High Quality Imaging of Electronic Documents
July 21, 1987
High-Quality Imaging
of
Electronic Documents


Richard J. Beach
Imaging Area
Computer Science Laboratory
Xerox PARC

July 21, 1987
CSL Imaging Research
f Our research focus is the presentation of high-quality illustrated electronic documents
(to supply the images for marking research)
f The PARC Imager Architecture provides the basis for imaging electronic documents
f We use the Cedar environment for rapid prototyping to facilitate more effective technology transfer
f We are presently exploring a world with new types of electronic documents:
 integrated content,
 color,
 active,
 interactive
Defining High-Quality
Electronic Documents
f Graphic arts quality standards
Tradition for craftsmanship
f Quality tradeoffs
Proof copies:
small quantity, rapid job turnaround, modest resolution
Production copies:
large quantity, modest job turnaround, modest resolution
Master image copies:
small quantity, modest job turnaround, greatest resolution
f Functionality as a quality requirement
Any image is possible
Some images are practical
Most images are convenient
Imaging Electronic Documents
is a Systems Problem!
f Significant computation required
Composing interesting documents
Decomposing Interpress masters
Process control computation
System reprographics computation
f Challenges posed by marking technologies
Resolution increases beyond 300 spi
Printing grey-scale pixels requires more bits
Coping with variety of color production technologies
f PARC Imager architecture solution
Resolution independent
Device independent
Fully functional imaging software
(Interpress 3.0 or PostScript)
PARC Imager Architecture:
Goals and Tenets
f We need to display and print our research
f ``Images by Friday, not pages per minute''
Yet, we use it everyday in production . . .
f Color everywhere, even black and white!
f Identical software for applications and printing: robust and reliable
f Careful design of program interface
(Lots of working code thrown away)
Initial design 1983, initial implementation 1984
First release Cedar5.2 1985
Cedar6.0 1986, Cedar7.0 1987
f Imager architecture tenets
Common imaging model (Interpress 3.0)
Common application program interface
Extensible, suitable for years of imaging research
PARC Imager Architecture:
Schematic
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Applications Depend on
PARC Imager Architecture
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Print Server Configuration
based on PARC Imager
f Interpress Development Environment
(Interpress 3.0 Professional Graphics Set)
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
PARC Imaging with
Diverse Marking Technologies
=
Device name Colors Resol. Pixels Marking
=
Workstation BW 1000 1 phosphor
Workstation 3-color 1000 8 phosphor
Workstation 3-color 1000 3X8 phosphor
Xerox 4045 BW  300 1 xerography
Xerox 4050 BW  300 1 xerography
Xerox Raven BW  300 1 xerography
Xerox Raven BW  384 1 xerography
Platemaker BW 1200 1 laser film
Versatec color 4-color  200 4X1 electrostatic
Xerox 4020 4-color  240 4X1 ink jet
Panasonic TT 4-color  400 4X1 thermal
Platemaker 4-color 1200 4X1 laser film
Dunn camera 3-color 1000 3X8 photo film
Acoustic Ink 3-color 1250 3X64 acoustic ink
=
MasterBlaster BW  300 1 xerography
MB Dot Matrix 3-color 360X180 3X1 ink jet
Colorado 4-color 1600 1 xerography
Optronics 3-color 2000 3X8 photo film
=
Samples from a Variety
of Marking Devices
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Active Electronic Documents
f A document is a repository of information for human perception
f This broad definition supports the following content that we can demonstrate now
— Formatted text
— 2D Illustration and 3D graphics
— Mathematical computation
— Voice annotation
— Database queries
— General computation
f We explore these concepts by researching architectures to support the integration of these different contents
PARC Imager architecture
Interpress and related standards
Color standards
Intervoice architecture
Distributed computation architectures
Active Documents with Mathematical Content
f Mathematical content in documents
Problem of displaying notation
Problem of creating/editing/proofreading notation
f Notation is computable
Symbolically compute new math expressions
Explore applications of math notation
(Mortgage and least squares demo)
Document Containing
Mortgage Computation
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Annotated Documents
f Integrating audio into documents
Etherphone: digital audio over Ethernet
Lark telephone
Voice file server
RPC communications service
f Annotating electronic documents with voice
TiogaVoice tool for dictation, editing, replay
VoiceRopes for managing voice fragments
f Scripting documents
. . . to play themselves
. . . to demonstrate themselves
(Berlitz conversational French demo)
Annotated Documents:
French Lesson
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Annotated Documents:
Voice Editing Tool
f Voice represented as sound and silences
f Textual annotations (on the voice annotation) may be added anywhere
f Dictation machine user model
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Active Documents with
Embedded Computation
f Document presents information computed upon demand
f Current example of restricted computation is data-driven charts and graphics
f Computation will extend the purpose and scope of electronic documents
f Sampler demonstration
Time of day reminder
Database query
Computed information
Animation
Document containing
Reminder and Database Query
f Information formatted as a document
f Content computed upon presentation
=
[Artwork node; type 'Artwork on' to command tool]
Conclusions
f Imaging area focusses on architectures for integrated illustrated document creation tools
f Good leverage from PARC Imager and other integrated system architectures
f Demonstrated active electronic documents
f We do print anything we display!
You now have a copy.