Command Window Research Articles

Comment on “A Model for Studying Display Methods of Statistical Graphics”

I find Bill Cleveland's paper interesting because it argues in favor of a dichotomous framework for collection of visual information that we can develop to improve methods for graphical analysis. We would all like to believe in statistical holography; that is, that there is some instrument for looking at data (microscope, macroscope, tweezers, telescope ...) that would enable us to reconstruct the whole picture from a fragment or a distorted one, just as a piece of a holographic plate contains (in harder to read, fuzzier form) the whole, or original picture. The instrument we have at hand for casting some useful light on the is a system formed by a computer screen with several graphical windows: a command window that accesses a statistical toolbox, a keyboard and a mouse in front of which lies the key to the system, and the best neural net available-a brain. It is important to establish how to optimize the whole system, and taking into account interfaces and some things we know about the brain helps. Table look-up and pattern recognition characterize two separate brain functions that I will label, for historical reasons, left-brain and right-brain functions. Although today's picture of the brain is a mixture between patchwork and network, I will use the left-brain/right-brain metaphor-as illustrated in Figure 1-to stress that the brain does two (at least) different things at the same time and in a completely different way:

Image processing with personal computers

Modern powerful personal computers, having memory sizes in the megabyte range are well suited for interactive image processing. User-friendly low-cost systems can strongly stimulate a widespread use of image processing. Aspects necessary for such systems are discussed: • The necessary image processing elements for such systems, • user interaction; command interpreter, macro command system and Window Management System. Two existing packages are described: TIM, which runs on an IBM personal computer and makes use of a commercially available frame grabber, and AIM, an educational (public domain) image processing package, which was originally developed for the Atari ST computer. Both packages share the philosophy that certain facilities are needed for an image processing program to be useful. Their origin is common: the Pattern Recognition group of the University of Technology in Delft. They differ in certain implementational aspects, but demonstrate clearly the possibilities of image processing with PCs.