Re:Writing math papers in pre-LaTeX era (2010)
by a_e_k on Sunday August 30, 2020 @01:26AM
(#24321563)
Did you mean [x,y,z,w]*M?
For textbox use, my workaround is to write [x,y,z,w]^T when I want to be clear that I really mean a column vector.
Incidentally, your comment inspired me to go spelunking through some old tech memos (Standard disclaimer: RenderMan dev, opinions my own, this is my speculation, yada yada). As best as I can tell, the row vector convention in RenderMan must have came from Newman and Sproull's "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics" [1] by way of Alvy Ray Smith who referred to the convention as "computer graphics normal form" [2]. Interestingly, that book seems to have been inspired in turn by course material from Ivan Sutherland [3], who had previously built a head-mounted display using custom hardware with a row vector times matrix multiplier unit, among other things [4].
For textbox use, my workaround is to write [x,y,z,w]^T when I want to be clear that I really mean a column vector.
Incidentally, your comment inspired me to go spelunking through some old tech memos (Standard disclaimer: RenderMan dev, opinions my own, this is my speculation, yada yada). As best as I can tell, the row vector convention in RenderMan must have came from Newman and Sproull's "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics" [1] by way of Alvy Ray Smith who referred to the convention as "computer graphics normal form" [2]. Interestingly, that book seems to have been inspired in turn by course material from Ivan Sutherland [3], who had previously built a head-mounted display using custom hardware with a row vector times matrix multiplier unit, among other things [4].
[1] https://archive.org/details/principlesofinter00newm/page/334...
[2] http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Pixar/Matrix64.pdf#page=6
[3] https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/04/08506443/1...
[4] http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ss09/ar/p757-sutherland.p...