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 The lectures will reference published material but will gather unpublished research and techniques into a useful set of course notes.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

Digital Typography/Bigelow
—Font representations, character sets, metrics, legibility issues
—Typographic organization

2D Imaging Model/Stone
—Device- and resolution-independent images
—Imaging primitives
—Imaging operators

Page Description Languages/Beach
—Representing the page through a 2D imaging model
—Describing and rendering documents
—Survey of Interpress and PostScript languages

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

Graphical Style/Beach
—Separating geometrical content from rendering form

Presentation Tools/Mackinlay
—Automated selection and creation of graphical presentations

Wrapup/Beach
—System issues for Documentation Graphics
—Day in the life of real publishing
—Dealing with real output devices

Richard J. Beach, chair
Xerox PARC

Chuck Bigelow
Bigelow & Holmes

Jock Mackinlay
Stanford University

Maureen Stone
Xerox PARC