Boots – shoes – and leggings
Patent
1990-03-20
1992-06-16
Clark, David L.
Boots, shoes, and leggings
364DIG1, 395160, G06F 314
Patent
active
051229722
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to data processing systems and to a method of providing help to a user of such a system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It is common practice for programmed data processing systems to provide help to an operator or user in response to a request for help. Such help is displayed to the operator at a workstation and frequently replaces the previous display screen entirely. Help may consist of actual help information or of a menu or index of possible help from which the operator is required to select an item. Such indices can be very extensive and laborious to search in themselves.
So called contextual help is known in which the help provided is not merely general to the current screen or application but is specific to the actual position of a cursor or pointer on the screen. Three related articles describing a contextual help system by R E Berry, S E Johnson et al. are found in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin (Vol. 7, No. 10B, March 1985 at pages 6126, 6127 and 6128). These articles show the provision of contextual help in windows on a display screen. Two types of Help panel are possible, Active and Passive. The Active panel allows the operator to make further unspecified selections from within the panel. However, no other provision for knowing what alternative help is available is made.
Another contextual help system making use of windowing capabilities is described in European patent application 0185845 A2, entitled "Help placement on a screen for a computer user". Help messages are displayed in a window which is so positioned in areas of the screen as to minimise the overlapping or obscuring of the screen content.
Also known in the provision of help to a computer user is the concept of multi-level help in which, if the initially displayed information (first level help) is inadequate, the user may request further more detailed information (second level help). Examples of systems employing multiple levels of help can be found in an article by P D Koeller et al in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin entitled "Improved method for Help Lookups" (Vol. 29, No. 1. June 1986, P 291) and in European published patent application 0190419 A2 entitled "Method for providing an on-line help facility for interactive information handling systems".
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
The above mentioned prior art thus fails to provide easy location of alternative or related help at the same level as the contextual help initially provided.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a data processing system having a work station including a display for displaying on a screen panels of information relating to one or more tasks, the panels being viewable through windows under the control of a display manager, and operator input means by which an operator can communicate with the system interactively, the input means including indicator means for identifying items on the screen by means of a visible on-screen indicator, selection means for communicating a selection to the system on the basis of displayed information and help request means for requesting help information from the system; the system further including an addressable store of hierarchical help text information, contextual help means responsive to an appropriate request for help and to the current state of the system when help was requested to access the help text store to obtain appropriate help text and to cause the display manager to display said help text through a help text window on said screen, concurrently with the information related to the task or tasks in hand which was being displayed when help was requested, help map display means responsive to selection by said selection means to cause the display manager to display in a separate window, concurrently with said help text window, at least a portion of a hierarchical map of the stored help text, each entry of which corresponds to a unit of stored help text, and means responsive to selection of a map entry by said selection means to cause help text
REFERENCES:
patent: 4555775 (1985-11-01), Pike
patent: 4648062 (1987-03-01), Johnson et al.
patent: 4752889 (1988-06-01), Rappaport et al.
patent: 4789962 (1988-12-01), Berry et al.
patent: 4821211 (1989-04-01), Torres
patent: 4823283 (1989-04-01), Diehm et al.
patent: 4899276 (1990-02-01), Stadler
patent: 4970678 (1990-11-01), Scadowski et al.
"Flat Hierarchical Menu," International Disclosure Technologies Inc., vol. 25, No. 1, Jan. 25, 1987, #018703.
Richards Justin J. C.
Williams Kenneth
Clark David L.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Lefeve Douglas H.
McBurney Mark E.
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