Graphics Co-ordinator's Report
The production of training materials has been an activity of AGOCG from
its early days. We have continued this tradition providing support staff,
running courses and providing teachers of computer graphics with useful
resources.
Colour in Computer Graphics
Lindsay MacDonald has extended his set of slides from the original 36
to 108 and put all the slides onto a PhotoCD. Details of ordering these
are given in this issue of the newsletter.
3D Rendering Techniques
A series of visuals on this topic is being put together under the supervision
of Alan Watt from the University of Sheffield. These will be available on
CD ROM. The images will include single images, animation sequences, illustrative
diagrams indicating how algorithms work. I hope this will be available in
May.
Lingo
The materials produced by Ian Phillips on the Lingo programming language
within Macromedia Director are being upgraded for the new software version
and it is intended to make the examples available for PC and Mac.
Software Evaluation
An evaluation of presentation software for the Apple Mac has just been
concluded at the University of Edinburgh. The aim of this work was to address
the software providing a suitable replacement for Cricket Graph. The work
has been extended to cover PC products in the light of the announcement
that Stanford Graphics is not to be developed further. I am working with
CHEST to follow through the recommendations and to get proposals from suppliers.
If anyone is currently conducting surveys of the market and needs this information
prior to publication, please contact me.
Metadata
I seem to be in many meetings and conversations these days where there
is talk of the problem of organising on-line data in such a way that people
can find information which they are looking for and/or is of interest to
them. The word "metadata", meaning data about data, comes up and
if this is true for you too and you would like a good overview then there
are some useful articles held under the UKOLN Web pages, see:
Dempsey, L and Heery, R. Metadata: an overview of current resource description
practice.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/review
Heery, R. Review of Metadata Formats. Program Vol 30, Issue No 4, October
1996.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/review
Miller, P. Metadata for the Masses, Ariadne, 5, 1996.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ariadne/issue5/metadata-masses/
In fact, Ariadne is a useful source of articles relating to online information
and worth checking out.
Anne Mumford
a.m.mumford@lboro.ac.uk
