JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2011, ISSN 2151-9617

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Algorithm and Application of Dynamic view generation by organizing

sectionsof a view plane based on Visibility Quotient

Sanjeev Kumar Biswas Kanika Dalmia Gupta

Adobe Systems India P Ltd Adobe Systems India P Ltd

Keywords: Imaging, data visualization, dynamic view selection, time varying view selection

Abstract - The paper outlines an algorithm for generating the dynamic view of different sections of a
plane based on the visibility quotient. People browsing through a web site or a document which has
different sections with different content usually skip reading those sections which are of low “visibility”.
The paper describes the data structure and algorithm used to sort these sections based on their “visibility
quotient” and provide a flexible way to the user to browse these sections using some kind of “navigation
technique” and “scrolling” mechanism.
This approach can improve the overall experience by speeding up the loading time of more relevant
sections in a view and delaying loading of less relevant sections.

1 INTRODUCTION

The paper discusses a new technique of generating a dynamic view of rectangular sections of a document
or a web page. Using “visibility” as the defining criteria for arranging the sub sections can be of
tremendous use in the industry as well as for the end user.

For instance, consider an e-newspaper, where an entire newspaper is available in digital format. There are
many sections of the newspaper that are at the corners of the page and do not have a high visibility. But
the web browser tries to load all the sections of the page in one go before showing the user the complete
page. This unnecessarily delays the page loading and degrades the user experience.

The algorithm and quotient discussed in this paper provides a solution to many such visibility issues.
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2 DETAILED DESCRIPTION

2.1 KEY CONCEPT

The Page Layout is divided into rectangular regions each pertaining to a different content. There are
regions on the page that do not have high visibility when viewed by the user from a particular view point
in space. So the proposed invention provides a visibility quotient to each rectangular section of the plane
based on its projected surface area and the linear distance from the view point. This visibility quotient can
be used to rearrange these sections individually for facilitating section wise navigation of the whole plane.

Consider a rectangular plane XY with center at (Xc, Yc), which is divided into variable sized rectangular
sections X1Y1, X2Y2 … Xi Yi….XnYn, each having a surface area Ai (where i = 1, 2…n).[2] When this
plane is observed from a point Z in space which is at a perpendicular distance d with an angle of
inclination i, each section of the plane has a different visibility. Sections that are big and are closer to the
point Z will be more visible to the observer than small sections located at a distance from the point of
observation.

The visibility quotient Vi depends on the Surface Area Ai of the rectangular section i and is inversely
proportional to the square of the distance of the observation point and the distance of the section i from
the projected point of observation (Xc, Yc).

Refer to the diagram below that shows how the visibility quotient of a sub-section i is calculated.
Z

Y
d

Ai

yi
X X’

xi

XY

Y’
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(x c , y c ) Projected point of observation on XY plane

Angle of Inclination

Z Point of observation

d Distance of the point of observation Z from the XY plane

A i Surface Area of sub section i

Calculation of Projected Surface Area of Section ‘i’

A’

90-

Let A be the Surface area of sub-section i and A’ be the projected surface area.

be the angle of inclination

A’ = A cos

Where cos can be calculated in terms of the distance “d” [2] and the distance of the section I from
the projected point of observation.
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Calculation of the Visibility Quotient

Where A i is the surface area of section i

Where k is the visibility constant

The visibility quotient is calculated as follows –

• The visibility of a section i directly depends on its projected surface area ( Ai Cos )
• The visibility of the section is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the
point of observation (By Inverse Square Law).

Using the diagram, the angle of inclination is determined.

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Visibility Quotient (Vq) Sorted Linear Array

The above diagram shows a composite image which has 9 sub-images in it. Each sub-image is referred to
by an index i. Using R as the projected point of observation, the visibility quotient of each subsection can
be calculated by the derived formula. The values of the visibility quotient are then normalized, to rank the
sections from 0,1…Normalization can be done by dividing all the Vq values by the highest Vq value. The
pointers to the section struct are pushed to the linear stack in increasing order of the normalized visibility
quotient Vq, with the section having the highest visibility rank at the head of the stack.

In the example above, V7 has the highest Vq and hence is at the top of the linear stack.

The algorithm for preparing the visibility quotient sorted list of Section structures is illustrated in the
flow diagram below:
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3 EVALUATION OF CONCEPT

This fundamental can be extended for many applications that involves viewing a rectangular image which
is further split into sub-images, each having rectangular cross-section.

