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Welcome to Graphics Newsletter No 12! This contains information on current graphics activities. In this issue we have a summary of the activities of the IUSC Graphics Working Party, the Advisory Group on Computer Graphics, and the IUSC Workstations Working Party. There is also a report on the Scientific Visualisation Workshop held at Stanford University and NASA Ames in June. Reports on other events are held over until the next issue. If you have not seen this Newsletter before and wish to get on the mailing list, please send your name and address (preferably by e-mail) to me. New readers are always welcome! New contributors are also always welcome!
Many readers will already have seen in the last edition of the Newsletter that Chris Whitaker has retired as Chairman of the IGWP. As incoming Chairman I should like to thank Chris for all the work he has done to improve computer graphics facilities for the Higher Education community and wish him well for the future.
In fact Chris will continue as a member of the IGWP thus giving us valuable continuity although he will not be playing as active a role as previously.
Several members of the Working Party have indicated their willingness to continue as members and I believe we have a good team with which to approach the issues of the next few years.
There are, of course, many areas that the Working Party will wish to address and also there are several jobs which are currently active. The most pressing requirement at present is the need to set up a deal for a PC graphics package or packages. This has been a fairly long-standing requirement but progress has been impeded by the fact that the market in this area has been in a state of flux. However, it is felt that now may be the time to move, and thus it has been decided to evaluate a wide range of products in the next two months with a view to making a decision as soon as possible after that. We are working closely with CHEST and AGOCG on this.
The Working Party will be looking at future plans at its next meeting, so if anyone would like to send me any suggestions about possible future projects or initiatives, I would be pleased to receive them.
AGOCG are now looking ahead to the second year of existence and has decided some areas of work. Other proposals are always welcome, so if you wish to influence the direction then contact me.
On the software side, we will be continuing an interest in standards. There will be announcements soon regarding GKS for PCs, GKS-3D source release and some further CGM software. There is a SERC funded project starting at the University of Manchester which will develop some tools to assist PHIGS programmers. We will be looking for test sites for the software in the Winter of 1991192 and if you are interested in assisting please let me know. The testing could form part of a student project which was using PHIGS.
Visualisation is a growing area of interest. AGOCG are planning a workshop in 1991 to bring together experts to talk about the requirements for visualisation. A major report is expected to be output from this meeting.
On the hardware side we are going to be looking at scanners (primarily colour scanners) and projection systems. Any experiences (good and bad) with systems would be useful information. We will be looking for a site to carry out evaluation of the short-listed scanners. This would involve intensive work over a short period (probably a month) and the production of a report. The testing would require checking interfaces to a wide range of software which the site selected for the work would be expected to have already. Please contact me if you are interested.
The AGOCG Graphics Operational Requirement has been sent to the CCTA. If anyone would like a copy please contact me.
The CHEST deal for the CGM Checker and Viewer is now out. The tools are Metacheck and Metaview. Metacheck carries out a check on a CGM and can list out the contents in detail and any errors found. This is available for PC, Vax/VMS, Apollo and Sun. The viewer is available for PCs only. These are useful tools for checking CGMs that cannot be read and it is unclear whether the writer or reader is at fault.
News of forthcoming releases of both EMU-TEK and Rainbow should please users still struggling with DOS memory problems.
A pre-release version of EMU-TEK 2.07 has already reached the U.K. This version includes new features including CGM export, Hercules monochrome card support and (for VT220) double height, double width characters and 132 column mode using narrow characters. All of these facilities have been requested by the CHEST community. The pre-release of version 2.07 is about 7K smaller than 2.06E which, in turn, was 7K smaller than 2.04.
Edinburgh also recently announced enhancements to its Rainbow PC networking products. Significant memory reductions in both Pinkbook and Padport are on the way. Padport will be around 18K smaller and Pinkbook is targeted to reduce by 17K. A combined version of Pinkbook and Padport will also be offered and this will require less memory than the two programs running separately. The new Rainbow software should be available by the middle of September.
It looks as if these two announcements, together with tools like Lanspace which many sites use to locate PC networking code above 640K, will go a long way towards solving outstanding problems with EMU-TEK and PC networking. By the time this note appears, I hope that CHEST will have set up mailing lists for discussion amongst EMU-TEK users. It will be interesting to hear on those lists how you get on with the new products.
