Improving interaction with a raster display
Steven L. Tanimoto · ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics · 1978
Interacting with a raster display can be frustratingly slow if images must be transmitted over slow data links such as standard telephone lines. When interaction with a graphics terminal is based on the system displaying detailed pictures and then a response by the user, the slow row-by-row painting method should be replaced by a hierarchical refining scheme discussed here. The small overhead in the refining scheme is a small price to pay for increased convenience to the human.