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Engineering Computing Newsletter: Issue 8,

July-September 1988

Editorial

I would like to draw your attention to the announcement of the Workshop on Graphics Standards, to be held on 18 and 19 October 1988, at the Manchester University Computer Graphics Unit. If you would like to attend, please send the enclosed form back as soon as possible.

The article on WYSIWYG text processing evaluation summarises what is available in this area. Comments on these types of systems, plus any general comments, are welcomed, so that they may be included in the evaluation. Text Processing will be the subject of a future workshop.

There is also an announcement on the JANET-NSFnet link, between the UK and the US. The US NSFnet plays a similar role to JANET in the UK.

A summary is given of the last two Workshops, held at Warwick in February, and at Leeds in April. The recommendations from these two workshops, plus those from the first two, have been presented to the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group.

Fran Childs (Editor)

JANET-NSFnet Link

In the previous issue of Network News I described the new initiative on international networking and the changes that had taken place with the management and funding of the UK EARN service. During the past year there has also been considerable activity aimed at improving access to the US, particularly access between the JANET and Internet communities.

I am pleased to announce that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has agreed to fund the US side of a link between JANET and the NSFnet. The NSF approval is in response to a proposal produced by the JNT, UCL, ULCC and the USC ISI (University of Southern California Information Science Institute) in December 1987. The UK side of the project is funded by the Computer Board and the SERC Science, Engineering and Astronomy Boards. Other UK funding bodies have expressed an interest in participating.

NSFnet is planned to be the high performance backbone of the Internet linking the US supercomputer centres and the regional networks and it thus plays a similar role to JANET in the UK. The transatlantic connection will be a 64 kbits/sec link between ULCC and the John von Neumann Supercomputer Centre at Princeton using the new TAT8 transatlantic optical fibre. The initial services offered will be electronic mail, file transfer and terminal access using a clone of the current UCL JANET/ARPA gateway and it is hoped that the new service will remove many of the restrictions and problems that have affected the UCL service over the past few years. It is expected that the new link will enter service by 4Q88 but timescales are dependent on the installation schedule on the US side.

The new service will be managed on the UK side by ULCC under contract to the Network Executive. UCL will be contracted to provide software support. The introduction of the new service will be in stages and as an interim measure it is planned to run the current DARPA access service via the new gateway at ULCC. Progress is well advanced and the ULCC gateway is expected to enter service in June. Part of the development plan will include the provision of improved management facilities including a new mail authorisation mechanism based on trusted hosts. The new mechanisms have still to be finalised and the existing mechanisms will be retained for the new service in the interim.

Agreement has been reached with the MoD for continued access to the Internet via the UCL ARPA link for a six month period prior to the availability of the new transatlantic connection to NSFnet. The use of this link by the academic community is restricted to mail traffic. The cooperation of the MoD in allowing this extended period of use is gratefully acknowledged.

As a result of these developments there will be a significant improvement during 1988 in the network infrastructure linking the UK and US academic and research communities, and reasonable continuity of the existing services prior to the availability of the new facilities.

Bob Cooper (Central Computing Division)

WYSIWYG Text Processing Evaluation

Traditionally documents have been prepared and typeset on a computer using a somewhat batch-oriented process (e.g. troff, TeX, Scribe). Although publication quality results can be obtained, the output from the typesetting cannot be viewed until the processing is over. Now some interactive typesetting systems, influenced by Apple Macintosh software, are becoming available on the Sun workstation, albeit expensively at the moment. These systems display the text as it would appear on the final medium - What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).

Later this year, we hope to evaluate WYSIWYG text processing systems, against the following criteria, for recommendation to EASE Sun users. If you feel that there is anything missing that you would particularly like to see in a WYSIWYG system, please email jcm@uk.ac.rLinf. If you have any relevant sample documents, please send copies to Miss J C Malone at RAL.

We would also welcome comments on WYSIWYG systems you have used and any general comments.

Please reply by 16 September 1988 to ensure your comments are included in the evaluation.

