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From: jons@shark.UUCP (Jon Steinhart)
Newsgroups: net.graphics
Subject: Re: GKS vs. 1979 SIGGRAPH CORE
Message-ID: <694@shark.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Apr-84 00:58:30 EST
Article-I.D.: shark.694
Posted: Thu Apr 12 00:58:30 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Apr-84 20:40:39 EST
References: <1545@mit-eddie.UUCP>, <198@cubsvax.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 38

A few notes on the GKS vs CORE discussion:

1.	GKS is a major improvement over CORE in the area of language-bindings.
	CORE standardized the functionality but did not standardize the access
	to that functionality.  As a result packages such as DI-3000 were
	necessary in order to allow portable graphics code to be generated.
	GKS language binding efforts are currently underway for: FORTRAN, C,
	PASCAL, ADA, PL/1 and BASIC.

2.	GKS is an international standard.  It makes sense to adopt it as an
	American standard in order to be compatible with the rest of the
	world.

3.	GKS has additional functionality in the area of output primitives and
	attributes, and segments.

4.	Work is currently underway on 3D extensions for GKS.

5.	Proposals have been submitted to extend GKS in the areas of segment
	hierarchy and editing.

6.	Two GKS books are in print.  The first is by Hopgood, the second by
	Enderle and Pfaff.  The first book was published before work on GKS
	was completed.  Enderle and Pfaff also helped author GKS itself.

7.	There are some differences between ANSI and ISO GKS.  Among other
	things, ANSI has defined a new level of GKS which provides the
	equivalent functionality of the now defunct PMIG (programmers minimal
	interface to graphics) project.



					Jon Steinhart
					Tektronix, Inc.

					and (I'd use small print if I could)

					ANSI X3H3