About the Cover
The cover of this book features a portion of the drawing “The Landing of
the Ark,” which decorates the ceiling of Duncan Hall at Rice University.
Both Duncan Hall and its ceiling were designed by British architect John
Outram (principal of John Outram Associates in London, England). Duncan
Hall is an outward expression of architectural, decorative, and philosophical
themes developed over Outram’s career as an architect. The decorated ceil-
ing of the ceremonial hall plays a central role in the building’s decorative
scheme. Outram inscribed the ceiling with a set of significant ideas—a cre-
ation myth. By expressing those ideas in an allegorical drawing of vast size
and intense color, Outram created a signpost that tells visitors who wander
into the hall that, indeed, this building is not like other buildings.
By using the same signpost on the cover of Engineering a Compiler,theau-
thors intend to signal that this work contains significant ideas that are at the
core of their discipline. Like Outram’s building, this volume is the culmina-
tion of intellectual themes developed over the authors’ professional careers.
Like Outram’s decorative scheme, this book is a device for communicating
ideas. Like Outram’s ceiling, it presents significant ideas in new ways.
By connecting the design and construction of compilers with the design and
construction of buildings, we intend to convey the many similarities in these
two distinct activities. Our many long discussions with Outram introduced
us to the Vitruvian ideals for architecture: commodity, firmness, and delight.
These ideals apply to many kinds of construction. Their analogs for com-
piler construction are consistent themes of this text: function, structure, and
elegance. Function matters; a compiler that generates incorrect code is use-
less. Structure matters; engineering details determine a compiler’s efficiency
and robustness. Elegance matters; a well-designed compiler, in which the al-
gorithms and data structures flow smoothly from one pass to another, can be
a thing of beauty.
We are delighted to have John Outram’s work grace the cover of this book.
Duncan Hall’s ceiling is an interesting technological artifact. Outram drew
the original design on one sheet of paper. It was photographed and scanned
at 1200
DPI yielding roughly 750 MB of data. The image was enlarged to
form 234 distinct 2 ×8 foot panels, creating a 52 ×72 foot image. The pan-
els were printed onto oversized sheets of perforated vinyl using a 12-
DPI
acrylic-ink printer. These sheets were precision-mounted onto 2 × 8 foot
acoustic tiles and hung on the vault’s aluminum frame. For more informa-
tion, see: www.johnoutram.com/rice.html.
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