Documentation Facilities

  1. Tables
    1. landscape and portrait b. including maths and pictures
  2. Pictures
    1. line-drawings (a la (UNIX troff) pic)
      1. a la MacDraw
      2. preferably defined interactively
      3. with ability to label
      4. with pattern-fill
    2. real graphics (produced by GKS, PRIGS, CGM etc)
    3. photographic images
    4. grey-scale images
    5. screendumps - allowing editing to add labels
    6. coloured images (some journals already allow this at no extra charge to author)
    7. (less important) business graphics (e.g. pie charts)
    8. annotations on diagrams should have full text functionality, using the same font sets as normal text
  3. Maths
    1. both in-line and as displays
    2. equations (e.g. partial differentials)
    3. symbols
    4. sub/superscripts
  4. Graphs
  5. Special Characters (e.g. pound sign, greek symbols)
  6. Fonts
    1. large range of sizes (there is experience of systems with a 24-point limit)
    2. mixed fonts in a line
    3. mixed point sizes in a line
    4. underlines
    5. equivalent to what is available on the output device or, if using different fonts on the screen (e.g. if bitmaps for others are not available), using printer positioning, so that true WYSIWYG works
    6. ease of adding new fonts to the system
    7. ease of switching font families for a whole document
  7. Colour for whole document (for future)
  8. Multi-column
    1. figures spread across columns (e.g. in n shape)
    2. choice of how to layout the columns on the final page, if it is not full (e.g. unequal- v equal-sized columns)
  9. Headers and Footers
  10. Chapter and Section Numbering
  11. Paragraph/list numbering in range of styles (arabic, alphabetic upper case etc)
  12. Footnotes

Automatic Aids

  1. Spelling checker (British) - with extensible dictionary
  2. Thesaurus
  3. Contents Page Production - automatic maintenance
  4. Index Page Production - allowing editing (e.g. regrouping)
  5. Cross-referencing (automatically updating referred page nos/chapters etc as document edited)
  6. Bibliographies

System View of Document

  1. Placement of figures - LaTeX lets you describe roughly where a diagram/table/text block etc should go - e.g. top of next suitable page, on a page by itself, at the end of the chapter; it will ensure the figure is not inserted before the first reference.
  2. Style sheets - like PageMaker, Ventura etc - so you can pour text and pictures onto page and also do flow around.
  3. Control over Positioning - the converse to the previous criteria, where you want to be able to position lines exactly - e.g. for a letter, exactly where the envelope window is.
  4. Structure Knowledge - it should know which are headings, paragraphs etc - for correct reformatting.
  5. Abstract document - the ability to change the appearance of constructs, e.g. by redefining macros.
  6. Types. Macros and Attributes
    1. formatting special languages (e.g. the macros for formatting VDM in LaTeX)
    2. define own types - e.g. quotations are indented, in smaller font etc
    3. attach named attributes to text within paragraph (e.g. "emphasis") and use these to select font style (e.g. italics)

Usage

  1. Fast learning curve for basics
  2. Zoom down to see the fine maths details, and up for layout, with text blocks represented by boxes.
  3. For one-off letters and notes, you need something that's fast and compact when saved.
  4. It is essential that there be a way to get bulk text or other material into the editor with reasonable default formatting (e.g. breaking into paragraphs) without lengthy hand-editing by the user. There should be some control over this formatting (e.g. blank lines separate paragraphs in normal text, but newlines are important in program source!) Obviously, there will be limits to what can be recognised automatically (e.g. is this a header or a short paragraph?), but it should not be necessary to edit every line let alone every word or character.
  5. Tabular input from ascii files is a must.
  6. External file formats for all types including diagrams must be known, so that data can be imported by a bit of awk and sed magic.
  7. Should produce SGML ODA/ODIF saved formats as appropriate, for transportation.
  8. Foil production.
  9. It should be possible to view and print selected pages, rather than all the pages serially.
  10. Access to a library of document templates i.e. call in a standard first page of a letter, with all the address info in place (rather like the PROFS document formats).
  11. If possible, the system should be like some other interactive system metaphor with which many users are familiar.
  12. There should be some way of getting existing documents into the system, e.g. troff (perhaps limited to -mm and -ms), TeX and anything else that is widely used.
Jan Malone (Informatics Department)

