GKS Theory and Practice

Eurographics, the European Association for Computer Graphics, has always been an important forum for discussions and presentation of results concerning the first ISO Graphical Standard, GKS (the Graphical Kernel System) and later of its three-dimensional extension, GKS-3D. This book is a collection of those articles which have appeared within the framework of Eurographics in the past 5 years, and which still contain, even after several years, valid and interesting results concerning the problems arising in connection with GKS. Some of these papers help the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the standard; others deal with general implementation problems, and finally there are some presentations of specific algorithms usable also for a GKS or GKS-3D implementation. The book may be of a particular interest to those specialists who intend to implement a GKS package or some similar graphics subsystem and who can therefore make direct use of the experiences reflected in this collection. The book should also be a valuable supplement in university courses concerned with teaching the principles of implementing device-independent computer graphics.

Inhalt
I: Concepts and Architectures.- A GKS Interface to a Realtime Oriented Raster Workstation for CAD Applications.- On Developing a GKS Driver Architecture for Raster Workstations.- Common Graphics Manager (CGM) Concepts and Their Realization.- A General Device Driver for GKS.- XGKS A Multitask Implementation of GKS.- A VLSI Implementation of the Graphics Standard GKS.- A Token Based Graphics System.- II: Algorithms.- Polygonal Clipping of Polylines.- Algorithms for Handling the Fill Area Primitive of GKS.- An Algorithmic Interpretation of the GKS TEXT Primitive.- A Method of Displaying Transformed Picture Rectangles Using GKS Raster Functions.- An Implementation of the GKS-3D/ PHIGS Viewing Pipeline.- III: Specification and Certification.- A Practical Strategy for Certifying GKS Implementations.- Configuring Reference Systems for Certifying GKS Implementations.- An Algebraic Approach to the Standardization and the Certification of Graphics Software.- Towards a Formal Specification of the GKS Output Primitives.- IV: Programming Language Interfaces.- GKS Inquiry Functions Within Prolog.- GKS Based Graphics Programming in Prolog.- A Proposal for an ALGOL 68 Binding of GKS.- Contact Addresses.