The Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) is a computer-graphics standard defining an interface between an application program and a computer-graphics system. PHIGS has been actively under development since 1980. Much of this development has been performed by Technical Committee X3H3 under the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) procedures. PHIGS is also an international standard sponsored by the United States and developed by the international computer-graphics committee, ISO TC97/SC21/WG2. In addition, PHIGS has been selected as the graphics extension to the X-window standard and as part of the Intel i860 P.A.X. standard. The PHIGS standard has received wide acceptance throughout the computer graphics industry. PHIGS libraries are available on most of the high performance three-dimensional graphics platforms. These include IBM, DEC, HP, Sun, Alliant, Stardent, and Silicon Graphics. Despite this acceptance, there are few texts that provide the software engineer with an overview of the standard. The only currently available PHIGS references are in the form of the ANSI functional description, technical papers, and device-specific PHIGS to the novice PHIGS programmer."

The PHIGS system is a computer graphics standard defining an interface between an application program and a computer graphics system. The PHIGS standard has received wide acceptance throughout the computer graphics industry and PHIGS libraries are available on most of the high-performance 3-D graphics platforms today, including IBM, DEC, HP, SUN, Alliant, Stardent, and Silicon Graphics. In spite of this acceptance, there are no PHIGS texts available to the average software engineer or graphics students. PHIGS by Example will be that text. Written with the novice programmer in mind, the book starts with examples of very basic concepts and, after careful exploration of these aspects, moves on to more advanced topics. PHIGS by Example teaches the application programmer how to use the PHIGS standard in his/her own program. Each section of the book is built around programming examples, using the strategy that the best way to learn PHIGS is to use PHIGS. The sections begin with a conceptual discussion of the PHIGS topics presented in that section and is followed by a detailed explanation of an example program or subroutine.The sections are concluded with a set of exercises that are designed to challenge the reader to experiment with PHIGS functions describes in that section. The text assumes that the reader is familiar with basic graphics concepts; a complete understanding of these basics is helpful, but not required.