The goal is to provide much more than a graphical rep- resentation of the table geometry manager, but a higher level view of layout design to make it easy to create, save, and apply new layout designs. Ted is more than a wrapper for table configuration options. Windows are arranged onto a grid rep- resenting the rows and columns of the table. Windows may also span multiple rows or columns. Grid configu- ration and window alignment is controlled from the lower panel.
Many interface builders give the user too much freedom in window placement.
They ignore geometry manage- ment issues, simply positioning windows at specific screen coordinates. In addition, because there is no underlying geometry model, the interface builder does nothing to repair or improve the user's design. An alternative approach is to retrofit the placement of a set of windows to a particular layout mode after the user has arranged them. But this can easily be a source of confusion, especially when the layout model fails to accurately reflect the actual design problem. It is impor- tant that the model be clear to the interface designer as to how it will affect the design.