Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1996-08-30
2001-03-06
Feild, Joseph H. (Department: 2776)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06199080
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of information display technology. Specifically, this invention is a new and useful method, apparatus, system and computer program product configured to display structured information to a user on a computer controlled display device.
2. Background
Information is often presented in tabular or graphical form to show relationships present in the information. Information provided in tabular form is presented within the structure of rows and columns. An intersection of a row and column defines a cell that can contain information. This row-column format provides a two dimensional characterization of the information stored in each cell. Thus, the rows may be organized to “categorize” the information within the cells, and the columns organized to show the “type” of information contained within the cells. The terms “categorize” and “type” are simply convenient labels to identify different ways of classifying the information. Often the cells in the first row and first column of the table contain supplemental information that describe the category and type of the information stored in the remaining cells (the body cells). A typical table is illustrated in
FIG. 1
a
. A table
101
has a header
103
, a leftside
105
, and a plurality of body cells
107
. The information in the header
103
indicates the categories of the data within the body cells
107
. Here the categories are “
1990
”, “
1991
”, and “
1992
”. The information in the leftside
105
cells indicates the type of data within the body cells
107
. Here the type of data is related to “California”, “New York”, and “Indiana”. Hence, the value of the “Indiana” data for
1991
is ‘5’ because the value contained in a cell
109
defined by the intersection of the row labeled as “Indiana” and the column labeled as “
1991
” is 5. The category and type information is supplemental to the primary information stored in the body cells of the table. Thus the information in the table is structured in that the information includes supplemental and primary information.
Graphs are also used to show informational relationships. In this case the information is presented to a user in a graphical form.
FIG. 1
b
illustrates an example graph representing the information contained in
FIG. 1
a
. A graph
121
includes an X-axes
123
and a Y-axis
125
. For this graph
121
, the Y-axis
125
indicates the magnitude of the values of the datapoints (here corresponding to the data stored in the body cells
107
of the table
101
in
FIG. 1
a
). The X-axis
123
is labeled with the categories of the data. A legend
127
associates each of a plurality of bars
129
with a type of information. Thus the legend
127
shows that the data values for “Indiana” are associated with a plurality of bars
131
, one for each category of data. As in the table
101
, the information in a graph is structured and contains both supplemental and primary information.
A problem when displaying large tables and graphs is that the information to be displayed often cannot be completely presented (in a useful form) to a user in the drawing area available on a computer display. This problem is often addressed by scrolling and/or paging the information displayed. Paging replaces the currently displayed information with an adjacent “page” of information. Scrolling repetitively and incrementally moves the existing displayed information in a scroll direction and adds new information to the display such that the information appears to move smoothly on the display. Thus, when a table or graph is scrolled or paged to view portions of the information that would not fit in the drawing area of the display, supplemental information (such as a table header or a graphic axis label) is often moved out of the drawing area and out of the user's view. This requires the user to remember what supplemental information is associated with the information that is displayed. This becomes very difficult after a series of scroll or page operations.
When tables are presented on paper, many applications print the supplemental information on each page when the table body extends across pages. This allows the reader to reference the categories and types of the data printed in the table's body cells on each page. Thus, the prior art knows of repeating table headers on each printed page of a multi-page table. This functionality is provided in many “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) applications such as Adobe's Framemaker® and Microsoft's Word® (see Using FrameMaker, part number 41-04699-00, page 6-11, from Frame Technology Corporation and Microsoft Word User's Guide, document number WB60460-0794, page 305). In Microsoft Word the supplemental information is first selected by the user and then flagged as a header (a header being classified as supplemental information). In FrameMaker, the table facility provides explicit header, footer, and title areas depending on which table format the user selects. These header, footer and title areas contain information supplemental to the primary information contained in the body cells of the table. These applications only display the supplemental information on a computer display when in a “page view” mode (thus duplicating the formatting of a page of paper on a computer display). The difficulty with this approach is that the supplemental information is presented for each page, thus when multiple pages are presented on the display the supplemental information is duplicated occupying space otherwise available for the display of the primary information. Additionally, the supplemental information changes position on the display as the user scrolls across a page boundary. (For example, as header information at the top of one page is scrolled out of the drawing area a duplicate of the header information may appear at the bottom of the drawing area—at the top of the new page that is scrolled into the display.)
Another approach, taken by Microsoft Excel®, provides a facility for segmenting a displayed spreadsheet and of “freezing” the segments. Thus, the user can manually segment the spreadsheet and freeze the segmented panes such that supplemental information within a frozen pane is always displayed. This approach has only limited applicability when the table is not the entire document. Many documents also contain text and illustrations before, after and around a table. Further, some documents include tables within tables. For these types of general documents there is little utility in maintaining visibility of a single segment.
The above methods also involve an explicit user or page layout command to identify the supplemental information that is to be presented to the user. However for sorting purposes, Microsoft Excel automatically determines the header information (a limited type of supplemental information) of a table. Excel identifies column labels by comparing the characteristics of the information in the first row of data with the information in subsequent rows. This process is briefly described in the Microsoft Office User's Guide, version 5.0, copyright 1993-1994, document no. XL57926-0694, page 388.
Generally, these WYSIWYG applications do not provide a mechanism for displaying supplemental information (such as axis labels, titles, or legends) from a graph. However, graphs share some display characteristics with tables. For example graphs can be larger than the drawing area available to display them. Thus, supplemental information that exists on a graph is often scrolled off the drawing area of a computer driven display.
Although paper based WYSIWYG applications provide a way of displaying supplemental information on tangible media, these applications do not provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of maintaining supplemental information on a limited drawing area of a computer controlled display device. The fundamental concept of a WYSIWYG application is that the author of a document sees a true representation on the computer display of
Feild Joseph H.
McDermott & Will & Emery
Sun Microsystems Inc.
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