Hiroshi Okazaki

The VIEW-Station environment: tools and architecture for a platform-independent image-processing workstation

An image processing workstation called the vision and image engineering workstation, or VIEW-Station, which as developed in order to merge the state-of-the-art software environment of a UNIX workstation and the computing power of the fast image processor, is described. The software system of the VIEW-Station is constructed hierarchically in order to allow device independence in porting to various hardware configurations and to achieve flexibility in developing application systems. An image computing language called V-Sugar, which provides specific data types and a functional notation, allowing image processing algorithms to be expressed simply, is described. The image memory management mechanism, V-server, and the window system extensions, VIEW-Windows, are described. They are integrated to provide an independent basis to hardware configurations.<<ETX>>

VIEW-Station software and its graphical user interface

VIEW-Station is a workstation-based image processing system which merges the state-of-the- art software environment of Unix with the computing power of a fast image processor. VIEW- Station has a hierarchical software architecture, which facilitates device independence when porting across various hardware configurations, and provides extensibility in the development of application systems. The core image computing language is V-Sugar. V-Sugar provides a set of image-processing datatypes and allows image processing algorithms to be simply expressed, using a functional notation. VIEW-Station provides a hardware independent window system extension called VIEW-Windows. In terms of GUI (Graphical User Interface) VIEW-Station has two notable aspects. One is to provide various types of GUI as visual environments for image processing execution. Three types of interpreters called (mu) V- Sugar, VS-Shell and VPL are provided. Users may choose whichever they prefer based on their experience and tasks. The other notable aspect is to provide facilities to create GUI for new applications on the VIEW-Station system. A set of widgets are available for construction of task-oriented GUI. A GUI builder called VIEW-Kid is developed for WYSIWYG interactive interface design.