Introducing live graphics gems to educational material

Introduction: This paper aims in addressing an obstacle in building the online community in computer graphics (CG) education that is achieving a critical mass of quality material. They propose a novel repository service introducing " live " graphics gems (Graphics Educational Material Source) to the material. The repository is given two services, server-side compiling and source-code versioning. They present a prototype implementation with free software. Repository material now evolves on the fly. The approach provides a granular source control to embrace also materials that authors would not publish as open source. We describe both the technical content management and educational setups for live graphics gems. Didactics: Live graphics gems merge (1) a visual or interactivity and (2) real source code with (3) theory. It is an extension of the classic ''textbook with program listings'' approach by replacing passive listings with interactive editors. The key idea behind a textbook with program listings is to enrich the high-quality explanation of an algorithm with an implementation. This is true especially for CG-related domains, where many users tackle with getting pseudo code description actually to work. Research papers leave out ''easy'' programming code, i.e. the practical details a user must face. Textbooks and online journals therefore provide additional Web pages with discussion boards and user annotations, and many other, unofficial boards for source code discussions exist. Yet, they represent out-of context materials, neither interlinked with the original work nor approved by its author. With live graphics gems, source implementations become part of the material. 1. Visuals and interactivities can be closely interlinked with their surroundings by scripting. In the figure below, they have replaced the traditional didactics, a theorem-proof-example sequence, with a visual proof by an interactive illustration. Further more they provide proper XML-based markup for the text and mathematical equations (MathML). Parts of the theorem and formula have small scripting instructions attached that target the visual. Users can select active parts to rearrange the visual and illustrate the described concepts graphically. 2. In this the material includes real source code. Materials are presented like before, as textbook with program listings, but users can manipulate the program listing, and so the interactivity, at place. Authors must markup source code, which is similar to using other content markup. Normally, only parts of the sources will be included into a teaching material; parts that are useful for some educational or technical reason. Further code can be …