Improving Usability of Interactive Graphics Specification and Implementation with Picking Views and Inverse Transformations

Specifying and programming graphical interactions are difficult tasks, notably because designers have difficulties to express the dynamics of the interaction. This paper shows how the MDPC architecture improves the usability of the specification and the implementation of graphical interaction. The architecture is based on the use of picking views and inverse transforms from the graphics to the data. With three examples of graphical interaction, we show how to express them with the architecture, how to implement them, and how this improves programming usability. Moreover, we show that it enables implementing graphical interaction without a scene graph. This kind of code prevents from errors due to cache consistency management

An introduction to Graph Data Management

A graph database is a database where the data structures for the schema and/or instances are modeled as a (labeled)(directed) graph or generalizations of it, and where querying is expressed by graph-oriented operations and type constructors. In this article we present the basic notions of graph databases, give an historical overview of its main development, and study the main current systems that implement them

Toward an Energy Efficient Language and Compiler for (Partially) Reversible Algorithms

We introduce a new programming language for expressing reversibility, Energy-Efficient Language (Eel), geared toward algorithm design and implementation. Eel is the first language to take advantage of a partially reversible computation model, where programs can be composed of both reversible and irreversible operations. In this model, irreversible operations cost energy for every bit of information created or destroyed. To handle programs of varying degrees of reversibility, Eel supports a log stack to automatically trade energy costs for space costs, and introduces many powerful control logic operators including protected conditional, general conditional, protected loops, and general loops. In this paper, we present the design and compiler for the three language levels of Eel along with an interpreter to simulate and annotate incurred energy costs of a program.Comment: 17 pages, 0 additional figures, pre-print to be published in The 8th Conference on Reversible Computing (RC2016

The Mode of Computing

The Turing Machine is the paradigmatic case of computing machines, but there are others, such as Artificial Neural Networks, Table Computing, Relational-Indeterminate Computing and diverse forms of analogical computing, each of which based on a particular underlying intuition of the phenomenon of computing. This variety can be captured in terms of system levels, re-interpreting and generalizing Newell's hierarchy, which includes the knowledge level at the top and the symbol level immediately below it. In this re-interpretation the knowledge level consists of human knowledge and the symbol level is generalized into a new level that here is called The Mode of Computing. Natural computing performed by the brains of humans and non-human animals with a developed enough neural system should be understood in terms of a hierarchy of system levels too. By analogy from standard computing machinery there must be a system level above the neural circuitry levels and directly below the knowledge level that is named here The mode of Natural Computing. A central question for Cognition is the characterization of this mode. The Mode of Computing provides a novel perspective on the phenomena of computing, interpreting, the representational and non-representational views of cognition, and consciousness.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figure

Map Calculus in GIS: a proposal and demonstration

This paper provides a new representation for fields (continuous surfaces) in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), based on the notion of spatial functions and their combinations. Following Tomlin's (1990) Map Algebra, the term 'Map Calculus' is used for this new representation. In Map Calculus, GIS layers are stored as functions, and new layers can be created by combinations of other functions. This paper explains the principles of Map Calculus and demonstrates the creation of function-based layers and their supporting management mechanism. The proposal is based on Church's (1941) Lambda Calculus and elements of functional computer languages (such as Lisp or Scheme)