This course is for programmers and researchers working with or building technical publishing tools. It may also be of interest to graphic designers who are knowledgeable about computer graphic techniques and want to learn more about how it is accomplished.

A general familiarity with computer graphics will be assumed and knowledge or interest in the field of technical publishing would be helpful.

This course will survey the use of computer graphic techniques and problems in producing illustrations for technical publications. The lectures will reference published material but will gather unpublished research and techniques into a useful set of course notes. The survey begins with the two-dimensional device-independent imaging model that forms the basis for recent page description languages, Xerox Interpress and Adobe Systems PostScript. Then the sources of illustrations and their organization into documents are covered from the point of view of an implementor. The focus shifts in the afternoon to the problems of rendering documentation graphics with the quality, style, and typography expected in technical publications. The final topic addresses automated techniques for creating graphical presentations. Throughout the course, unsolved problems and thorny technical issues will be highlighted to point out areas needing further work.

29
DOCUMENTATION GRAPHICS
Tuesday

CHAIR
Richard J. Beach

LECTURERS
Richard J. Beach, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA
Chuck Bigelow, Bigelow & Holmes, San Francisco, CA
Jock Mackinlay, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Maureen Stone, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA

TOPICS
Graphic Arts Quality Issues/Beach
—Resolution and media variance
—Color and gray-scale reproduction across devices
—Images and fonts
—example of fonts at device resolution for paint systems indicates that the quality issue is recognized; MacDraw & ImageWriter substitute double size font to get better printed resolution

Digital Typography/Bigelow
—Font representations, character sets, metrics, legibility issues
—EP86 typography paper, or something Chuck supplies
—Typographic organization

2D Imaging Model/Stone
—Device- and resolution-independent images
—Update essay: Device Independent Graphics
—Imaging primitives
—Imaging operators
—Warnock&Wyatt paper

Page Description Languages/Beach
—Representing the page through a 2D imaging model
—Describing and rendering documents
—Survey of Interpress and PostScript languages
—Mendelson material to LaserLovers
—Brian Reid material: Comparison tech report; EP86 paper on procedural page description languages
—Harrington comparison report (WRC)
—anything about standards activities?

From Rendering to Editing/Beach
—Tools to produce PDL page master
—Documentation problem is greater than the sum of its parts

Illustration Programs/Stone
—Illustration models presented to user
—Resources required
—Graphic Arts Quality Issues
—some MacPaint/MacDraw summary
—Juno paper -> Constraint model
—Techniques for Interactive Graphics (with Baudelaire)
—Star graphics paper (Lipkie et al) SIGGRAPH'82
—idomatic illustrators (Bowman)

Graphical Style/Beach
—Separating geometrical content from rendering form
—Chapter 3 of Rick's thesis or Graphical Style paper

Presentation Tools/Mackinlay
—Automated selection and creation of graphical presentations
—APEX paper by Feiner

Wrapup/Beach
—System issues for Documentation Graphics
—Day in the life of real publishing
—Traditional Document Production Techniques (from Thesis)
—Dealing with real output devices

Richard J. Beach, chair
Xerox PARC

Maureen Stone
Xerox PARC

The following list contains a pool of suggested lecturers among others who would ensure that the tutorial has a non-Xerox flavor to it. Each of them is knowledgeable in specific areas of the tutorial outline and has published in those areas. The intent would be to augment Beach and Stone with one of them or equivalent speakers.