Publications on Sascha Brawer

Method for Memory-Bounded Construction of a Globally Complete, High-Zoom-Level Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF from Tile-Access Logs

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A defensive disclosure of the technique behind OSMViews: how its builder turns a rolling window of OpenStreetMap tile-access logs into a planet-wide raster in constant memory. Published to prevent patentability; the reference implementation is on GitHub under the MIT license.

Automated Georeferencing of Archived Cadastral Plans

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An independent project, presented to the City of Zürich’s Geomatics and Surveying department. The talk was given in German.

Using Variable Font Width to Adjust Flow of Text Within Text Boxes

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Published on Technical Disclosure Commons to prevent patentability, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Quick Transitions Between Indoor and Outdoor Maps

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From the indoor-mapping work on Google Maps.

Map Content Driven by Location and Schedule

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A location- and schedule-aware Google Maps feature. The German entry is a utility model (Gebrauchsmuster), which runs a shorter term than the patents.

Building Exteriors from Interior Floor Plans

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From the indoor-mapping work on Google Maps — deriving a building’s outside from its floor plans.

Estimating the Cost of Workplace Activities

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A patent application filed by Google in 2011 and published in 2015, but not pursued to grant. The publication put the method into the public record; because no patent ever issued, it is free for anyone to use.

Proper Name Transcription/Transliteration with ICU Transforms

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was a talk rather than a published paper — slides and a recording of the presentation, no separate written paper. Presented at IUC 34 in Santa Clara.

Conversion of Input Text Strings

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Patented technology for converting place names and similar geographic strings between writing systems — part of the same line of work as the ICU transforms talk.

ISO 19137:2007 — Geographic Information — Core Profile of the Spatial Schema

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was the editor and principal author, and took the standard through ISO/TC 211’s process. It grew out of a background paper I wrote for Working Group 7 on aligning commonly used spatial formats with ISO 19107. Available from the ISO catalogue.

Mobile Sitemaps

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A mobile-web extension of the Sitemaps protocol. Granted in the United States, Japan, China and South Korea; the Canadian and Brazilian filings were not pursued to grant.

Sitemaps for Web Crawling

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The patents behind the Sitemaps protocol, co-developed at Google in 2005 and published openly as an industry standard — two US continuation threads, one for the website side and one for the crawler side.

Java Security: How Free Software Is Secured Using the Java Language

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Given with the GNU Classpath team at FOSDEM 2004 in Brussels. See also the companion talk GNU Classpath: Core Classes for a Diversity of Java Virtual Machines.

GNU Classpath: Core Classes for a Diversity of Java Virtual Machines

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Given with Mark Wielaard at LOTS 2004 in Bern and in the Java Developer Room at FOSDEM 2004. The companion talk on the platform’s security model: Java Security.

The Open-Source and Free-Software Scene in Switzerland

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A German-language talk, given with Dietrich Feist for Wilhelm Tux, the Swiss free-software campaign, at LOTS 2004 in Bern.

Multi-Dimensional Foraging and Retrieval of Documents

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Developed at Xerox PARC, in the same line of research as the interactive classification patent.

Modeling Spatial Data

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Co-authored with Joseph Dorfschmid, commissioned by KOGIS/swisstopo. The textbook was written and published in German for a German-speaking audience — the PDF linked here is the original German text, not a translation. It alternates between the narrated Ilistal story and the underlying theory, so readers can go as deep as their interest and prior knowledge call for.

Current NSDI Activities in Switzerland Based on ISO 19100 Standards

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Presented by the Swiss delegation at the ISO/TC 211 plenary in Bangkok, with Hans-Rudolf Gnägi (ETH Zürich) and Claude Eisenhut (Eisenhut Informatik). I was at Adasys AG, Zürich, at the time.

Interactive Classification of Objects

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Developed at Xerox PARC, in the same line of research as the multi-dimensional document foraging patent.

Colors in INTERLIS 2

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Written at Adasys AG, Zürich, for the Swiss Federal Office of Topography, Directorate of Cadastral Surveying.

Patti

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Given on a 1999 tour of several research labs. The full write-up is my diploma thesis, Patti.

An Architecture for Content Analysis of Documents and its Use in Information and Knowledge Management Tasks

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From the natural-language research program at Apple’s Advanced Technology Group in Cupertino.

Dynamic Presentation of Document Content for Rapid On-Line Skimming

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From the SeeFacts document-skimming project at Apple’s Advanced Technology Group in Cupertino.

Patti

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My diploma thesis at Saarland University, supervised by Hans Uszkoreit and Manfred Pinkal. It describes work I did during an internship at Apple’s Advanced Technology Group in Cupertino.

A talk on the core ideas followed in 1999.

Programming Techniques in Computational Linguistics

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

University of Zurich, Department of Informatics, Computational Linguistics — winter semester 1997/98 through summer semester 1999.

I designed this course from scratch. Prolog wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice for it — I’m a systems programmer at heart — but the department insisted I teach exactly this language. It looks fairly odd from today’s vantage point, but back in the 1990s, Prolog, together with Lisp, was the language of choice in artificial intelligence.

Montague’s Semantic Model in “English as a Formal Language”

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Written up from a talk I gave on 18 January 1995 in Werner Saurer’s Montague Grammar seminar at Saarland University. Slides.

Treating German with a Provably Context-Free Grammar

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A condensed English version of the German original, Mechanismen einer kontextfreien Grammatik für das Deutsche, which first appeared in the student track of the 18th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI-94). This version was presented at the 5th Conference of Computational Linguistics Students (TaCoS) in Saarbrücken.

The work describes the grammar and parser of the SVOX text-to-speech system, developed by the Speech Processing Group at ETH Zürich, where I spent three months in 1993 reworking both.

Computational Lexicology

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A German-language write-up of a talk from B. Zimmermann’s introductory Lexikon seminar at Saarland University.