Transition in graphics—the intelligent interface

The desirability of graphics within a university environment can be easily understood, even by an appeal to the cliche “one picture is worth a thousand words”; however, university computing centers face a major problem in the delivery of a useful graphics system. At the crux of the problem is the situation that graphics vendors supply graphics software packages predicated upon the hardware architecture of their own equipment, with little or no regard for commonality in user interfaces. This particular facet of graphics software tends to provide some dislocation to the user with computer savvy and a major roadblock to the casual user. In a university environment with its large divergency of users, the problem becomes a nightmare for the center's support personnel, especially in a multi-device graphics environment. In the sections which follow, the transitions that we have seen at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA) will be presented.