Transportable Applications Environment (TAE) Plus: A NASA Tool Used to Develop and Manage Graphical User Interfaces

TAE Plus was built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to support the building of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for highly interactive applications, such as realtime processing systems and scientific analysis systems. If is a general purpose portable tool that includes a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) WorkBench which allows user interface designers to layout and manipulate windows and interaction objects. The WorkBench includes both user entry objects (e.g., radio buttons, menus) and data-driven objects (e.g., dials, gauges, stripcharts), which dynamically change based on values of realtime data. This paper discusses what TAE Plus provides, how the implementation has utilized state-of-the-art technologies within graphic workstations, and how it has been used both within and outside NASA.