GC4S: A bioinformatics-oriented Java software library of reusable graphical user interface components

PLoS One. 2018 Sep 20;13(9):e0204474. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204474. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Modern bioinformatics and computational biology are fields of study driven by the availability of effective software required for conducting appropriate research tasks. Apart from providing reliable and fast implementations of different data analysis algorithms, these software applications should also be clear and easy to use through proper user interfaces, providing appropriate data management and visualization capabilities. In this regard, the user experience obtained by interacting with these applications via their Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) is a key factor for their final success and real utility for researchers. Despite the existence of different packages and applications focused on advanced data visualization, there is a lack of specific libraries providing pertinent GUI components able to help scientific bioinformatics software developers. To that end, this paper introduces GC4S, a bioinformatics-oriented collection of high-level, extensible, and reusable Java GUI elements specifically designed to speed up bioinformatics software development. Within GC4S, developers of new applications can focus on the specific GUI requirements of their projects, relying on GC4S for generalities and abstractions. GC4S is free software distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General Public License and both source code and documentation are publicly available at http://www.sing-group.org/gc4s.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Access to Information
  • Computational Biology*
  • Computer Graphics*
  • Internet
  • User-Computer Interface*

Grants and funding

Hugo López-Fernández is supported by a post-doctoral fellowship from Xunta de Galicia (ED481B 2016/068-0).