Xu Pengfei, Yan Guohang, Fu Hongbo, Igarashi Takeo, Tai Chiew-Lan, Huang Hui
IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2021 Apr;27(4):2355-2368. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2019.2954321. Epub 2021 Feb 26.
Specifying precise relationships among graphic elements is often a time-consuming process with traditional alignment tools. Automatic beautification of roughly designed layouts can provide a more efficient solution but often lead to undesired results due to ambiguity problems. To facilitate ambiguity resolution in layout beautification, we present a novel user interface for visualizing and editing inferred relationships through an automatic global layout beautification process. First, our interface provides a preview of the beautified layout with inferred constraints without directly modifying an input layout. In this way, the user can easily keep refining beautification results by interactively repositioning and/or resizing elements in the input layout. Second, we present a gestural interface for editing automatically inferred constraints by directly interacting with the visualized constraints via simple gestures. Our technique is applicable to both 2D and 3D global layout beautification, supported by efficient system implementation that provides instant user feedback. Our user study validates that our tool is capable of creating, editing, and refining layouts of graphic elements, and is significantly faster than the standard snap-dragging or command-based alignment tools for both 2D and 3D layout tasks.
使用传统的对齐工具来指定图形元素之间的精确关系通常是一个耗时的过程。对大致设计好的布局进行自动美化可以提供一种更高效的解决方案，但由于存在模糊性问题，往往会导致不理想的结果。为了便于在布局美化中解决模糊性问题，我们提出了一种新颖的用户界面，通过自动全局布局美化过程来可视化和编辑推断出的关系。首先，我们的界面提供了带有推断约束的美化布局预览，而无需直接修改输入布局。通过这种方式，用户可以通过交互式地重新定位和/或调整输入布局中的元素大小，轻松地不断优化美化结果。其次，我们提出了一种手势界面，通过简单的手势直接与可视化约束进行交互来编辑自动推断出的约束。我们的技术适用于二维和三维全局布局美化，并由能够提供即时用户反馈的高效系统实现所支持。我们的用户研究验证了我们的工具能够创建、编辑和优化图形元素的布局，并且在二维和三维布局任务中，其速度明显快于标准的捕捉拖动或基于命令的对齐工具。
