COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:

Various color and intensity-level options can be made

available to a user, depending on the capabilities and
design objectives of a particular system. General
purpose raster-scan systems, for example, usually
provide a wide range of colors, while random-scan
monitors typically offer only a few color choices, if any.
Color options are numerically coded with values ranging
from 0 through the positive integers. For CRT monitors,
these color codes are then converted to intensity level
settings for the electron beams. With color plotters, the
codes could control ink-jet deposits or pen selections.
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
In a color raster system, the number of color choices
available depends on the amount of storage provided per
pixel in the frame buffer Also, color-information can be
stored in the frame buffer in two ways: We can store color
codes directly in the frame buffer, or we can put the color
codes in a separate table and use pixel values as an index
into this table.
With the direct storage scheme, whenever a particular color
code is specified in an application program, the
corresponding binary value is placed in the frame buffer for
each component pixel in the output primitives to be
displayed in that color. A minimum number of colors can be
provided in this scheme with 3 bits of storage per pixel, as
shown in Table 4.1. Each of the three bit positions is used
to control the intensity level (either on or off) of the
corresponding electron gun in an RGB monitor..
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
The leftmost bit controls the red gun, the middle bit
controls the green gun, and the rightmost bit controls
the blue gun. Adding more bits per pixel to the frame
buffer increases the number of color choices. With 6 bits
per pixel, 2 bits can be used for each gun.
This allows four different intensity settings for each of the
three color guns, and a total of 64 color values are
available for each screen pixel. With a resolution of 1024
by 1024, a full-color (24bit per pixel) RGB system needs
3 megabytes of storage for the frame buffer. Color tables
are an alternate means for providing extended color
capabilities to a user without requiring large frame
buffers. Lower-cost personal computer systems, in
particular, often use color tables to reduce frame-buffer
storage requirements.
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
Color Tables:
Figure 4-16 illustrates a possible scheme for storing color
values in a color lookup table (or video lookup table),
where frame-buffer values are now used as indices into the
color table. In this example, each pixel can reference any
one of the 256 table positions, and each entry in the table
uses 24 bits to specify an RGB color. For the color code
2081, a combination green-blue color is displayed for pixel
location (x, y). Systems employing this particular lookup
table would allow a user to select any 256 colors for
simultaneous display from a palette of nearly 17 million
colors. Compared to a full-color system. this scheme
reduces the number of simultaneous colors that can be
displayed, but it also reduces the frame buffer storage
requirements to 1 megabyte. Some graphics systems
provide 9 bits per pixel in the frame buffer, permitting a
user to select 512 colors that could be used in each
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
A user can set color-table entries in a PHIGS applications
program with the function
setColourRepresentation (ws, ci, colorptr)
Parameter ws identifies the workstation output device;
parameter ci specifies the color index, which is the
color-table position number (0 to 255 for the example in
Fig. 4-16); and parameter colorptr points to a trio of RGB
color values (r, g, b) each specified in the range from 0 to
1. An example of possible table entries for color
monitors is given in Fig. 4-17.
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
Grayscale:
With monitors that have no color capability, color functions can be
used in an application program to set the shades of gray, or
grayscale, for displayed primitives. Numeric values over the range
from 0 to 1 can be used to specify grayscale levels, which are then
converted to appropriate binary codes for storage in the raster. This
allows the intensity settings to be easily adapted to systems with
differing grayscale capabilities.
Table 4-2 lists the specifications for intensity codes for a four-level
grayscale system. In this example, any intensity input value near
0.33 would be stored as the binary value 01 in the frame buffer, and
pixels with this value would be displayed as dark gray. If additional
bits per pixel are available in the frame buffer, the value of 0.33
would be mapped to the nearest level. With 3 bits per pixel, we can
accommodate 8 gray levels; while 8 bits per pixel would give us 256
shades of gray. An alternative scheme for storing the intensity
information is to convert each intensity code directly to the voltage
value that produces this grayscale level on the output device in use.
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
When multiple output devices are available at an installation, the
same color-table interface may be used for all monitors. In this
case, a color table for a monochrome monitor can be set up using a
range of RGB values as in Fig. 4-17, with the display intensity
corresponding to a given color index ci calculated as
intensity = 0.5[min(r, g, b) + max(r, g, b)]
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
AREA-FILL ATTRIBUTES
Options for filling a defined region include a choice between a solid
color or a patterned fill and choices for the particular colors and
patterns. These fill options can be applied to polygon regions or to
areas defined with curved boundaries, depending on the
capabilities of the available package. In addition, areas can be
painted using various brush styles, colors, and transparency
parameters.
Fill Styles
Areas are displayed with three basic fill styles: hollow with a color
border, filled with a solid color, or filled with a specified pattern or
design. A basic fill style is selected in a PHIGS program with the
function
setInteriorStyle (fs)
values for the fill-style parameter fs include hollow, solid, and
pattern (Fig. 4-18).
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
Another value for fill style is hatch, which is used to fill an area with
selected hatching patterns-parallel lines or crossed lines-as in Fig.
4-19. As with line attributes, a selected fill style value is recorded in
the list of system attributes and applied to fill the interiors of
subsequently specified areas. Fill selections for parameter fs are
normally applied to polygon areas, but they can also be
implemented to fill regions with curved boundaries.
COLOR AND GRAYSCALE LEVELS:
Hollow areas are displayed using only the boundary outline, with
the interior color the same as the background color. A solid fill is
displayed in a single color up to and including the borders of the
region. The color for a solid interior or for a hollow area outline is
chosen with
setInteriorColorIndex( fc )
where fill color parameter fc is set to the desired color code. A
polygon hollow fill is generated with a line drawing routine as a
closed polyline.