I Dynamic Viewing of page content by varying the point of observation: In online-hosted

newspapers/magazines page

Consider for instance a page layout of an online newspaper or a magazine. The different sections of a
newspaper or a magazine page layout can be split and arranged based on the visibility quotient of each
section. So for enabling linear navigation (horizontal or vertical) of the sections, the sections that have
high visibility quotient are displayed first. This would provide image by image navigation of a larger
composite image, where the navigation criteria would be determined by the visibility quotient of each
sub-section based on the point of observation chosen by the user using some kind of ‘navigation
technique’ or ‘scrolling’ mechanism.

This navigation technique and scrolling mechanism would give the flexibility to the user to view the sub-
sections of a big image, one by one. When the user chooses to navigate using this technique, based on the
location of the mouse pointer as point of observation, the visibility quotient of the all the sub-sections is
calculated and the references to these image sub-sections are stored in a linear array, sorted in decreasing
order of the visibility quotient. The user would then be provided the ‘most visible’ image of the
composite image, along with the horizontal and vertical navigation keys. When the user chooses to
horizontally navigate in this window, the next most visible image/ sub section is displayed in the window
to the user. The sorting order of the sub-sections can also be reversed, in case the user wishes to view the
less visible sub-sections of the page.

This could be further extended to improve the advertisement visibility. The advertisements can be placed
in those sections of the page that have the maximum visibility[4], while not neglecting the importance &
priority of newspaper content. So when the user chooses to view the page with the proposed navigation
technique and scrolling mechanism, the advertisements can be displayed to the user prior to less important
information on the page.

II Multi-level zooming with sectional loading of sub-images in a composite image

In case of a composite image, When the Zoom tool is applied by the user, the zooming takes place in
some time and the complete zoomed image is loaded at once. However, we can apply the proposed
algorithm on the sub-sections images of the composite image and sort them based on the visibility
quotient. This sorted list of images can then be zoomed and loaded one by one starting with the image that
has the highest visibility quotient. Thus, the proposed visibility quotient based algorithm can be used for
progressively zooming and loading a composite image such that the most visible sub-image would be
zoomed and loaded first, followed by the next most visible sub-image, based on the visibility quotient
sorted linear array.

The Zoom tool and the proposed technique can thus work in sync, improving the image load time. This
method can be further extended for multi-level zooming as well.
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III Deciding Page Layout for Hard-Copy Newspapers & Magazines publishers

Eye Tracking and Eye Gaze patterns have been long being used to determine the content layout on a web
page[5]. Although automating these patterns is a very complicated task as it involves many heurestics and
is more a theoretical concept. However, Using the visibility quotient, this can be made an automated task
where the software would suggest placements of different sections based on priority based on the value of
the visibility quotient.

The editors of magazines and newspapers can use the visibility quotient based navigation technique and
scrolling mechanism to decide the placement of the content on the page. The content is split into many
sub-sections and the placement of the articles is primary to attaining good reader circulation. At present
this task of placing the right article at the right place n each place is a manual process. This can be
completely automated wherein the users would have the flexibility of arranging the page as per design
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and then using this technique to check if the visibility of each article is as desired. This could suggest the
user to rearrange the page for better visibility. This can be used in two ways:

1) The Page Designer lays out a page and assigns a priority to each sub-section. Then selects a point
of observation using some navigation and scrolling technique. Using this point as the point of
reference, the visibility quotient of each sub-section is calculated and sorted in decreasing order
of visibility. This order can then be compared with the priority given to the sub-sections to check
whether the placement of articles has been done in sync with the priority & visibility quotient of
the article or not.
2) Given the priority ranks of the sub-sections by the Page Designer, the visibility quotient based
sorting technique can be applied to lay out the page on the basis of the visibility quotient, placing
the high priority sub-sections in the most visible spots.

4 CONCLUSION

The concept and design of the algorithm for generating dynamic view of sections of the plane is discussed
and illustrated in this paper. This can be implemented to provide enhanced performance and superior user
experience in applications that display a sectioned image/document. There has been considerable research
in this domain of Visibility Algorithms in the plane[3]. However, the concept of using a single quotient to
determine visibility is relatively unexplored.

Our analysis and proposal brings out a new reference constant termed as the “Visibility Quotient” that
has tremendous use and is a generic parameter.

The research in this paper opens up new avenues of providing scrolling and navigation facilities for
browsing different sections of the planer image.

5 REFERENCES

1. http://www.weather.gov/asos/vsby.htm
2. http://www.springerlink.com/content/576r700969016743/
3. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521875745
4. http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/advertising.htm
5. http://www.usability.gov/articles/newsletter/pubs/032010news.html