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Further reading □ Foreword □ Contents □ Preface □ Prologue □ Acknowledgements □ Participants □ 1. Introduction □ A. Guedj □ B. Hopgood □ C. Crestin □ D. Warman □ E. Sabin □ F. Encarnacao □ G. Dunn □ H. Bono □ I. Newell □ J. Foley □ K. Foley □ L. Sancha □ M. Sancha □ N. Sancha □ 2. Working documents □ Current position □ Graphics primitives □ Core □ Attributes □ Structure □ Methodology: Structure □ Design □ Input □ Transformations □ Formal Specification □ Conceptual Framework □ IFIP Report □ Recommendations □ Future
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⟶ ACD ⟶ Literature ⟶ Books ⟶ Methodology in Computer Graphics
⟶ ACD ⟶ Literature ⟶ Books ⟶ Methodology in Computer Graphics
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Further reading ⇓

□ Foreword □ Contents □ Preface □ Prologue □ Acknowledgements □ Participants □ 1. Introduction □ A. Guedj □ B. Hopgood □ C. Crestin □ D. Warman □ E. Sabin □ F. Encarnacao □ G. Dunn □ H. Bono □ I. Newell □ J. Foley □ K. Foley □ L. Sancha □ M. Sancha □ N. Sancha □ 2. Working documents □ Current position □ Graphics primitives □ Core □ Attributes □ Structure □ Methodology: Structure □ Design □ Input □ Transformations □ Formal Specification □ Conceptual Framework □ IFIP Report □ Recommendations □ Future

On Formal Specification Techniques

The recommendations of the Specifications Group are more likely warning statements for the other subgroups of the workshop rather than concrete suggestions of methodological principles.

Recent work developed for software building, proving programmes, etc., has highlighted concepts which are of interest in the domain of computer graphics.

The main concept is: when defining a function or a data item, define them first at a semantic level (i.e. only in terms of their specifications) and then, from the functional and data abstractions, define how the semantics are implemented in each particular case.

This way of thinking should be of great value in the attempt to define computer graphics concepts such as transformations, current position, etc. Currently, such concepts are not independent of the way they are implemented in various systems.

The Specifications Group recommends to the workshop to include in its report a chapter on specification techniques with the following contents:

  1. A not too short introduction to specifications in computer graphics and to the necessity of using a methodological approach.
  2. A survey of approaches with a list of references.
  3. Some simple examples of formal specifications in Computer Graphics.
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