Combining graphics and layout language in a single interactive system

Layout languages provide users with the capability to algorithmically define cells. But the specification language is so non-intuitive that it is impossible to debug a design in that language, one must plot it. Interactive graphics systems, on the other hand, allow the user to debug in the form in which he sees the design, but severely restrict the language he may use to express the graphics. For example, he cannot express loops or conditionals. What is really needed is a single interactive system that combines layout language and graphic modifications to the data. This paper describes just such a system

Obvious: a meta-toolkit to encapsulate information visualization toolkits. One toolkit to bind them all

This article describes “Obvious”: a meta-toolkit that abstracts and encapsulates information visualization toolkits implemented in the Java language. It intends to unify their use and postpone the choice of which concrete toolkit(s) to use later-on in the development of visual analytics applications. We also report on the lessons we have learned when wrapping popular toolkits with Obvious, namely Prefuse, the InfoVis Toolkit, partly Improvise, JUNG and other data management libraries. We show several examples on the uses of Obvious, how the different toolkits can be combined, for instance sharing their data models. We also show how Weka and RapidMiner, two popular machine-learning toolkits, have been wrapped with Obvious and can be used directly with all the other wrapped toolkits. We expect Obvious to start a co-evolution process: Obvious is meant to evolve when more components of Information Visualization systems will become consensual. It is also designed to help information visualization systems adhere to the best practices to provide a higher level of interoperability and leverage the domain of visual analytics

An interactive multi-block grid generation system

A grid generation procedure combining interactive and batch grid generation programs was put together to generate multi-block grids for complex aircraft configurations. The interactive section provides the tools for 3D geometry manipulation, surface grid extraction, boundary domain construction for 3D volume grid generation, and block-block relationships and boundary conditions for flow solvers. The procedure improves the flexibility and quality of grid generation to meet the design/analysis requirements

Harmony and Technology Enhanced Learning

New technologies offer rich opportunities to support education in harmony. In this chapter we consider theoretical perspectives and underlying principles behind technologies for learning and teaching harmony. Such perspectives help in matching existing and future technologies to educational purposes, and to inspire the creative re-appropriation of technologies

A procedural method for the efficient implementation of full-custom VLSI designs

An imbedded language system for the layout of very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits is examined. It is shown that through the judicious use of this system, a large variety of circuits can be designed with circuit density and performance comparable to traditional full-custom design methods, but with design costs more comparable to semi-custom design methods. The high performance of this methodology is attributable to the flexibility of procedural descriptions of VLSI layouts and to a number of automatic and semi-automatic tools within the system