A New Interface for Cloning Objects in Drawing Systems Inproceedings

Abstract:

Cloning objects is a common operation in graphical user interfaces. One example is calendar systems, where users commonly create and modify recurring events, i.e. repeated clones of a single event. Inspired by the calendar paradigm, we introduce a new cloning technique for 2D drawing programs. This technique allows users to clone objects by first selecting them and then dragging them to create clones along the dragged path. Moreover, it allows editing the generated sequences of clones similar to the editing of calendar events. Novel approaches for the generation of clones of clones are also presented.
We compared our new clone creation technique with generic duplication via copy-and-paste, smart duplication, and a dialog driven technique on a standard desktop system. The results show that the new cloning method is always faster than dialogs and smart duplication for most conditions. We also compared our clone editing method against rectangular selection. The results show that our method is better in general. In situations where rectangle selection is effective, our method is still competitive. Participants preferred the new techniques overall, too.