In the previous two chapters, we dealt with computer-generated graphics and the various ways to achieve animation, thus preparing the groundwork for designing more sophisticated data/audio visualizers. Doing so, however, also involves retrieving, manipulating, and encoding data appropriately, which will be discussed in this chapter. More to the point, we will examine various mechanisms to acquire and generate data from a wide range of possible sources, as well as the methodologies to process, encode, and distribute them within our programs. Such techniques are invaluable in miscellaneous contexts, and even if at this point they appear largely irrelevant with visualization, they are rather fundamental to it and are encountered even in the simplest scenarios. Readers primarily interested in the latter will have to be patient during this chapter; all will make sense in the next one.
The topics that will be covered in this chapter are as follows:
Retrieving...