Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!rpi!batcomputer!garry
From: garry@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Garry Wiegand as guest)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: PHIGS early history?
Message-ID: <7685@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 6 Apr 89 05:40:00 GMT
Reply-To: garry@larch.cadif.cornell.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Cornell Engineering && Ithaca Software
Lines: 25

We are trying to track down the early design history of Phigs and 
get it straight. I had had a vague impression that Phigs was basically
an IBM contract to RPI which later got promoted to being an ANSI
committee, but that's all I knew.

My partner has called ANSI and dug through the Siggraph proceedings of
the early 80's. The information is very scanty there, but it sounds like:

    Phigs was an outgrowth of a GKS-3D group (which faded away upon not
    being able to reach agreement with the ISO GKS committee?); 

    The first (ad hoc?) committee to meet called it "PMIGS", started
    meeting in 1980, (and did the design from scratch?); 

    The first official standards committee called it "PHIGS" and started
    meeting in 1982. 

I don't know how the IBM/RPI work and the Megatek work fits into this, 
or who/when the real designers were.

Can anyone who was there in the early days fill us in on the designers,
the basic chronology, and the first implementations of PHIGS? How did 
it really happen?  (merci)

garry wiegand   (garry@larch.cadif.cornell.edu - @tcgould won't work!)