Browse Books

Reviewer: Mike A. Evans

The second edition of Computer graphics: principles and practice [1], published in 1990, was almost a total rewrite of the original edition published in 1982 [2]. This second edition in C contains minor revisions, plus a complete rewrite of the code in C instead of Pascal. It remains one of the classic books describing the techniques of computer graphics; I know of no other book that has such comprehensive coverage of the subject, although papers in journals and even commercial practice have made parts of the book out of date. The book is primarily meant to be used as a text in university courses, but it can be read at various levels. It includes exercises that test various levels of understanding. The excellent bibliography, with references up to 1990, includes European and Japanese works. The index is comprehensive. The graphics packages described are available from the publishers to run on IBM PC, Macintosh, and Unix workstations. In a commercial organization where computer graphics applications are written, it would well serve an applications programmer who needs to understand the enabling technology. It is also useful as a general reference. The book's organization is unchanged since the last edition. As I mentioned in my 1992 review, it is organized into a group of basic chapters; three more specialized sections on the user interface, model definition, and image synthesis, respectively; and a final section on advanced techniques to model objects. The reader requires sufficient programming background to read the program fragments and to understand basic data structures and algorithms. This excellent text sets out to be a standard reference on computer graphics, and it certainly achieves its purpose. Computer graphics is now too wide a field for any individual to completely master; the book uses four main and three guest authors to mitigate that problem. It is a large book, nearly twice the size of the first edition, but its best feature is that the content is organized so manageably. Computer graphics is an expanding field, and the technology is evolving quickly. This means that such a comprehensive book is bound to age rapidly. The book describes computer graphics technology only up to the beginning of the 1990s. It does not cover, for example, the issues and concepts of object-oriented computer- aided design or the impact of components such as computer graphics libraries for rendering. However, the book is still relevant and a very readable reference on a vast subject. In 1992 I was entertained and enlightened, and thoroughly recommended this text in my review. I maintain that judgement.