreover, this does not fit with the daily duties of model developers. As a consequence, when a GUI has been created – usually within a specific project and often relying on an intern – the maintenance either constitutes a major burden or is not performed. This also tends to limit the evolution of the numerical models themselves, since the model developers try to avoid having to change the GUI. In this paper we describe an approach based on an XML description of the required numerical model configuration elements (i.e., the data model of the configuration data) and a C++/Qt tool (Inishell) that populates a GUI based on this description on the fly. This makes the maintenance of the GUI very simple and enables users to easily get an up-to-date GUI for configuring the numerical model. The first version of this tool was written almost 10 years ago and showed that the concept works very well for our own surface process models. A full rewrite offering a more modern interface and extended capabilities is presented in this paper.