Terminology

Human communication needs a common language in order to succeed. Of course, in a new and rapidly developing field like Computer Graphics, different groups will develop their own basis for communication. Many conflicts and misunderstandings in the course of GKS design and review were caused by not having a common language. Different terms were used for the same object, or different objects were given the same name by different people. This was true not only in the international field, where English is used as the main language of communication, but also in various other languages. In order to avoid any difficulties which might arise from designing GKS in two languages at the same time, DIN decided at a very early stage to develop the GKS standard in English, and later translate the finished document into German.