Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-18
2003-02-18
Cabeca, John (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S419000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06522347
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus, a portable information processing apparatus, and an electronic apparatus comprising the above apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently in the field of portable apparatuses, as a small-sized information processing apparatus, a display apparatus which is called a PDA (personal digital assistant) is known. In an information processing apparatus such as a PDA, a PC (personal computer), and an electronic pocket-notebook, a word processor, and a schedule manager are included to manage schedules for individual users.
In most of such applications called a scheduler, the schedule is managed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, in which, for example, a standard calendar display format covering a period of four to six weeks is adopted.
As shown in
FIG. 57
, for example, a plurality of date display areas
2001
indicating dates is formed on a menu screen
2000
which displays a calendar such as that described above, and operations such as combine-displaying of a line
2002
on the area
2001
and color-displaying are performed to recognize a position of a schedule
on-schedule item and the like so as to confirm the schedule. To see specific contents, the color-displayed area is selected and a window input with data items such as schedules is opened.
In a method such as that described above, however, since only a screen used to search a schedule and the like can be displayed, a defective problem arises that other hierarchical screens need to be opened to see different types of information.
In particular, although a type of calendar-mode menu screen can be displayed to see an information item such as a schedule, clicking needs to be repeated to shift display screens so as to see the hierarchical screen.
These operations to open another type of hierarchical screen are rough for the user when a desired type of information relates to other types of information. It is especially troublesome that the time-wise relationship between a type of information and other types of information cannot be grasped.
Furthermore, since respective menu screens for relative types of information are required to be selected, a plurality of hierarchical relationships among relative types of information need to be grasped.
Therefore, it takes much time for the user to grasp the plurality of relationships and perform the operation. Especially, when information items are related to various fields, functional usability is also troublesome in addition to the fact that much time is required for the operation to obtain desired information.
Incidentally, with a PDA, since a display screen is smaller than that of a standard PC, a problem arises that although an image is compressed or reduced at the same ratio as in the case of the PC, icons are displayed to be so much smaller that items thereby indicated are unclear to identify the relevant functions. Another problem arising in this connection is that a character is unclear to be identified when a font is displayed. As described above, since a character font is reduced to be smaller by changing the resolution as it is, the display image is identified with difficulty.
If the same amount of information as in the case of the PC, icons and fonts need to be displayed in a smaller size—which is an especially great problem to be resolved for products such as portable computers and electronic notebooks. For example, for displaying the Japanese-language characters, fonts of at least 24×24 dots are easy to read, but these font sizes cannot be ensured because of restrictions with the display screens and “kanji” characters are not readable.
To resolve problems such as those described above, an arrangement is tried, in which a display screen is formed with a metaphor interface defined as a display state of icons and the like.
With a metaphor interface apparatus using a windows system to realize a desktop metaphor, image displaying can be easily understood by users having a knowledge regarding operations thereof, but it is difficult to understand for users having no preliminary knowledge about it. For example, with metaphor interface apparatuses in cases such as Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2-250113 and No. 4-2888641, a window represents an inter-application relationship when it is viewed from the application side, and a window mainly used to perform input operations and icons that represent supported functions, in-execution processing, and the like, are displayed on the same time axis.
With this type of apparatus, no specific meaning is given to the positional relationship on display screens. Therefore, for identification between the window and the icon, users need to memorize the difference between display areas and the meaning of items such as characters and graphics drawn inside them. In addition, users are confused by the performance that objects on different viewpoints are displayed on the same screen.
In other conventional apparatuses according to patent publications such as Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 1-173139 and No. 4-168482, explanatory texts indicating detailed meaning of metaphor-environmental objects such as icons additionally displayed to reduce the burden of memorizing that users may have. With this type of apparatus, however, the icons having additional indications such as symbols and keywords are useful for a user who can understand the indications, but conversely increases the burden of memorizing and reduces operation efficiency for users who do not have sufficient preliminary knowledge because they need to memorize such additional indications. In addition, the visibility of indications such as characters is not good; therefore, such a method as above cannot be applied to PDAs.
As described above, the additional indications such as symbols and keywords provide increased burden to users who have not a sufficient preliminary knowledge because they need to memorize and understand such indications which are difficult to understand, leading to the problem of reduced operation efficiency.
A displaying method for icons as in the case of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 5-2817 other can also be considered for applicability. In this case, however, a displayed condition of icons is standard, in which for users to select their desired one of displayed icons, the only method possible is to find the position of a desired function by seeing a graphical design for function names indicated on the individual icons. In this type of arrangement, respective functions corresponding to icons that are arranged in a matrix pattern can be quickly identified by skilled users who remember a location of their desired icon. For novice users, however, much time is needed before they can understand the function itself, and the location of their desired icon cannot easily be found so that erroneous selection is frequently induced.
Normally, the size of the PDA display section is smaller, on which identification of execution function is difficult and in addition, individual icons are also smaller to cause the selection thereof to be difficult.
FIG. 58
shows an example of menu screen on which a background image and image that are given meaning and displayed. As shown in this
FIG. 58
, an icon
2012
is three-dimensionally displayed on a menu screen to assist the user to understand it. With this type of display shown as an example, a problem still remains with that assistance by means of character information is needed for the user to sufficiently understand the meaning of the icon information, and hence a display type such as the example cannot be applied to a PDA, of which display section is smaller, for the reason described above.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to overcome the aforementioned problems.
For resolution of problems as described above, an object of the present invention is to provide a display apparatus, a portable information processing apparatus, an information recording
Sakai Hiroaki
Tsuji Keisuke
Cabeca John
Seiko Epson Corporation
Thai Cuong T.
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