People producing illustrations with graphical editors often need to repeat the same steps over and over again. This paper describes five techniques that reduce the amount of repetition required to create graphical documents, by having the computer play a role in automating repetitive tasks. These techniques: graphical search and replace, constraint-based search and replace, constraints from multiple snapshots, editable graphical histories, and macros by demonstration, have all been implemented within the Chimera editor framework. Chimera, which contains an object-based editor for producing 2D illustrations, was built as a testbed for this research. All of these techniques are demonstrational or example-based. The user specifies concrete examples of tasks, and the system applies the tasks to other data. In addition to reducing repetition, these techniques allow users to customize the editor for the tasks that they frequently perform, and expert users to encapsulate their knowledge in a form that other users can exploit.
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