INCITS/ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 Information technology Computer graphics Metafile for the storage and transfer of picture description information Part 1: Functional specification (Adopted by INCITS)
ISO/IEC 8632 provides a file format suitable for the storage and retrieval of picture description information. The file format consists of an ordered set of elements that may be used to describe pictures in a way that is compatible between systems of different architectures@ compatible with devices of differing capabilities and design@ and meaningful to application constituencies. This picture description includes the capability for describing static images. The elements specified provide for the representation of a wide range of pictures on a wide range of graphical devices. The elements are organized into groups that delimit major structures (metafiles@ pictures@ and application structures)@ that specify the representations used within the metafile@ that control the display of the picture@ that perform basic drawing actions@ that control the attributes of the basic drawing actions@ that allow application-specific structuring to be overlaid on the graphical content@ and that provide access to non-standard device capabilities. The metafile is defined in such a way that@ in addition to sequential access to the whole metafile@ random access to individual pictures and individual context-independent application structures is well-defined. Applications which require random access to pictures and/or context-independent application structures within pictures may@ within the metafile@ define directories to these pictures and/or context-independent application structures. The metafile may then be opened and randomly accessed without interpreting the entire metafile. In addition to a functional specification@ two standard encodings of the metafile syntax are specified. These encodings address the needs of applications that require small metafile size plus minimum effort to generate and interpret@ and maximum flexibility for a human reader or editor of the metafile. This part of ISO/IEC 8632 describes the format using an abstract syntax. The remaining parts of ISO 8632 specify standardized encodings that conform to this syntax: ISO/IEC 8632-3 specifies a binary encoding; ISO/IEC 8632-4 specifies a clear text encoding.
INCITS/ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 history
1999INCITS/ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 Information technology Computer graphics Metafile for the storage and transfer of picture description information Part 1: Functional specification (Adopted by INCITS)