Introduction

Abstract

This book may be read at a number of different levels. Firstly, it can be considered as a recipe book of graphics programs for those who simply want to draw complex pictures with their Spectrum. We naturally hope that the reader, having drawn these figures, will be inspired to delve deeper into the book in order to understand how and why the programs were constructed. Secondly, some of the programs may be used as a package to produce and label data diagrams (pie-charts, histograms and graphs) for business and laboratory use. Finally, and the main reason for writing the book, it is an introductory text to computer graphics, which leads the reader from the elementary notions of the subject through to such advanced topics as character graphics, construction of three-dimensional objects and hidden line (and surface) algorithms.