Discussion of Some Future Lecture Topics and Project Topics

Basically, you have two choices:

1. Replace me in giving a 30-minute talk about a topic
2. Do some research or an implementation project and give a 30-minute talk about it.

For choice one, pick some topic that is of interest to you, even something that I might have talked about, but have not. Find all the literature about it, read about it, prepare the half-hour talk and the report about it. The topic can even be a continuation of something that I DID talk about. Of course, the topic can be something that I never even thought of talking about, but you know about it or want to learn about it well enough to talk about it.

For choice two, pick some unsolved problem, do some research to make some progress to solve the problem, write about it, and talk about it. The problem can be something mentioned in one of the lectures. It can be an electronic publishing problem that you have encountered and have wished for a solution for it. The solution can involve implementing, prototyping, or even just architecting a program to solve it. For example, if in your research or work, you have noticed that you continually make the same kind of diagrams. One possible project is to design a little language for producing these diagrams from textual descriptions (e.g., flo which translates from close to pascal to flowcharts or chem which translates from textual chemical formulae to molecule diagrams).

A list of some of both kinds can be found in the slides for the first day. Some of these are out of date. Ask me and I will tell you if what you picked is out of date. In class, I will put some possible lecture and project topics on the board:

Of course, these listed topics are not the only possible topics. If there is something in electronic publishing that you are interested in, then pursue it. All the more power to you!

Regardless of where you got your topic, before you begin the research for it, please discuss it with me. In particular, if I don't think that the topic is about electronic publishing, that the topic is too small, or even that the topic is too big, you want to know about it sooner rather than later.

Any of these topics could lead to a thesis topic. However, clearly the second choice is more likely to lead to a thesis topic than is the first choice.

The two choices are graded differently.

1. I do not expect you to break any new ground with a topic of the first choice, but I do expect to do a thorough job of reporting what has been done in the past on the topic.
2. I expect you to break some new ground, but I do not expect you to finish, especially if the topic ends up being worthy of a thesis. I do expect you to report the problem you were trying to solve and what you have learned so far about your solution.