Subject: Graph Visualization System daVinci V1.3 available
From: [email-masked] (Michael Froehlich)
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 15:19:22 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce

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    Announcement: Graph Visualization System daVinci V1.3 available:
------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 30, 1994 (Bremen, Germany) -- The daVinci project of the Institute 
for Formal Methods  in Software Engineering  at the University of Bremen 
announces  the new release V1.3  of the  interactive graph visualization 
system daVinci. daVinci is an universal, generic visualization system of 
high quality for directed graphs which are very common in todays appli-
cations,  e. g. file systems,  module dependencies,  dataflows, document 
structures, networks, etc.

The most important new features of daVinci V1.3 are:

    	- PostScript interface for printing and exporting graphs in
    	  Encapsulated PostScript format (EPSF).
	- Support of cyclic graphs and graphs with multiple or self-
	  refering edges.
	- Support of different graphical objects (box, ellipse,
	  circle, rhombus) for the visualization of graph nodes.
	- Support of different font families and font styles for the
	  visualization of graph nodes. The font size can be set 
	  globally for a visualization at runtime.
	- New graph editor for creating daVinci graphs interactively. 
	  The graph editor is an external tool which has to be connected
	  to daVinci's application interface for tool communication.
	- Availability of PC version (with Linux).
	  
daVinci visualizes  a directed graph from an ASCII  term representation,  
considering readability  qualities like  minimization of  edge crossings 
and bends.  The visualization is interactive,  i. e. nodes and edges can 
be  selected,  they can be  moved for fine-tuning  to improve  the graph  
image,  subgraphs can be hidden temporarily for abstraction, the display
scale can be modified steplessly, etc.

daVinci provides  an application interface  for the communication with a 
graph administrating program.  This interface offers commands for trans-
mitting  graphs,  creating menus,  calling  user dialogs  or controlling 
daVinci.  A connected  application  is informed  about  events  like the  
user selection of graph nodes, menus etc. By using daVinci's application 
interface,  an arbitrary application is able to offer  the user a visual 
view to graphs without losing control of the graph structure.

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Until now, daVinci has been distributed to more than 600 users  all over 
the world like MIT, ETH Zuerich,  the Universities of Alberta, Bordeaux, 
Delft, San Diego, Nancy, Oregon, Purdue,  Toronto, Washington as well as 
Adobe, AT&T,  BASF, Chevron,  DEC, Dupont, Ericsson, Intel, Kodak, Moto-
rola,  NASA, Nokia,  Panasonic,  Siemens, Sony, Sun Microsystems,  Texas 
Instruments, Toshiba, Xerox and many more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

daVinci is an OPEN LOOK application and is delivered as a binary for Sun 
SPARC  workstations  (with SunOS 4.1.x  and Solaris 2.x)  or PC's  (with 
Linux). daVinci needs the public available XView libraries.  The minimal 
hardware configuration  should be a  Sun SPARCstation SLC. In principle,
the system can be ported to each UNIX platform which is supported by the 
public available  OPEN LOOK toolkit XView,  e.g. Apple Macintosh (A/UX), 
DECstation  (Ultrix),  HP 9000/7xx  (HP-UX),  IBM  RS6000 (AIX)  or  SGI 
(Irix). daVinci is available free of charge for non-profit use. Any com-
mercial  exploitation  of this software  is prohibitted  without the ex-
plicit authorization  of the  daVinci project.  You  can get  daVinci by 
anonymous ftp from:
	
	ftp.Uni-Bremen.DE (134.102.228.9) 
	in the directory /pub/graphics/daVinci
	
or from the US mirror

	wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4)
	in the directory /graphics/graphics/packages/daVinci

In this directory, there are files (compressed with gzip) with different 
distributions for each supported platform (SunOS 4.1.x, Sun Solaris 2.x, 
Linux).  The contents of each  distribution are the same,  except of the 
binaries. Each distribution covers the documentation, graph examples and 
tools.  In the file info.ps (resp. info.txt), more detailed informations 
about daVinci can be found.  In directory 'binaries_only',  one can find 
the distributions without the documentation and examples.  

The interactive graph visualization system daVinci has been developed at 
the  Institute for  Formal Methods  in Software Engineering  at the Uni-
versity  of Bremen, headed by  Prof. Dr. Bernd Krieg-Brueckner.  The au-
thors of daVinci are  Michael Froehlich and  Mattias Werner. daVinci was 
implemented in the pure functional language ASpecT which has been devel-
oped at the  University  of  Bremen also.  The OPEN LOOK  user interface  
of daVinci was implemented using the toolkit XView. 

To  contact the  daVinci project,  to report bugs,  to subscribe  to the 
daVinci mailing list  or to suggest new features, write by e-mail to:

	[email-masked]

-- 
  _ _  __ __	
 | | ||  |  |	Dipl.-Inform. Michael Froehlich
 | | ||  |  |   University of Bremen
 | | ||_ |__|	FB3 - Institute for Formal Methods in Software Engineering
 | | ||  |\	PO-Box 330440, D-28334 Bremen, Germany
 | | ||  | \	Tel.: x49 421 218-4228 
 | | ||  |  \   e-mail: [email-masked]