Graphics Co-ordinator's Report
At the last AGOCG meeting we had some considerable discussion on the topics
of software evaluations and training materials. We would very much welcome
your comments on these topics.
Software Evaluations
Software evaluations will be affected by the fact that the Universities and
Colleges Software Group have stood down their Graphics Working Party. This
has been chaired by Steve Morgan for the last 5 years and I would like to note
the appreciation of the community for Steve's work. AGOCG and the Graphics
Working Party have worked well together over the years through Steve and Chris
Whitaker before him.
Although we have seen recent offers for scientific graphics software on PCs,
this remains an area of ongoing interest where we need regular updates and
briefings for the community. I would welcome comments from people on how we
are to achieve this. Do we want full blown evaluations every so often (how
often?) or do we want someone to play a watching role and to advise AGOCG
when the market place has changed sufficiently that a full evaluation is appropriate?We also need to position new products, such as GSharp from Uniras, into the
portfolio of products.
CHEST Information
CHEST have been working with suppliers to improve prices for Adobe products
and for products on the Macintosh platform. See the CHEST pages on the NISS
Information Server. Visual Numerics has agreed that CHEST can provide an
evaluation copy of Stanford Graphics for a period of 30 days to any site
which would like to see the product before placing an order. Unfortunately,
CHEST only have one copy to give out, so you will have to take your turn!
Training Materials
We have approved a project to produce training materials for Macromedia Director.
We are also going to look at the current status of Uniras materials, in particular
materials needed for GSharp, and will fund work in this area. When the new
version of VISILOG comes out we will get the training materials updated. We
would welcome a proposal to update the ERDAS training materials. If you are
interested in getting involved in these projects, or if you have other
suggestions as to areas where training materials can be most effectively
produced at a national level, please contact me.
VRML
As reported in the last Newsletter, AGOCG have met with NAG. As a result of this meeting,
Robert Iles agreed to provide AGOCG with a briefing paper on Open Inventor,
VRML and Related Technologies. This paper is included in this issue.
Anne Mumford
a.m.mumford@lut.ac.uk
