CGLMeeting Agenda

Wednesday, August 28th, 1996

Location:
DC 1304
Time:
1:30 PM
Sofa being:
Rob Kroeger

1. Adoption of the Agenda - additions or deletions

2. Coffee Hour

Coffee hour this week:
Any volunteers?
Coffee hour next week:
Any volunteers?

3. Next meeting

Date:
September 4th, 1996
Location:
DC 1304
Time:
1:30 PM
Hammock:
W.B. Cowan
Technical presentation:
Rick Kazman

4. Forthcoming

Chairs:
  1. Nathan Litke
  2. Steve Mann
  3. Mike McCool
  4. Dan Milgram
Tech Presenters:
  1. Rick Knowles
  2. Rob Kroeger
  3. Nathan Litke
  4. Iain Little

5. Technical Presentation

Presenter:
John Kommiek
Title: Jabber Programming in Modula-3
Abstract:
Suppose you need to build a large, complex application. There are many pieces. A number of servers and loggers live indefinitely as daemons. Information sources come and go. Client programs on PCs provide a GUI front end. The system has to run across a network, or on a single machine -- with little or no change in source code. It is a research application -- the specifications are discovered, not proscribed -- and you want to build it fairly quickly. You can't shirk maintainability, either. Industrial sponsors intend to ship a commercial product based on your work. This is your task. It is also a description of the Jabber project.
One of the main tenets of the unix philosophy is to use the right tool for the job. For this job it is the Modula-3 programming language ... taught to our begrudging undergraduates, and profitably used by a few happy cgl graduates.

6. General Discussion Items

7. Action List

8. Director's Meeting

9. Seminars

  DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
  UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
  SEMINAR ACTIVITIES


  MASTERS THESIS PRESENTATION


  - Tuesday, September 3, 1996


  Haroon Sheikh, Graduate Student, Department of Computer
  Science, University of Waterloo will speak on
  ``Designing Subdivision Surfaces through Control Mesh
  Refinement''.


  TIME: 9:30 - 10:30 a.m.

  ROOM: Davis Centre Room DC1304

  ABSTRACT

  I present a technique for designing subdivision
  surfaces through the repeated process of refining the
  control mesh of the surface. The refinement is
  performed using the surface's subdivision algo- rithm.
  An abstract structure for subdivision surfaces is
  develop- ed that involves the control mesh and the
  subdivsion algorithm. This structure is used to build
  a generic editor that assists in the design of surfaces
  represented by classes of control meshes and
  subdivision algorithms.

  The theory of subdivision surfaces, in particular,
  tensor product cardinal splines and box splines is
  described in detail. From the theory, subdivision
  algorithms for these surfaces are construct- ed and
  then used to create Refiners. The concept of triming
  these surfaces is also introduced to aid in rendering
  of the surface. Several C++ spline classes used in the
  implementation are describ- ed. The subdivsion surface
  editor uses these classes and Open Inventor to provide
  a prototype 3D surface design, manipulation and editing
  environment.



  The Institute for Computer Research (ICR)

  Presents a Seminar on

  "Interactive Voice Servers Over the Telecom Network"


by: Professor Gerard Chollet

of: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications-Signal

  Paris, France


Date: Wednesday, September 4, 1996

Time: 3:30 p.m.

Place: William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, Room 1304



Abstract:

A lot of 'useful' (and some useless) information is getting more
accessible over the TELECOM network (INTERNET, AudioTex, Banking,
Travel, Tourism ...). In many situations the most convenient
(and sometimes the only) way to access it is Voice I/O.

The use of the telephone on the other hand could be very frus-
trating or distracting when the intended recipient of the call is
absent or busy or does not want to answer the phone . Voice mail
systems are an answer to this problem. They are becoming more
and more user friendly and include such features as setting up
appointments, speaker verification, etc.

This talk will review some to the speech technology necessary to
fully develop this market. Among the issues are: Language-
independent flexible vocabulary approach to speech recognition,
robustness to the environment (noise, channel distortions, etc.),
dialectical variations, speaker verification, adaptation to new
speakers, speech translation, among others. Interactive Voice
Servers developed in France and Switzerland will be described and
evaluated.


Biography:

Gerard Chollet's education was centred on Mathematics (DUES-MP),
Physics (Maotrise), Engineering and Computer Sciences (DEA) until
the doctoral level. He studied Linguistics, Electrical and Com-
puter Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara and
was granted a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Linguistics.

Professor Chollet joined the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique in 1978 at the Institut de Phonetique in Aix en Pro-
vence. His main research interests are in phonetics, automatic
speech processing, speech dialogue systems, multimedia, pattern
recognition, digital signal processing, speech pathology and
speech training aids.



Everyone is welcome. Refreshments served.


  DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
  UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
  SEMINAR ACTIVITIES


  MASTERS THESIS PRESENTATION


  - Thursday, September 5, 1996


  J.Y. Eric Giguere , Graduate Student, Department of
  Computer Science, University of Waterloo will speak on
  ``A Model for Database Support in Rapid Application
  Development Environments''.


  TIME: 2:30 - 3:30 p.m.

  ROOM: Davis Centre Room DC3301

  ABSTRACT

  This thesis describes a model for database support in
  rapid application (RAD) environments. With this model,
  users who have very little database expertise can
  create interactive database applications requiring a
  minimal amount of coding while also minimizing or
  eliminating the use of user-modified generated code.

10. Lab Cleanup (until 2:30 or 5 minutes)