representing patterns and structures
brayman@zuben.ca.boeing.com (Bill Brayman)
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 94 09:40:28 PST
From: brayman@zuben.ca.boeing.com (Bill Brayman)
Message-id: <9411181740.AA04657@zuben.ca.boeing.com>
To: cg@cs.umn.edu, srkb@cs.umbc.edu
Subject: representing patterns and structures
Sender: owner-srkb@cs.umbc.edu
Precedence: bulk
Here is a modeling question in the spirit of brainstorming (I wonder
why there isn't more of this among us).
Suppose you have a sheet of metal with holes in it, or a table with
marbles on it, or a row of pickets in a fence, inch marks on a ruler,
telephone poles on the road, etc.
What constructs would one use to say that objects are grouped, that
they are evenly spaced, that they reside in a region of an object, that
they form a shape such as a gentle curve, or a matrix?
fence pickets are spaced 3 inches apart
the marbles were arranged in a circle
The dictionary says that a row is a group of objects that are next to
one another. How would one model "next to one another?"
It seems that there should be some way to represent patterns or
structures without having identify every point to point
interelationship among elements of the pattern.