p.6 Editorial
[author : Jonathan Erickson] #Edito
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FEATURES
p.16 OPTIMIZING THE PERFORMANCE OF VRML WORLDS
[author : David R. Nadeau, Andrea L. Ames, and John L. Moreland]
VRML, the "Virtual Reality Modeling Language," is a platform-neutral file format used to describe 3-D shapes and scenery for the World Wide Web. Different platforms, however, create different VRML-performance bottlenecks. Our authors present optimization techniques that let your VRML worlds look good and perform well.
p.26 3-D SURFACE CONTOURS
[author : Will Schroeder and Bill Lorensen]
Visualization is the ability to transform complex data into visual form. What makes this possible is the contouring algorithm presented here.
p.34 SPIFF: STILL PICTURE INTERCHANGE FILE FORMAT
[author : James D. Murray]
James examines SPIFF, the "still picture interchange file format," which is a generic bitmap file format defined by the ISO for the storage, compression, and interchange of color or grayscale continuous-tone images and bitonal image data.
p.42 AUTOMATICALLY GENERATING JAVA DOCUMENTATION
[author : Gary Aitken]
Because Java doesn't require a header file, documentation is really important in a Java environment. Gary examines some of the documentation issues related to Java programming and discusses how to automatically generate documentation for Java classes using javadoc.
p.50 LOOP SPLITTING UNDER WINDOWS NT
[author : Charles Letner]
Charles presents a C++ class that lets you use multiple threads to implement "loop splitting"that is, dividing processing of a loop over multiple processorsunder Windows NT.
EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
p.56 MONITORING DATA IN REAL TIME
[author : Tony Garcia, Jeff Woodard, and Craig Liddell]
Our authors describe the design and implementation of a real-time system that monitors and logs environmental characteristics. Among other features, the system accommodates remote access to the data via the World Wide Web.
NETWORKED SYSTEMS
p.66 THE WINMOCK LIBRARY
[author : Joseph Hlavaty]
Joe created WinMock, short for "Windows Sockets Mockup Tool," for testing and debugging Windows Sockets applications, without a network connection.
EXAMINING ROOM
p.74 EXAMINING THE SMARTSOCKETS TOOLKIT
[author : Douglass L. Campbell]
SmartSockets, a message-oriented toolkit for developing systems that require IPC, lets you embed messaging capabilities into your applications so that they can communicate across different operating systems.
PROGRAMMER'S WORKBENCH
p.78 HELP FILE WEB LINKS
[author : Robert Lord]
Bob shows how to embed links to World Wide Web URLs in your standard Windows help files. What makes this technique possible is a DLL implementation of a WinHelp macro that accepts a URL parameter.
COLUMNS
p.87 PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS
[author : Michael Swaine]
As Michael finds out this month, what can go wrong, will go wong, er, wrong.
p.91 C PROGRAMMING
[author : Al Stevens]
In building his multimedia CD-ROM project, Al implements a derived application class for the dialog-based setup program. He also takes his first sip of Java.
p.101 ALGORITHM ALLEY
[author : Carlo Pescio]
Dr. Pescio extends Cichelli's hashing algorithm to obtain a general implementation that improves the original algorithm's performance by more than an order of magnitude.
p.107 UNDOCUMENTED CORNER
[author : Robert R. Collins]
The Pentium Pro's undocumented Physical Address Extensions (PAE) let the processor address up to 64 GB of physical memory (36-bit address bus), and access page sizes of 2 MB.
p.113 PROGRAMMER'S BOOKSHELF
[author : William Stallings]
Emerging Internet protocols are discussed in IPng: Internet Protocol Next Generation, edited by Scott Bradner and Allison Mankin, and IPv6: The New Internet Protocol, by Christina Huitema.
Forum
p.8 LETTERS
[author : you]
p.128 SWAINE'S FLAMES
[author : Michael Swaine]
PROGRAMMER'S SERVICES
p.118 OF INTEREST
[author : Monica E. Berg]