User Interface Management Systems - a current product review

The main objective of a User Interface Management System (UIMS) is to free the applications programmer from low level device details and the high level interface details, the latter being the responsibility of the interface designer. The UIMS should consist of a comprehensive set of tools for the user interface designer, which support the implementation, debugging and evaluation of interactive human-computer dialogues. A UIMS is intended to reduce the cost of software development for the user interface.

A survey of the UIMS currently available on the market, has been carried out for the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group (CFT AG). An extensive set of criteria were developed, and then the systems were assessed against these. All aspects of the life cycle of software were considered, from design, through implementation, to maintenance and testing.

The six products assessed were Tiger, SET, Dice, Blox, Grape MMI, and Autocad.

The major criteria were:

The paper was initially presented at the Glasgow DIMS Workshop which was arranged by CFTAG. The paper has since been updated, enlarged and has recently been published as a RAL report: User Interface Management Systems - A Current Product Review, report number RAL-88-028.

Martin Prime (Informatics Department)

AI Support for Engineers

Introduction

The Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) of the Engineering Board of SERC are currently funding a three year contract at the AI Applications Institute, Edinburgh University, to provide support to SERC funded engineers who wish to investigate the application of AI to their work. This support covers a wide range of activities from general advice on hardware and software selection to collaboration in the construction of application systems.

Much of the support available has been contracted for in advance by CFC and hence is available at no further cost.

Workshop on AI Tools

Our second workshop, entitled AI Tools, took place on 18 March 1988. The workshop consisted of a series of talks, discussion sessions and demonstrations. Talks were presented by members of the Knowledge Representation and Expert Systems Group from AIAI and by members of the Department of AI at Edinburgh University. The talks covered a variety of tools used for building knowledge-based systems - from PC shells to the more exotic toolkits available on workstations. Application programs developed using some of these tools were demonstrated.

There is a report on the workshop which is in five sections. The first section is a copy of the slides that the speakers used in their talks. The second section contains two papers that describe some of the tools in greater detail. Section three is made up of a bibliography of AI in engineering and a list of AI tools. Section four gives details about some of the AI software distributed by AIAI. The final section is a summary of the discussions that took place at the workshop. Free copies of this report are available.

The bibliography of AI in engineering and the list of AI tools, which are in section three, arc available for copying over JANET from uk.ac.ed.aiai accessed with authorisation "guest" and your name as the password. For example, assuming you use hhcp for ftp, try the following:

Home% hhcp 000016000227:'<AILIB>bib' bib 
transfer authorisation: guest 
transfer password: <enter your name here>

Workshop on AI in Process Engineering

Our next workshop, which will be on Artificial Intelligence in Process Engineering, is scheduled for 9 December 1988. This workshop will provide a forum for discussion on the application of AI techniques to problems in the fields of Chemical and Biochemical Processing Systems. There will be talks covering a variety of systems which involve the use of artificial intelligence, together with demonstrations and ample opportunities for discussion.

Following the format of our previous workshops, we would like to limit the number of attendees to around thirty. If you are interested in attending, please let us know as soon as possible. The workshop has been scheduled so that those interested may attend the Expert Systems course on the two preceding days, 7 and 8 December (see below).

Courses

The following list gives details of courses to be given at AIAI during the second half of 1988.

Ian Filby (AI Applications Institute, Edinburgh University)

Information on the X Window System

The X Window System is fast becoming a de facto standard for workstations. It has the unusual and welcome property that it is being taken up widely by both academic and industrial users. It has been adopted by EASE, and should be a valuable aid to making workstation software portable. the academic and industrial communities.

