Interactive NPAR: What Type of Tools Should We Create?

Abstract

I argue that we need to increase our consideration of the interaction that is possible and/or needed for the NPAR algorithms we develop. Depending on the application domain of a given algorithmic contribution, different degrees of interaction are required to make it practically useful and, thus, relevant. The spectrum of interactivity ranges from (almost) fully automatic processing to levels of control that are similar to those of traditional tools-some of the approaches even needing to support the full spectrum. Only if these considerations are first-class members of the NPAR development process can we expect others to want to work with our tools and to use them on a regular basis.