Taiwan's most innovative science fiction writer presents three tales of intrigue, espionage, betrayal, political strife, time travel, and Chinese history and mysticism. After thousands of years of civil unrest and countless wars, the weary Huhui people of Sunlon City have once again succumbed to a ruthless and overpowering enemy. In Five Jade Disks, the first book in the trilogy, the imperialistic Shan have enslaved the inhabitants of Sunlon City and imposed a harsh martial order. As the Shan fight to retain control of the restless Huhui natives, an unstable rebel alliance prepares to...

This book is intended as both an introduction to the state-of-the-art in visual languages, as well as an exposition of the frontiers of research in advanced visual languages. It is for computer scientists, computer engi- neers, information scientists, application programmers, and technical managers responsible for software development projects who are inter- ested in the methodology and manifold applications of visual languages and visual programming. The contents of this book are drawn from invited papers, as well as selected papers from two workshops: the 1985 IEEE Workshop on Lan- guages...

Multimedia has two fundamental characteristics that can be expressed by the following formula: Multimedia = Multiple Media + Hypermedia. How can software engineering take advantage of these two characteristics? Will these two characteristics pose problems in multimedia systems design? These are some of the issues to be explored in this book.
The first two chapters will be of interest to managers, software engineers, programmers, and people interested in gaining an overall understanding of multimedia software engineering. The next six chapters present multimedia software engineering...

The last few years have seen an explosive growth in multimedia computing, communications and applications. This revolution is transforming the way people live, work, and interact with one another, and is impacting the way businesses, government services, education, entertainment, and health care are operating. It is safe to say that the multimedia revolution is underway. Yet, several issues related to modeling, specification, analysis and design of distributed multimedia systems and applications are still challenging both researchers and practitioners.

This book addresses fundamental design...

The book covers the recent new advances in software engineering and knowledge engineering. It is intended as a supplement to the two-volume handbook of software engineering and knowledge engineering. The editor and authors are well-known international experts in their respective fields of expertise. Each chapter in the book is entirely self-contained and gives in-depth information on a specific topic of current interest. This book will be a useful desktop companion for both practitioners and students of software engineering and knowledge engineering.