Curriculum Vitae
Hugh A. Tucker, infoMenta Ltd.

click to view Euro CV Hugh A. Tucker is the principal of Ltd. and an international expert in IT documentation and information systems.
Hugh grew up in northern British Columbia, Canada and was educated at universities in Canada (UVIC, UBC, Univ. Waterloo), but his career changed after being invited to teach a semester at the Polytechnical University in Denmark and Denmark became his home and base for the next many years. He has lectured at Universities throughout Europe as well as for organizations such as NATO, EU, Eurographics.
Software development is his passion and Hugh has been deeply involved in designing, developing and implementing information and document processing systems in . And, associated with software development, Hugh has been active in international organizations and standardization activities. With computer graphics, he initiated standardization projects (IFIP, ISO, EU), organized international seminars, edited 3 textbooks, was a founding member of the EuroGraphics Association. He organized and was the chairman of the Eurographics 1984 Conference in Copenhagen. Computer graphics development and standardization led to documentation and the participation in development of the ISO standard SGML—now called XML. He has been involved in EU standards efforts, such as EPHOS, and internationally as the chairman of the ISO TC184/SC4/T14 Product Documentation group for STEP.
For many years Hugh has been working on the concepts of a better modelling system— a browser-based meta-modelling system called that is to be the major information tool of 's repertoire.
My Academics & Lecturing
Technical University of Denmark
In 1971, I was offered a position developing software at the Northern Europe University Computing Center (NEUCC). NEUCC was a center of IT development in Europe and the position naturally lead to involvements in standardizing and teaching about computer graphics systems, both in Denmark and as a guest lecturer at other institutes in Europe.
In 1987, I moved to the Institute for Electronics at the Technical University where I oversaw the installation and operations of one of the first CAD/CAM systems in Denmark.
University of Copenhagen
I was a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Datalogy at the University of Copenhagen. During this time I became even more active in standards activities, this time in the area of documentation as the Danish representative to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 that developed SGML (HTML, XML).
International Lecturing
I have taught courses and organized and run seminars in many countries and for many different organizations (IFIP, NATO, EU, ISO).
My Activities
Computer Graphics
One of the first professional projects was a graphic plotting system for the Northern Europe Computing Center, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark. I wrote it in assembler language, (in those days, space and speed were priorities). It serviced the center's graphic activities for more than 10 years.
In 1973, I made one of the first computer-generated films. This involved jury-rigging a film camera in-place of the microfiche camera. The camera, a very-expensive piece of equipment was borrowed from Danmarks Radio (The national TV). At the Northern European University Computing Center, a simulation program by DHI (Danmarks Hydrauliske Institute) generated data that I converted into display commands to the CRT of the microfiche machine (20-odd 2400ft. tapes). During a whole weekend, I ran tapes and eventually ended with a 5 or 7 minute film, showing the simulation of a hurricane approaching Florida. The film was shown at a conference in the USA with great success.
In the early 1970's, I organized a computer graphics standards activity in Scandinavia and I was a founding member and part of the leadership of the IFIP Graphics Initiative. This group included experts from both East and West Europe and we organized and held three international seminars, with well known graphics experts from throughout the world (USA, Japan, Europe). Each seminar was edited published producing three well known scientific textbooks on computer graphics and interactive techniques. (publ. North Holland). The group also established the first international graphics standard GKS (Graphics Kernel System).
I was a founding member of the EuroGraphics Association and I served on the Board of Governors for many years. I was the Chairman of the Eurographics Conference in 1984.
Documentation
I was the Danish representative to ISO/IEC WG4 that was responsible for developing the SGML standard (ISO 8859) - probably one of the most influential and widely used international standards. The inspiration and technology of SGML spawned HTML and later was re-labelled as XML. SGML was a most significant development in documentation, improving on every aspect and quickly spread to industrial and commercial use. Today SGML, or XML as it is know, is ubiquitous as an interchange standard for any and every type of IT exchange.
Product Data Documentation & Systems
I was the chairman of ISO TC 184/SC4/WG3/T14 Product Documentation Technical Task Group and developed systematized approaches to using SGML in industry. One of the projects that I developed at this point was with the Boeing Aircraft Co., using their SGML documentation to produce practical working documents for aircraft technicians.
EU - Open Standards
I participated as an expert and Danish Standards representative in activities organized by the Directorate General III (Enterprise and Industry) and DG XIII (Research and Standards). One of the major efforts of these programs EU was the establishment of an interactive system on open standards, the European Procurement Handbook for Open Systems (EPHOS).
Other standards activities
− was asked to write a work on “Character Code Sets for SGML” for DG XIII of the CEC as a special project.
− chaired and wrote a proposal outline for Scandinavia for The Inter-Nordic Standards association (INSTA) for document interchange and interoperability using SGML. Participants from Sweden, Norway, and Finland participated in the project. Later, I was a consortium partner and chief architect in INSTA Standards InfoBase project—the establishment of a hypertext base for ISO standards. I was the project leader of INSTA project P92022 International Standards for Document Interchange, Nordic Foundation for Technology and Industrial Development.
− was an author of SGML & ODA: Standards for Document Processing and Interchange, Danish Standards Association. (translated into French and Japanese).
I was the Project Editor of EWOS ODA PT 011 SGML / ODA Convergence.