Draft:Surf (graphics program)

{{AFC submission|d|v|u=Maxim Leyenson|ns=118|decliner=Greenman|declinets=20250205215029|reason2=nn|ts=20250120202615}}

{{AFC comment|1=External links should also be removed or converted to inline citations where appropriate. Greenman (talk) 21:50, 5 February 2025 (UTC)}}

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File:Endrass surface.png visualized with surf|right]]

Image:Barth decic.png visualized with surf]]

File:BarthSextic.png visualized with surf]]

surf is a an open source computer program written to visualize some real algebraic geometry: plane algebraic curves, space curves, and algebraic surfaces in a three-dimensional real affine space.

Surf is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Surf was developed in 1996-1997 at the Friedrich Alexander Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg, and since 1997 at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz.

surf provides a C-style programming language for the description of geometric objects. It supports semi-transparency and ray tracing in the Phong reflection model.

surf was written at the suggestion of Wolf Barth by Stephan Endrass, Hans Huelf, Ruediger Oertel, Kai Schneider, Ralf Schmitt, and Johannes Beigel.

Distribution

surf is packaged in the Debian Linux and derivatives (such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint) as [https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/surf-alggeo surf-alggeo] and in the Fedora Linux as [https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/surf-geometry/surf-geometry/ surf-geometry].

It is also provided with the SageMath project.

Derivatives and forks

There are various derivatives of surf.

[https://www.imaginary.org/program/surfer surfer] which is a project under the direction of Gert-Martin Greuel

{{citation

| last1 = Friedman

| first1 = Michael

| last2 = Krauthausen

| first2 = Karin

| title = Model and Mathematics: From the 19th to the 21st Century

| chapter = Interview with Andreas Daniel Matt: Real-Time Mathematics

| series = Trends in the History of Science

| url = https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-97833-4

| year = 2022

| doi = 10.1007/978-3-030-97833-4

| isbn = 978-3-030-97832-7

}}

surfex is a 2008 derivation of surf written in Java by Oliver Labs and Stephan Holzer
{{cite book

|last1 = Holzer

|first1 =Stephan

|last2 = Labs

|first2 = Oliver

|editor-last1 = Elkadi

|editor-first1 = Mohamed

|editor-last2 = Mourrain

|editor-first2 = Bernard

|editor-last3 = Piene

|editor-first3 = Ragni

| title = Algebraic Geometry and Geometric Modeling

| chapter = Illustrating the classification of real cubic surfaces

|pages=119–134

| url = https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-540-33275-6

| isbn=978-3-540-33275-6

| year = 2006

|doi =10.1007/978-3-540-33275-6

}}

. It is now distributed as a part of Singular.

References

[https://repology.org/project/surf-alggeo/versions surf page at the Repology project]
[https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/surf-alggeo Ubuntu page for surf]
[https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/surf-geometry/surf-geometry/ Fedora Linux page for surf]

[https://cage.ugent.be/~hs/barth/barth.html Herman Serras page on Surf animations of Barth Surfaces]

{{cite book

|last1 = Friedman

|first1 = Michael

|last2 = Krauthausen

|first2 = Karin

|last3 = Matt

|first3 = Andreas Daniel

|year= 2022

|editor-last1=Friedman

|editor-first1 = Michael

|editor-last2 = Krauthausen

|editor-first2 = Karin

|title=Model and Mathematics: From the 19th to the 21st Century

|publisher=Springer

|pages=431–445

|chapter=Interview with Andreas Daniel Matt: Real-Time Mathematics

|doi = 10.1007/978-3-030-97833-4

|isbn=978-3-030-97833-4