Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-17
2002-04-09
Nguyen, Cao H. (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06369837
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates generally to computer systems and more particularly to the computer's graphical user interface (GUI) arid improved user interaction with the computer system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Computers, such as personal computers (PCs), e.g. systems utilizing DOS, Windows, or Windows NT by IBM or the Macintosh by Apple, and workstations, have become commonplace tools for a variety of users. As a group, these computers can be referred to as “desktop” computers. Desktop computers are now used routinely in a wide variety of environments: schools, laboratories, businesses, government agencies, homes, etc. The ever-increasing reliance on computers has lead to increased standardization of the GUI and means of interacting with the GUI. For example, windows, toolbars, menus, and icons are implemented on a wide variety of platforms and have come to be expected components of a desktop computer's GUI. As a result, in some instances, for often used devices, users have become so proficient that they can often utilize common visual devices efficiently based primarily on memory of location of icons on the screen or on the location of menu items within a menu.
While computer users have become more skilled, so too have computers and computer applications become more advanced. Computers, and operators, have reached the point where a user may have multiple windows open with applications running and processing commands in any number of these open windows, called multi-tasking. Also, applications have become increasingly feature rich, and often provide an increasing amount of visual devices as the application versions progress. Together, these forces have led to increased contention for space on the computer screen or GUI, creating “screen-clutter” and an often cumbersome GUI work environment.
Another factor at work in desktop computer systems is the rapid and wide-scale migration to object oriented design (OOD) applications, rather than structured programming applications. In OOD, objects can be used to represent most any entity, with various aspects of the entity being represented as modifiable properties and entity behaviors being represented as methods. This change manifests itself not only in the actual creation of programs, but also in the way in which users control, create, modify, and otherwise interact with application entities or objects visually within the GUI. Modifying a property of an object often entails the changing of a value associated with the object's properties. For example, if a user had a calendar represented as an object, the calendar object could have a property to represent the days of the month and the values associated with the property for days could be the numerical values of 1-28 for February. Therefore, changing the property value could be accomplished in a variety of ways, such as selecting a number from a menu list, scrolling through a number list, or by selecting the number from a visual representation of the calendar object. With increased focus on object oriented applications and tools, it is increasingly important to allow users to efficiently choose properties and modify property values within the increasingly cluttered GUI.
A typical desktop computer is depicted in FIG.
1
. Devices which allow a user to interact with the computer's GUI are called input devices and include a keyboard, mouse, trackball, light pen, or other such devices. As mentioned, the typical GUI for a desktop computer utilizes a window-based approach. Such a system usually includes a plethora of menus, toolbars, icons, palettes, and other visual devices used to control the operation of the computer and properties of various entities or objects. Wherein, “pull-down menus” are often used as a means for performing operations or changing object properties relative to an “active” window, which displays an interface to a given application, e.g. a web browser, or an application file, e.g. word processing document or spreadsheet. The active window is the window in direct control by the user at a particular instance in time, although other windows may be processing information under multi-tasking. For example, if a user had a word processing document open, a set of menus would be available to the user, indicated by menu titles running, usually, across the top of the window. Placing the computer's cursor over a menu title and selecting the menu, usually done by depressing a mouse button, reveals a vertical list, or linear menu, of operations, e.g. for opening, closing, and saving the document, or for editing properties, e.g. bold, italics, or underline for text formatting, available to the user. Many current'systems also allow a nesting of menus, such that selecting an item from the menu list reveals another linear menu of available operations. Ultimately, a user can select an operation to be performed from one of these nested linear menus. The problem with these menus is that they inherently cause significant obstruction of the underlying window when used, as shown in FIG.
2
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While vertical linear pull-down menus tied to a window frame are by far the most common type of menu employed, other types of menus have also been used. For example, tear-off menus, typically vertical linear menus, differ from pull-down menus in that they are not rigidly tied to the window frame itself. Tear-off menus may first appear tied to the window frame, but can be moved or “dragged” by the user anywhere on the display. Another type of linear menu, the pop-up menu, presents a user with a menu which is not tied to the window frame itself, but usually appears in the position where the cursor was when the menu was requested by some operator action or in a predefined location, such as the center of the window. Like the tear-off menu, the pop-up menu can be repositioned on the screen.
Other types of menus depart from the linear approach in favor of a circular approach. The pie menu is a circular menu, which is divided by a series of radii forming pie segments. It is customary for each pie segment to contain one menu choice. Some pie menus show only a subset of available menu choices and allow a user to scroll through the choices, referred to as scrolling pie menus. A fan menu, which is not common, is half of a pie menu. Circular menus can also be in the form of “rings”, where a ring is related to a particular menu choice. Usually these circular types of menus are not tied to a window frame and can be moved by the operator about the display. The primary challenge with circular menus is that the menu item names can get cluttered or even overlap, cause the circle to be large to accommodate menu item names, or menu item names can be oriented radially making some of the item names difficult to read. The benefit of pie menus is that they are considered to offer better user accuracy and speed than their linear menu counterparts.
Some menus are hybrids of the linear and circular types. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,699 ('699) to Driskell discloses two linear menus side-by-side with a circular menu region incorporated in the center of the combined linear menus. The circular region, however, does not represent a plurality of menu items, but is either non-functional or has only one function. This type of menu attempts to offer some of the increased speed and accuracy of pie menus without the problems related to pie menu item names, because the names are all horizontal within the linear menus. However, as disclosed, this combination is relatively wide and, therefore, is more likely to obscure the underlying document or window.
Yet another type of menu allows an operator to not only select an operation but also supply the value from a range of values for a parameter associated with that operation. These are called “valuator menus”. U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,291 to Gest, et al. discloses such a menu, where the menus are either vertical or horizontal linear menus and the parameter value is determined by the horizontal movement of the cursor within the horizontal menu
International Business Machines - Corporation
Kudirka & Jobse LLP
Nguyen Cao H.
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