Other fill options include specifications for the edge type, edge
width, and edge color of a region. These attributes are set
independently of the fill style or fill color, and they provide for the
same options as the line-attribute parameters (line type, line width,
and line color). That is, we can display area edges dotted or dashed,
fat or thin, and in any available color regardless of how we have
filled the interior.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
The appearance of displayed characters is controlled by
attributes such as font, size, color, and orientation. Attributes
can be set both for entire character strings (text) and for
individual characters defined as marker symbols.
There are a great many text options that can be made
available to graphics programmers. First of all, there is the
choice of font (or typeface), which is a set of characters with a
particular design style such as New York, Courier, Helvetica,
London, 'Times Roman, and various special symbol groups.
The characters in a selected font can also be displayed with
assorted underlining styles (solid, dotted, double) in boldface,
in italics. and in outline or shadow styles. A particular font
and associated style is selected in a PHlGS program by
setting an integer code for the text font parameter tf in the
function

setTextFont (tf)
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
Font options can be made available as predefined sets of grid
patterns or as character sets designed with polylines and
spline curves.
Color settings for displayed text are stored in the system
attribute list and used by the procedures that load character
definitions into the frame buffer. When a character string is to
be displayed, the current color is used to set pixel values in
the frame buffer corresponding to the character shapes and
positions.
Control of text color (or intensity) is managed from an
application program with
setTextColourIndex (tc)
where text color parameter tc specifies an allowable color
code.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
We can adjust text size by scaling the overall dimensions (height and
width) of characters or by scaling only the character width. Character
size is specified by printers and compositors in points, where 1 point is
0.013837 inch (or approximately 1/72 inch). For example, the text you
are now reading is a 10-point font Point measurements specify the size
of the body of a character (Fig. 4-25), but different fonts with the same
point specifications can have different character sizes, depending on
the design of the typeface.
The distance between the bottomline and the topline of the character
body is the same for all characters in a particular size and typeface, but
the body width may vary. Proportionally spaced fonts assign a smaller
body width to narrow characters such as i, j, 1, and f compared to
broad characters such as W or M. Character height is defined as the
distance between the baseline and the capline of characters. Kerned
characters, such as f and j in Fig. 4-25, typically extend beyond the
character-body limits, and letters with descenders (g, j, p, q, y) extend
below the baseline. Each character is positioned within the character
body by a font designer to allow suitable spacing along and between
print lines when text is displayed with character bodies touching.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:

