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From: webber@topaz.rutgers.edu (Webber)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: PHIGS standard available for comments
Message-ID: <14164@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 00:01:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.14164
Posted: Mon Aug 24 00:01:48 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Aug-87 04:13:35 EDT
References: <3765@well.UUCP> <2162@xanth.UUCP> <2234@xanth.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 46
Keywords: PHIGS  ANSI  X3  graphics interactive CBEMA big bucks
Summary: picture not a problem with phigs docs
To: webber@aramis.rutgers.edu


In article <2234@xanth.UUCP>, kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> In article <1300@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
> >I'll take mine on tape.
> You wouldn't get much use out of it that way.  Graphics standards tend to
> be chock full of illustrations, without which the text is pretty valueless.
> This is also a response to the previous posting requesting anonymous ftp.

In the most recent document: Public Review - PHIGS+Functional
Description - Revision 2.0 - Jul 20, 1987, there are NO FIGURES (82
pages on extending PHIGS for rendering).  The main PHIGS document,
X3H3/85-21(X3H31/85-05) Revised:2/18/85, 473 pages with
  on page 37 a figure illustrating the concept of hierarchy
  on page 42 a figure illustrating the concept of a centralized data model
  on page 66 a figure illustrating basic parts of a font
  on pages 68-71 a figure illustrating character spacing and orientation
  on page 86-87,91 a figure again illustrating the concept of hierarchy
  on page 99 a figure illustrating logical input modes
  on page 101 another figure illustrating a hierarchy
  on page 196 the rgb cube picture
  on page 197 the hsv cone picture
i.e., NONE of the 14 pages of figures in 473 pages are necessary for
understanding of the document by someone already familar with Core and GKS.
The PHIGS Fortran Binding document X3H34/85-13 is 125 pages with NO
FIGURES.  The PHIGS ARICHIVE FILE FORMATS document
X3H3/85-21(X3H31/85-05) Revised 2/18/85 is 43 pages of NO FIGURES.

So, the problem of porting Figures has nothing to do with the
availability of the PHIGS documents I am familiar with.  An online
copy would be as valuable as the man pages on unix to people who use
these standards.  Of course, some day one would like to think that
Figures would become an important aspect of graphics standards, but so
far I haven't seen anything that couldn't be adequately handled by
TeX.

Recall that in the past, drafts of both the Core and GKS standards
appeared in issues of SIGGRAPH's Computer Graphics quarterly.

As to what to do with standard's organizations that refuse to provide
information at cost, I would say ignore them.  If there were any
interest in portable graphics interfaces, packages, or files, the
readers of this board could put together one that was good enough for
the purposes of the readers of this board.  In any event, GKS has
taught us to distrust standards that do not come with accompanying
generic implementations.

------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)