Advances in Engineering Software 1992, 14, 85-89

Book reviews

Computer Graphics - - Principles and Practice, 2nd edition. J. Foley, A. van Dam, S. Feiner & J. Hughes, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1990. pp. 1173, hardback, £33.95. ISBN: 0 201 12110 7

Interactive computer graphics has become indispensable for many applications in business, industry, architecture, education and the media, to name a few. Even preschool children are comfortable with interactive-graphics techniques such as window manipulation, and menu and icon selection with a mouse.

This book is, at least to the reviewer's knowledge, the most comprehensive and lucid coverage of the field. It is very well written and attractive even for someone with no graphics background but, there can be no doubt, con- sidering the thorough explanation of the concepts and applications, that this book is intended for students or professionals in the computer graphics world.

Each chapter contains numerous worked out examples and numerous exercises to supplement the text, together with important algorithms in 2-D and 3-D graphics, as well as over 800 figures illustrating the techniques presented in the book. These figures, due to their amazing quality, are one of the key points of this book.

The text can be used by those without prior back- ground in graphics and only some background in Pascal programming, basic data structures and algorithms, computer architecture, and simple linear algebra.

One area that is particularly useful is the description of some of the most important graphics programming lan- guages being used nowadays, such as SRGP, PHIGS and PostScript and, of course, the pedagogical approach to all those important algorithms in 2-D and 3-D graphics.

Special features of this book are:

• programming with SRGP, PHIGS and Page-Descrip- tion Languages;

• geometric and surface modelling; • raster graphics hardware and software; • image synthesis; • advanced modelling techniques such as fractals and

others; • concepts of computer animation.

As it will be, no doubt about it, a graphics reference

Advances in Engineering Software 14 (1992) - - © 1992 Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd.

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work for years to come, the reviewer strongly recom- mends this book to students of all levels.

V. Leitfio

FORTRAN 77 Programming, with an Introduction to the FORTRAN 90 Standard, 2nd edition. T.M.R. Ellis, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1990, £17.95. ISBN: 0 201 41638 7

This new edition of F O R T R A N 77 is a textbook aimed at teaching both the techniques of programming and approach to designing programs using F O R T R A N 77, The most conspicuous changes from the first edition are the sequence in which the various features of F O R T R A N are presented, which now seems to follow the most natural and didactic order, and the evolution of the F O R T R A N language, that will be known as F O R T R A N 90. The former change leads, for instance, to the introduction of procedures after a discussion of arithmetic and assignment but before meeting control structures. This means that procedures are treated as a natural basic programming block, which helps in developing programs in a modular fashion from the outset. The latter change has made it possible to include an extensive coverage of the new F O R T R A N 90 standard, providing information where syntax changes will have a direct effect upon programming techniques.

Two chapters on numerical methods are included. The first of these is concerned with a fairly detailed discussion of the problems of precision and rounding off errors in calculations and some of the ways in which these can be minimized. It includes examples of two numerical procedure: the fitting of a straight line to a set of data points using a least square approximation, and an interactive solution of non linear equations using the bisection method.

The second chapter devoted to numerical methods contains descriptions of a number of useful techniques for solving problems such as the solution of non-linear equations, the fitting of cubic splines and similar curves to a set of data points, and the integration of a function.

Many engineering and scientific applications are presented and over 150 computer programs and subprograms are included, all developed with the use of structure plans. These are intended to encourage a structured approach to problem solving and program design.

86 Book reviews

All chapters contain self test exercises, which do not require the writing of complete programs and are designed to enable the reader to verify his understanding of the material covered in each chapter. Also, at the end of each chapter, there are a number of programming exercises to be run on a computer. Example solutions to some of these are included at the end of the book.

An Instructor's Guide is also available from the publishers. This contains a short summary of the major points involved in each chapter, with a note of any particular areas where experience shows that students may have problems. The Instructor's Guide also contains example solutions to about half of the programming exercises, in addition to those included in the textbook.

It is the reviewer's opinion that this book is to be highly recommended for its attractive and didactic approach to the subject, which makes it useful not only as a textbook for students, but also as a source of reference for engineers and scientists who use FORTRAN as their programming language.

M.M. Perez

Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs. Ronald M. Baecker & Aaron Marcus, ACM Press, Addison-Wesley, 1990. pp. 368, softcover, £22.45. ISBN: 0 201 10745 7

Millions of people are now writing computer programs. They are also reading programs, either those previously written by themselves, or those written by others. The need to read programs, however, has received less consideration than the need to write them. Attention has been focused on the logic of programming languages but not sufficiently on their visual presentation; tools have been built to facilitate program composition and editing, but not program perusal or understanding. This book fills this gap by showing how graphic design principles can enhance program presentation and productivity.

The authors are acknowledged leaders among the growing number of researcher and practitioners who recognize the importance of program legibility and comprehension and its implications in learning, using and maintaining the program. They provide an introduction to the issues, methods, and results of effective program presentation, as well as a thorough illustration of what such presentations might look like. Applying a combination of human factors and typographical principles, they show how the appearance of the C programming language can be significantly enhanced.

Chapter 1 introduces program visualization to be detailed in the remaining chapters. Chapter 2 complements this introduction and gives a motivation for the book's design of an enhanced presentation of C source text by discussing the use of visualization in other

disciplines, the nature of complementary work in program visualization, and the method by which this design was developed.

Chapter 3 begins by developing a taxonomy of C program elements, a taxonomy of visual elements, and a set of graphic design principles. This is followed by a series of variations in which C constructs are mapped into visual presentations. Those working on their own design of the appearance of any programming language can apply the same graphic design principles used in the motivation and analysis of the examples.

Chapter 4 formalizes the set of recommended techniques by developing a set of guidelines and specifications for source code appearance, which together constitute a graphic design manual for the C language. The design manual describes systematically the typographic appearance of each syntactic construct in the language.

Chapter 5 expands the focus from the program code and comments to the entire body of supporting text that results in a documented and usable program, a technical publication. Again, a taxonomy of documentation elements and a set of design principles are developed. These concepts are applied to a real, medium-sized program, resulting in examples of program views and of a prototype program book.

The last chapter summarizes the work and discusses experimental validation, implementation, extensions to interactive applications, open research, problems and conclusions.

Contents:

Visualizing programs; Background and motivation; Mapping C source text to effective visual presentations; A graphic design manual for the C programming language; Programs as publications; Future issues in program presentation; Appendices.

The book will be particularly interesting to human factors specialists, computer typographers, graphic designers, computer scientists, software engineerings, and programmers who will find here an important source of ideas for future development and implementation.

P. Azevedo

Complete AutoCAD. David S. Cohn, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1991. pp. 1136, £26.95. ISBN: 0 201 51783 3

This book is, without doubt, a complete reference to every command, variable and feature in every version of AutoCAD currently being used and that's why, for many people, their first impression of this book is its rather formidable size.

The information it contains is carefully organized and each entry offers tutorial information and tips, as well as