Welcome to Number 5 of the IDELIX Technology Update, your source for the latest technology advancements and news from IDELIX. Previous versions of the newsletter are now available online.

"The Japanese are leaders in the technology market and their tremendous response is great validation of the market opportunity for PDT in the Japan. Our partnership with System IO has IDELIX well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity," commented Mr. Sanii.

Stay tuned for more news on our partners abroad.

"'Ink' Browsers vs. Web Browsers: Just compare the difference in the amount of viewing real-estate you have with the former (a.k.a. paper) and the later (your computer screen). Just think about how you use the size, distance, and location in how you lay out information using paper to help you discover, explore, and understand relations amongst what you are looking for. It will be at least 5-6 years before things like light emitting polymers enable us even to begin to capture the same amount of coverage in how we use electronic displays. In the interim, especially, it seems only logical that in order to make effective use of electronic displays, despite their relatively small size and high cost, is to develop new visualization techniques that enable us to get the most out of this valuable, but small expensive resource. It is precisely because of these considerations that I think that IDELIX's technology is so important: it provides one of the keys for getting the most out of the potential of electronic displays, while living with the current realities of their limitations."

Bill is also an active member of the IDELIX Board of Advisors.

Are you interested in reading what others have to say about Pliable Display Technology? Visit our Testimonials Page.

"The addition of COM to our current PDT Software Development Kits will ease the integration process for systems integrators on the Windows platform that we are currently targeting within the Image Analysis, Defense, GIS, and CAD sectors," says Dr. David Baar, CTO of IDELIX. "Companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who would gain significantly from the ability to offer their end customers PDT are often coupling together functional blocks written in different, otherwise incompatible, programming languages. IDELIX's future development efforts are aimed directly at them and others that are not necessarily graphics experts, but are interested in gaining the visual benefits provided by Pliable Display Technology."

The PDT Software Development Kits are currently written in C++, and are built for target platforms such as Linux, IRIX, Windows, Windows CE, and Mac OS-X. With the connecting COM interfaces, application developers can program against PDT using any language on the Windows platform that supports COM, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, and Perl for Windows. A .Net release of PDT is also planned for 2003.

Interested in trying out the PDT SDK 2.1 or PDT 3d SDK? Apply to the IDELIX Partner Program to receive an evaluation SDK. Have questions about our technology? Check out our FAQ's or Whitepapers and Technical Descriptions.

• PDT: A Viewing Tool for All Images
• PDT for In-place Editing and Mark-up of Digital Images
• PDT 3d: A new approach to Occlusion Reduction
• Improving the Efficiency of Your Existing Tools with PDT
• PDT and Folding
• PDT for PC Tablets, Handhelds, and Wireless Applications
• Viewing Multiple Layers of Data with PDT
• PDT and Measurement Tools

It must be Puppy Love! Life may be like a box of chocolates, but now we've lost our lovesick pup in one and need your help to determine "Where's Barley?"

Coming this Spring: Time to shed some of those layers using the new PDT Layers Demo that will be officially released in April. Sign up now to receive a sneak preview.

Unlike a real magnifying glass, PDT may also be designed to pull in new higher resolution images as the magnification increases so that pixelation, ideally, never occurs. This process, known as scale dependent rendering, is better explained with an example.

Imagine looking at an aerial view of Vancouver with a PDT lens over the Yaletown District. From a distance, the roads are visible. As the magnification of the lens increases, the image in the lens changes to one with a better resolution illustrating that some roads are part of a one-way system, while others roads are made up four lanes with two-way traffic. This additional data can only be seen at a higher scale, hence the term scale dependent rendering.

The concept of scale dependent rendering can be taken one-step further when combined with a "table of contents" providing an option to view additional features. For instance, by turning on the restaurant feature from the table of contents, the detail in the lens (and/or the background image) may reveal additional features pinpointing the location of restaurants.

If you have a question you'd like us to address in Function Junction, please send us an email and we'll do our best to address it in the next issue.

The PDT SDK makes it easy for you to integrate PDT into your application using your rendering technology of choice. From support for raw geometry transformations, to full OpenGL support, to an extendable format independent software texturing engine, PDT is flexible and provides different pathways to integration. One solution, designed for developers of Mac OS X applications, provides the ability to create a fully functional PDT application without writing any code.

The Mac OS X specific components of the SDK include an Objective-C++ Cocoa class descended from NSImageView that enables the display of PDT warped images. It also provides embedded user controls (MDLC) for manipulation of the lens. When building an application in Apple's Project Builder, a developer can launch Interface Builder and interactively build an interface that includes the PDT NSImageView subclass. Running the application will then result in a PDT enabled application. Writing just a few lines of code can provide drag and drop image loading capabilities, customization of the MDLC user interface, or any number of other features.

While the NSImageView subclass is quite powerful, the PDT Image Warper classes provide ultimate flexibility. These classes provide an easy yet powerful way of extending the PDT SDK to support different technologies, such as Carbon or QuickTime. The only requirement to write a fully functional Image Warper class is that you have full read and write access to pixel data. The Cocoa class that we have included with the SDK consists only of approximately 100 lines of code, most of it very simple, and operates on NSBitmapImageRep classes. You can easily write your own custom classes to provide PDT support for other technologies, be they for Mac OS X, or other platforms.

For further information on integrating PDT into your application, read our online Integration Overview.

Email us your comments!

This month's topic for discussion on the soapbox is information visualization on handheld/wireless devices. We address the "screen real estate" problem of handhelds in Market Spotlight and how PDT is one solution to this challenge. We'd like to hear your thoughts and experiences on working with handheld devices. What needs to improve? What benefits do you see or already experience? Has the wind been blown out of the sails of the wireless market? Tell us your opinion.

The small screen sizes of handheld/wireless devices amplify the challenges of detailed data visualization experienced by PC users.

This month we turn the spotlight on the handheld/wireless market and the strategic advantages of PDT for wireless applications.

Watch the new PDT for Handheld Devices video demo.

[Original satellite image in illustration above courtesy SPACE IMAGING©]

Vancouver also provides convenient access to great locations for Dave's other passion, rock climbing. Dave can often be found after work hours dangling 20 feet up with other members of the IDELIX team in climbing gyms around the city.

To learn more about Dr. Dave's more serious side, check out his bio.

January 14-16th, 2003
PDT: Exposed at West 2003!!

We'd like to thank all the vendors and members of the military who spent time with us at WEST 2003 learning more about Pliable Display Technology. The feedback we received and resulting requests for the PDT and PDT 3d SDKs has made this one of our most successful show yet!

March 16-19, 2003
GeoTec 2003
Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center
Vancouver, BC
Booth #115

Join IDELIX at Canada's largest spatial technologies trade show.

For the full list of events, visit our website Events page.

Would you like to meet us? Find out more about PDT? Find out more about these events? Email Tiffany Chester, Communications Coordinator, to set up an appointment for any of these events.