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From: dhs@iddic.UUCP (David H. Straayer)
Newsgroups: net.graphics
Subject: Re: Query:  ACM Core graphics for unix & a graphics terminal?
Message-ID: <1847@iddic.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Nov-84 13:59:28 EST
Article-I.D.: iddic.1847
Posted: Tue Nov 13 13:59:28 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Nov-84 03:09:40 EST
References: <34@uwvax.UUCP>, <635@watdcsu.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 42

- 
 Question on the net recently: Doesn't ISSCO support ACM CORE Standard?  
 Answer: No. Core was a proposal of ACM/SIGGRAPH.  ANSC X3H3 was
established under ANSI procedures to adopt Core as an American
National Standard in 1979.  That goal has been abandoned in favor
of adopting GKS, the Graphical Kernel System instead.  (If you
translate "Core Graphics System" into German, and then translate
the result back into English, you get Graphical Kernel System.)
GKS is very similar in intent to the Core proposal.  Chief
differences: GKS is 2D (3D GKS as a standard planned in about 12
months), and loss of the "current position" inherent in Core (No
Big Deal).  GKS is being adopted as American standard, is already
adopted in Britain and Germany, and in various stages as an ISO
International Standard and in Canada, Netherlands, France,
Austria,...  For a while, SIGGRAPH and ACM folks toyed around
with the idea of trying to establish ACM as an official standards
making body (it isn't) and promoting CORE as an "ACM Standard".
While the idea of ACM making standards is still moving forward
(slowly), the SIGGRAPH Board of Directors voted unanimously in
October '84 to abandon any attempt to promote Core as a
"standard".  In fact, ISSCO has announced that they will be
selling a GKS (not Core) package.  IBM, Tektronix, DEC, Megatek,
Ramtek, ISSCO, Precision Visuals, Chromatics, Cray, Nova, Uniras,
Visual Engineering, Data General, Graphic Software Systems and
others have all announced GKS products, and some have been
shipping for some time.  

One other important difference between Core and GKS is that Core
had only a functional specification (semantics but no syntax).
Thus, it is difficult to port application code from one
implementation of Core to another.  GKS has "bindings" in
languages.  Fortran is complete, and C, Pascal, and ADA are being
worked on right now.  I have ported applications from one GKS to
another, and its pretty trivial.  

David H. Straayer
Tektronix, Inc.
POB 1000 MS 63-296
Wilsonville, OR 97070
(503) 685-3544
(decvax,ucbvax,...)!tektronix!iddic!dhs