An evaluation of software products which allow personal computers to be used as X terminals is now nearing completion. A summary of the survey results will appear in a future newsletter. If products emerge which are of a sufficiently high standard then IUSC will be asked to recommend that CHEST negotiates one or more deals for the community. Since the evaluation has found some problems which suppliers are still working on, it is a little difficult to predict timescales just now.
Mailing lists have been set up at Newcastle for all the CHEST deals. This article tells you how to subscribe to the UNIRAS mailing list. It also tells you how to get a list of the other topics.
If your site runs UNIRAS you may want at least one member of your staff (the graphics specialist) to subscribe to one of the discussion lists which CHEST has recently set up. The lists are based on electronic mail and run on the MAILBASE service at the University of Newcastle.
The UNIRAS discussion list is named chest-uniras@newcastle and anyone can subscribe to it by sending an e-mail message of the form:
subscribe <listname> <Firstname> <Surname>
for example:
subscribe chest-uniras Anne Mumford
to the mail address: mailbase@newcastle. New subscribers are automatically sent a help file about how MAILBASE works. There are many other discussion lists (one for each CHEST centrally-funded deal) already set up and anyone is free to subscribe to them. For a full list of current discussion lists send a message containing the word:
lists
to mailbase@uk.ac.newcastle.
Once you have subscribed to a discussion list you can send out a message to all others on the list by sending a mail message to the list name; in this case chestuniras@newcastle.
I am compiling a list of programs for PCs which are of interest to the UK crystallographic community. Some of these are likely to be the presentation graphic packages being evaluated by the IUSC, but we also need more specialised ones. I already know of some commercial molecular modelling packages which include sophisticated graphics, and programs such as SHAPE for crystal morphology, and PsiGen for drawing chemical structures. I would be most grateful for details of any other programs, particularly ones in the public domain, for use in research or teaching of crystallography and properties of materials.
Many people will have had the problem of wanting to playback tapes generated in the US NTSC format and finding only European PAL equipment to be available. NTSC is technically quite different from PAL but, according to the June issue of Which? published by the Consumers' Association, there are now one or two reasonably priced VHS videos that will play NTSC tapes through most ordinary TV's. In particular the Panasonic NVJ35B at about £370 is recommended as a BEST BUY and has this feature. However, there is some technical trickery involved and some older TV's may not cooperate so test the combination before use.
Note: (l have tried the above with my USA "Scientific Visualisation" tape, and it works OK! Ed)
This Workshop was chaired by Val Watson (NASA Ames) and Bert Hesselink (Stanford University) and attended by 75 delegates from the USA, Canada, and Europe. The purpose of the Workshop was to review current developments and trends in scientific visualisation, survey current hardware and software tools and capabilities, address current problems and issues, and plan for future developments to meet emerging requirements. It was the second Workshop in the series; the first being at JPL in 1988.
The first day consisted of a review of current hardware and software offerings in the market place, presented primarily by vendors and technical developers. This included Stardent, Intelligent Light, United Technology, SUN, Visual Edge, Apple, SGI, and NASA Ames.
The second day surveyed issues, problems, and solutions from a University perspective and also from a laboratory perspective. The former were addressed by presentations from San Diego Supercomputer Centre, Pittsburgh Supercomputer Centre, Ohio Supercomputer Centre, Stanford University, Rutgers University, University of Texas, and University of Lowell. The latter were addressed by Los Alamos Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab, RIACS, and JPL.
The third day consisted of 5 Working Groups at NASA Ames. These had the following themes: Scientist's Environment, Shareable Environments, Representation of Complex Systems, Education, and Standards.
Space forbids a condensation of my 37 pages of notes taken at the Workshop, including the results of the Working Groups! However, it is hoped to provide occasional articles in this Newsletter on matters which were raised at the Workshop, if space permits.
Some of the most significant matters which were raised were as follows:
The interactive nature of the Workshop was most beneficial. The writer was impressed by some of the current developments in the USA.
A more detailed report is available via email from the undersigned.
