# EasyInterface: A toolkit for rapid development of GUIs for research prototype tools

## TL;DR

EasyInterface is an open-source toolkit that enables researchers to quickly create web-based GUIs for their research prototypes without extensive web programming knowledge.

## Contribution

It introduces a simple, text-based language and toolkit for rapid development of GUIs for command-line tools, facilitating integration and accessibility.

## Key findings

- Enables GUI creation in minutes for command-line tools
- Supports sophisticated GUI features like syntax highlighting and dialogs
- Facilitates integration of research prototypes into common environments

## Abstract

In this paper we describe EasyInterface, an open-source toolkit for rapid development of web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs). This toolkit addresses the need of researchers to make their research prototype tools available to the community, and integrating them in a common environment, rapidly and without being familiar with web programming or GUI libraries in general. If a tool can be executed from a command-line and its output goes to the standard output, then in few minutes one can make it accessible via a web-interface or within Eclipse. Moreover, the toolkit defines a text-based language that can be used to get more sophisticated GUIs, e.g., syntax highlighting, dialog boxes, user interactions, etc. EasyInterface was originally developed for building a common frontend for tools developed in the Envisage project.