The University of Kent at Canterbury has an SERC contract to be an affiliate member of the MIT X Consortium, the body responsible for overseeing the development of X. This body consists of large industrial users, such as DEC and HP, together with some Universities. Members of the Consortium are sent a considerable amount of electronic mail about X developments.

The SERC contract for the University of Kent docs not provide any manpower, but the University will do what it reasonably can to disseminate information. If you wish to receive this information (thus being a collaborator with the University), please contact us stating your interest. Some of the available mailing lists are:

CFTAG, the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group for the Computer Facilities Committee, is supporting X awareness' initiatives. These will take the form of courses, workshops, newsgroups, software support, etc. The balance between these activities will be determined by user need, and we would be pleased to receive comments and suggestions in this area.

Peter Brown, Steven Holmes (University of Kent)

Semiconductor Device Modelling

The one-dimensional device modelling program, HETRO, is being offered to interested academic research groups. HETRO is suitable for modelling heterostructure devices and transistors, under steady state and transient conditions.

The basic features of HETRO can be summarised as follows:

The code is written in Fortran 77 and was developed on Prime and Perq computers as part of a SERC/MOD research contract. Its release has been obtained with the permission of the MOD. The source code will be provided at the cost of a magnetic tape, but no support will be given. A user guide will be provided.

There is also a possibility of a 1-D amorphous silicon analysis package for solar cell and thin film transistor modelling being made available. The program is owned by a Dutch university and a final decision on its availability rests with them.

E Azoff (Informatics Department)

Workshops

Numerical and Mathematical Software University of Warwick, 1-3 February 1988

Tools for Integration - University of Leeds, 20-22 April 1988

These workshops, organised by the Engineering Computing Facilities Executive (ECFE) on behalf of the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group (CFTAG), were both attended by a total of 45 delegates, divided between industry, software suppliers, universities, polytechnics and SERC establishments.

The recommendations from these two workshops, plus those from the earlier workshops on Databases and User Interface Management Systems, were presented for consideration at a special meeting of CFTAG on Wednesday, 4 May 1988. As a result of these discussions, a report will be submitted to the Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) in time for its next meeting.

The main recommendations include programmes in:

Activity in some of these areas has already commenced: the X-ll workshops and the subsequent setting up of the X-II Toolkits working party. Work has also commenced in the evaluation of some commercial UIMS products, for example, PA-Set, Tiger and more recently, Blox. Other activities will commence when the detailed requirements of the Engineering Community have been agreed.

In the longer term, work on the implementation of emerging standards, such as STEP, EDIF, GKS-3D and PHIGS, will take on a greater significance and the potential of these will need to be assessed for the benefit of the community. Long term studies of the use of databases, mixed language environments and object oriented programming systems will need to be studied and recommendations as to their value to the research community assessed.

One other important proposal is for the appointment of an Education Co-ordinator to direct the training and awareness programme, this post also having responsibility for liaising with other bodies and institutions, such as the BCS, IEE, Computer Board, etc.

Once overall approval of the applications software programme and its integration within the EASE proposals have been accepted by CFC and the Engineering Board, presentations will be given at the Engineering User Group Meeting planned for the early autumn at RAL.

Geoff Lambert (ECFE)

Forthcoming Events

Alvey Vision Club Conference, 31 August - 2 September 1988 Manchester University

Fringe Analysis' 89 The 4th annual meeting of the Fringe Analysis Special Interest Group will be a major international conference devoted to state of the art techniques in generation and analysis of fringe patterns and interferograms. It will be held at Southampton University from 3 - 6 April 1989. Authors from Industry and Academe are invited to submit papers on applications and/or techniques of fringe generation and/or analysis. Of particular interest are applications of Classical Interferometry, Holography, Speckle Interferometry, Speckle Photography and Particle Image Velocimetry, Moire and Structured Lighting Techniques. It is intended to publish the full proceedings of the conference, and to publish selected articles in a refereed journal. Abstracts of not more than 200 words should be returned by 31 August 1988.

Workshop on Graphics Standards: Good or Bad for Engineers?, 18 - 19 October 1988 Manchester University Computer Graphics Unit

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