DocumentationGraphicsAbstract.tioga
Rick Beach, May 22, 1986 11:15:33 am PDT
Rick Beach, January 2, 1987 3:25:40 pm PST
PREFACE
ABSTRACT
SIGGRAPH '87 TUTORIAL COURSE NOTES
DOCUMENTATION GRAPHICS
Abstract
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 The lectures will reference published material but will gather unpublished research and techniques into a useful set of course notes.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 course introduces the problems of producing illustrated documents at the expected quality levels and of organizing written and graphical information in a complex document. The presentation of an imaging systems architecture begins with the two-dimensional device-independent imaging model that forms the basis for the discussion of page description languages, Xerox Interpress and Adobe Systems PostScript. These page description languages raise a number of challenging issues, such as color technology, digital typography and the interchange of illustrated documents. The sources of illustrations are covered from the point of view of an implementor. The focus shifts to the problems of rendering documentation graphics with a consistent quality, style, and typography expected of 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.
Preface
This course on documentation graphics concentrates on issues of incorp-orating illustrations within documents. There are lots of tools to create documents, lots of tools to create illustrations, and lots of activity to integrate the two. What problems remain? The major ones are the lack of quality and the lack of integration between the illustration and textual worlds.
These course notes present a series of essays and republished papers on topics concerning the production of quality illustrations using documentation graphics tools. The course begins by identifying the traditional document production process and relevant quality issues. One of these quality issues is the organization of written and graphical ``marks'' into a document.
The foundation for a systems architecture for documentation graphics is an imaging model capable of meeting graphic arts quality standards. This imaging model is device-independent and encompasses the presentation of information on two-dimensional media.
Page description languages capture the rendering specification of documents and illustrations. These notes outline their history and compares the two major languages: PostScript and Interpress. The procedural aspect of these languages is crucial to supporting the range of imaging requirements. Interpress extends the page rendering notion to document production control for distributed multi-purpose documents.
Several issues are raised and not resolved by the capabilities of page description languages. We introduce the problems of specifying and reproducing color within illustrated documents and page description languages. We describe the design of a new typeface, Lucida, for digital display and printing. A final issue is the interchange of illustrative material between creation environments and production environments.
Creating and manipulating illustrations is a major focus of documentation graphics. These notes survey electronic sources of images to provide a framework for integrating these sources. Papers on implementation techniques for illustrator programs extend the discussion of documentation graphics systems.
Controlling the appearance of illustrations to achieve consistency is introduced in the notion of graphical style. Finally, we present methods for automating the presentation of graphic information using artificial intelligence planning and rule-based techniques.