Design Considerations and Philosophy of a Device-Independent Publications/Graphics System

摘要

Over a period of ten years the National Nuclear Data Center has implemented graphics systems to meet a broad range of user requirements in the areas of interactive graphics, publications, and, to a lesser extent, text-editing, graphical data interpretations, and on-line data evaluation. The systems have been designed to support varying levels of user sophistication with respect to programing ability and user knowledge of the hardware involved. An overview is presented of the NNDC's graphics system which is available to the user via a higher-level language, FORTRAN. The system was designed with layers of software between the user and the device-dependent code. One layer is dedicated to processing the incompatibilities and inconsistencies between such devices as paper plotter, interactive graphics, and FR-80 microfilm/microfiche hardware. Another handles the niceties necessary for finer-quality publications work, e.g., superscripting, subscripting, boldface, variable character/page sizing, rotation, the use of multiple character sets (e.g., mathematical, Greek, physics) as well as features to allow the user to design special characters. 12 figures. (ERA citation 04:031991)