Interfaces in Computing最新文献

In this paper an experiment in which students who had been taught the principles of structured programming had to design a program is described. The designs were classified according to the choice of decomposition and a number of design characteristics. The results are discussed within the framework of problem solving. In particular, in this paper the use of such strategies as “incremental design” and “process the next item” as a basis for decomposition is identified. Furthermore, the results are interpreted in the context of current ideas on program design, and a relationship between the choice of decomposition, the likelihood of a correct design and the ease with which a designer produces a solution is proposed.

Existing methods for subtitling television are time consuming and costly. Discussions are taking place at present between The Polytechnic, Wolverhampton, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) with the aim of defining a system which will go some part of the way to producing subtitles automatically. This paper provides a clear problem statement and describes a new method for subtitling based on submitting the “auto-cue” files to text reduction techniques. Some results are projected.

Standardization of open systems interconnection (OSI) has been in progress for several years. Two major meetings at the end of 1983 consolidated recent efforts. In this paper the current status of the OSI work is reviewed and some future developments are predicted.

In this paper the implementation and application of a microprocessor-based medium speed experimental local area network using a coaxial cable transmission medium are dealt with. A separate unidirectional control wire has been used in order to provide a collision-free and fair medium access arbitration. As an application of the network, the design of a packet voice communication system is discussed.

In this paper, research undertaken at Leicester Polytechnic into the computer transcription of Palantype code (the British equivalent of Stenotype code) is described. The work has been investigated by the British Broadcasting Corporation for the automatic subtitling of television to benefit the deaf and hard of hearing. The fundamentals of machine shorthand are explained and the problems of computer transcription are identified. Techniques developed to overcome these problems are also described in outline. The research is continuing at The Polytechnic, Wolverhampton, and negotiations are taking place with H.M. Stationery Office to investigate the possibility of transcribing the proceedings of the House of Commons by computer.

In this paper the graphics software system and standards developed in the Electronics Department, Risø National Laboratory, are described.

The high degree of versatility and standardization of the system is mainly a result of the need for powerful graphics tools that has arisen during the evolution of the RIKKE (a package for interactive automatic cause-consequence analysis also developed in the Electronics Department, Risø National Laboratory) interactive risk analysis system since the mid-1970s. Because of its generality the system is now installed at a number of minicomputer sites in Risø.

A method is proposed of reliably transferring datagrams consisting of sets of data structures, which are of arbitrary sizes and non-contiguously resident in memory, over local area networks without concern for the restrictions on packet format imposed by the characteristics of the actual network interface.

The transfer is performed as one atomic operation with minimal overhead; on the basis of a set of premises respected by many local area networks, it is possible to send a datagram as a sequence of packets without specific headers. The integrity of the transmission is verified by counting the received packets. Both the sender and the receiver must know the structure of the datagram. One acknowledgment packet is sent for the entire datagram.

Similar techniques of packet counting for local area networks have previously been used in specialized protocols for remote operations at Stanford and for file transfer at Cambridge. In the present paper, the techniques are used to provide a flexible and reliable datagram transfer mechanism while reducing copying and processing overhead in the communicating hosts.

With the proposed protocol, data items of any size are copied directly between the various different memory areas belonging to the user and protocol layers and the network driver.