From the project homepage:
PGF is a TeX macro package for generating graphics. It is platform- and format-independent and works together with the most important TeX backend drivers, including pdftex and dvips. It comes with a user-friedly syntax layer called TikZ.
I have been a happy user of PGF ever since 2006. For certain types of graphics like data structures and geometry, it really makes more sense to “code it” then to “draw it” (interactively). The package is very rich in features, as you can witness just by flipping through the 560 page manual.
560 pages for a package? I know it’s long, but of course you don’t need to learn every single option of every single feature before you can use PGF productively. (Actually, you will use a high-level abstraction layer called TikZ as explained in the manual.) The manual provides several tutorials to help you start.
Lastly, I note that the package is written by fellow Theory researcher Till Tantau. Thank you Till!
P.S. Version 2.0 is in the MiKTeX distribution already. Just do an automatic update.
Date: February 27 2008, noon
Location: NSH 1507
Speaker: Daniel Golovin
Title: Uniquely Represented Data Structures with Applications to Privacy
Abstract:
A uniquely represented data structure has a unique physical state to encode each logical state of its abstract data type. In this talk I will discuss new efficient uniquely represented versions of popular data structures (including hash tables, binary search trees, and queues), how these data structures work, and how they can be used to improve the security and privacy of real-world applications.
As an example application, consider a typical system with some internal data structures. If the memory representations of those internal data structures are inspected, they may leave significant clues to the past use of the system. For example, a data structure with lazy deletions might retain an object that the user believes was deleted long ago; this is problematic in environments requiring high security or strict privacy guarantees. Uniquely represented data structures eliminate such problems entirely by storing exactly the information specified by an abstract data type, and nothing more.
