Parts of this post were based on the CACM'84 interview with van Dam. I cannot cover every single small development along the way. I had a paragraph on pre-Porter Duff 2D image models like QuickDraw, X11, and yes, Foley/van Dam's GKS but after a lot of hesitation, cut it for brevity. There are too many contributions to list, hopefully I can chronicle more in a future post.

The story I wanted to tell was to cover the large, broad developments in the industry that caused our solidification of the respective image models in both 2D and 3D. Perhaps I omitted a bit too much, and I'm certainly framing it with modern eyes, but I do not believe any of this to be revisionist.

Ah well, it's a complicated story. It did make me muse about the scads of graphics file formats back in the day plus the coexisting ecosystems. Everyone has their own slice of the picture.