Method of compressing and expanding large lists of data

Details Method of compressing and expanding large lists of data Method of compressing and expanding large lists of data

1998-12-10

2001-07-17

Nguyen, Phu K. (Department: 2671)

Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system

Display driving control circuitry

Controlling the condition of display elements

Reexamination Certificate

active

06262727

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to user interactive computer supported display technology and more particularly to such user interactive systems and methods which are user friendly and provide easy to use interactive user interfaces.
2. Description of the Related Art
The 1990's decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the internet over the past few years. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human endeavor in the industrialized world requires the distribution of information through interactive computer display interfaces. Information for reporting, marketing, technology and educational purposes, which in the past was permitted days and even months for distribution, are now customarily required to be “on-line” in a matter of hours and even minutes. The electronic documents through which such information is distributed is made up of a variety of information types, e.g. text, graphics, photographs and even more complex image types. Because of the limited time factors involved in the creation, updating and reading of computer displayed documents, there is a need for a method and system for navigating through these documents which are fast and relatively effective.
For example, the conventional method of allowing a user to view very large sets of data in tree, table or list format is to display every item in the list. A user then has to scroll through the displayed items to find a particular item of interest. Obviously, it is easier to find a particular item in a list of items, if only one screen is needed to display the items than if more than one screen is needed. Thus, a need exists for a method and system to allow a list of items to be compressed such that some of the items are displayed on one screen while allowing a user to quickly find any item of interest that is not displayed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The need is addressed by the present invention. The invention provides a method and apparatus for compressing a list of items on a display system. The method entails determining the number of display lines available on the display system. Then every nth item, from the list of items, is displayed on the display system, where n is an integer. If the items are displayed in some sort of order (e.g., alphabetical order), a user can then quickly determine where a particular item of interest is located. At that point then, the user can either expand the whole list to get to the item or the user can only expand the area where the item appears to reside. In either case, the item will more often than not be located quicker than if the whole list of a large list of items was displayed.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5206950 (1993-04-01), Geary et al.
patent: 5689669 (1997-11-01), Lynch et al.
patent: 5960437 (1999-09-01), Krawchuk et al.

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