This panel session is intended to present recent technical developments in the efforts to standardize computer graphics.

Graphics metafiles have been in use at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since early 1977. The first metafile format was defined in 1976 and has been updated several times to allow efficient graphics support in the Los Alamos computing environment. History and current applications of the Common Graphics System (CGS) Metafile are given. Design objectives, details of the format, and random access extensions incorporated in the Metafile are described.

This panel session will consist of reports from participants in the effort to standardize computer graphics functions in America. There are two principal goals. The first is to provide status reports for the groups represented by the panelists. The second is to explain relationships between different standardization efforts.

The Common Graphics System (CGS) was developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A standard device driver interface was defined for graphics device drivers and for use by user-callable graphics subroutine packages. This paper describes the existing CGS device driver interface, the experience we gained using it, and the extended interface capable of supporting more powerful graphics devices. The relationship between this interface and the CGS Metafile is also discussed.

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) implemented a graphics system designed to support one user interface for all graphics devices in all operating environments at LASL. The Common Graphics System (CGS) will support Level One of the graphics standard proposed by the ACM/SIGGRAPH Graphic Standards Planning Committee. CGS is available in six operating environments of two different word lengths and supports four types of graphics devices. It can generate a pseudodevice file that may be postprocessed and edited for a particular graphics device, or it can generate device-specific graphics output directly. Program overlaying and dynamic buffer sharing are also supported. CGS is structured to isolate operating system dependencies and graphics device dependencies. It is written in the RATFOR (RATional FORtran) language, which supports control flow statements and macro expansion. CGS is maintained as a single-source program from which each version can be extracted automatically. 1 figure.