The effect of different

character height setting
on displayed text
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
Text size can be adjusted without changing the width-to-
height ratio of characters with
setCharacterHeight (ch)
Parameter ch is assigned a real value greater than 0 to set the
coordinate height of capital letters: the distance between
baseline and capline in user coordinates. This setting also
affects character-body size, so that the width and spacing of
characters is adjusted to maintain the same text proportions.
For instance, doubling the height also doubles the character
width and the spacing between characters.
Figure 4-26 shows a character string displayed with three
different character heights.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
The width only of text can be set with the function
setCharacterExpansionFactor (cw)
where the character-width parameter cw is set to a positive real
value that scales the body width of characters. Text height is
unaffected by this attribute setting. Examples of text displayed
with different character expansions is given in Fig. 4-27.
Spacing between characters is controlled separately with
setCharacterSpacing (cs)
where the character-spacing parameter cs can be assigned any real
value. The value assigned to cs determines the spacing between
character bodes along print lines. Negative values for cs overlap
character bodies; positive values insert space to spread out the
displayed characters. Assigning the value 0 to cs causes text to be
displayed with no space between character bodies. The amount of
spacing to be applied is determined by multiplying the value of cs
by the character height (distance between baseline and capline).
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
In Fig. 4-28, a character string is displayed with three different
settings for the character-spacing parameter.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
The orientation for a displayed character string is set
according to the direction of the character up vector. A
procedure for orienting text rotates characters so that the
sides of character bodies, from baseline to capline, are
aligned with the up vector. The rotated character shapes are
then scan converted into the frame buffer.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
It is useful in many applications to be able to arrange
character strings vertically or horizontally (Fig. 4-30).
Character strings can also be oriented using a combination of
up-vector and text-path specifications to produce slanted
text.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES:
Another handy attribute for
character strings is alignment.
This attribute specifies how
text is to be positioned with
respect to the start
coordinates.
setTextAlignment (h, v)
Horizontal alignment is set by
assigning h a value of left,
centre, or right. Vertical
alignment is set by assigning
v a value of top, cap, half, base
or bottom. The interpretation
of these alignment values
depends on the current setting
for the text path.
BUNDLED ATTRIBUTES:

With the procedures we have considered so far, each

function references a single attribute that specifies exactly
how a primitive is to be displayed with that attribute
setting. These specifications are called individual (or
unbundled) attributes, and they are meant to be used with
an output device that is capable of displaying primitives in
the way specified.
If an application program, employing individual attributes,
is interfaced to several output devices, some of the devices
may not have the capability to display the intended
attributes. A program using individual color attribute, for
example, may have to be modified to produce acceptable
output on a monochromatic monitor.
BUNDLED ATTRIBUTES:

Individual attribute commands provide a simple and direct

method for specifying attributes when a single output
device is used. When several kinds of output devices are
available at a graphics installation, it is convenient for a
user to be able to say how attributes are to be interpreted
on each of the different devices.
This is accomplished by setting up tables for each output
device that lists sets of attribute values that are to be used
on that device, to display each primitive type. A particular
set of attribute values for a primitive on each output device
is then chosen by specifying the appropriate table index.
Attributes specified in this manner called bundled
attributes. The table for each primitive that defines groups
of attribute values to be used when displaying at primitive
on a particular output device is called a bundle table.
BUNDLED ATTRIBUTES:

Attributes that may be bundled into the workstation table

entries are those that do not involve coordinate
specifications, such as color and line type. The choice
between a bundled or an unbundled specification is made
by setting switch called the aspect source flag for each of
these attributes:
setIndividualASF (attributeptr, flagptr)
where parameter attributeptr points to a list of
attributes, and parameter flagptr points to the
corresponding list of aspect source flags. Each aspect
source flag can be assigned a value of individual or
bundled.