Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-05
2002-01-01
Bayerl, Raymond J. (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C707S793000, C709S201000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06335738
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to methods and tools for visually aiding interpretation of data displayed on a computer display device.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A well known mechanism for guiding a computer user's interaction with the computer is ‘Bubble Help’ (also known as ‘Tool Tips’ and ‘Hover Help’). The ‘Bubble Help’ mechanism aids user interaction by displaying to a user a text label explaining user interface mechanisms, such as explaining the functions represented by tool bar graphics or explaining what data a user should enter in an entry field. The explanatory text displayed via the Bubble Help mechanism is a static piece of information which is specific to and embedded within an application program. Text associated with a particular icon, field or other screen element is displayed alongside the associated icon or element in response to an input device pointer being moved into close proximity to the respective graphics or other screen element.
Other known forms of help system include context-sensitive on-line user guides which are specific to an application and which have functions for displaying to the user, in response to requesting help from within the application, specific predefined help information which is relevant to the part of the application which is currently active. Various parts of, or screen locations within, the application have labels associated with them which point to the relevant help text when help is requested.
These various user guidance mechanisms are directed at explaining functions or explaining what action is required of a user rather than aiding interpretation of data. The information they present to the user is predefined for the application (that is, predefined for the active part of the application or for a specific icon or field) and typically provides no help with interpretation of the data managed by the application.
Spreadsheet application programs provide tools which help with data analysis, but the type of analysis supported is not only specific to the spreadsheet application but also specific to a type of processing that users are expected to perform and which is always performed in the same way (for example, calculating totals for a complete column of data values, or adding a chosen percentage to those totals, or generating a graphical representation of a predefined set of elements in a table). Such tools within spreadsheets are not suitable for unplanned, flexible data interpretation operations such as exploring a selected set of data to find patterns, trends and exceptions.
Advances in the provision of assistance with interpretation of displayed data are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,896,491 to Englefield based on International patent application No. PCT/GB9502286 (publication No. WO96/39655), and which is assigned to the assignee of the present application and is incorporated herein by reference. Englefield discloses an object model in which operations are implemented as selectable instances of object classes which define the operations (as methods and properties). The operations can be applied to selected sets of data managed by any of a number of application programs (which may include speadsheets, word processors, Web browsers, databases). The algorithm within each operator object are independent executables that can be shared by all application programs which are able to interface with the operator objects.
The operations disclosed in Englefield include interpretation operations which visually adapt the displayed selected data set. One example is the application of colour codes to elements of an application's table of numerical data values where the codes indicate whether each value is above or below the average for the selected data set. Another example applies colour codes which indicate a ranking of data values in order of magnitude. Another example operation identifies positive and negative trends within numerical data by colour coding. For character data, one example operation is a spell check operation which highlights words which are not recognised by the spell check operation.
Englefield also discloses data-generating operations being performed by independently executable algorithms on selected sets of data managed by any one of a number of different application programs enabled to interface with the algorithms. Examples of the operations which process selected application-managed data to generate some additional data are sum, arithmetic mean and standard deviation computation operations. Further disclosed example operations include the generation of graphical representations of the magnitudes of the selected data values.
Although Englefield discloses a mechanism which greatly assists the user to recognize patterns, trends and exceptions within data, and avoids the need to replicate functions within multiple different application programs by implementing operations via generic objects that can be applied to the data of different applications, it does not provide any support for per-value interpretation of data beyond what can be discerned from a graph or from colour codes or other applied emphasis.
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
The present invention provides a mechanism and a method for presenting a per-value interpretation of data to a user of a data processing system.
According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a mechanism for providing a per-value interpretation of data to a user of a data processing system, including: one or more processing components, responsive to user selection of an operation to be performed and user selection of a set of an application component's data values, for processing the selected set of data values to generate a result; wherein said one or more processing components have means for generating per-value interpretation information corresponding to said generated result, and for providing said interpretation information to the application component for display to the user.
Logic for performing a particular processing operation on a set of data values, including processing the set of data values and generating per-value interpretation information, is preferably encapsulated within a respective processing object or a set of associated objects in an object oriented data processing environment. (An example processing operation may calculate an average for a set of data values and then compare each value with the average and generate information describing the relation of each value to the average). The application component comprises a second object adapted to interface with this processing object or set of objects. According to this preferred embodiment of the invention, a processing object class provides methods for performing operations on an application component's data and for providing per-value interpretation information back to the application component. Each processing object is thus an instance of a processing object class that processes selected data from any one of a number of application components adapted to interface with the generic object. The application component is responsible for displaying the interpretation information to the user. This is a distinction from typical prior art interpretation operations which are written specifically for a single application and are embedded within the sequential code of that application and limited to it. Prior art interpretation operations may even be limited to a predefined set of data elements within an application.
An “application component” in this context is not limited to a component programming environment and may be any application program or any part of an application program or applet, (such as a Java Bean (TM) or Active/X control), which is able to provide its data values to the processing component or part and to receive the returned interpretation information. Example components range from fine grained components such as entry fields and buttons, through medium grained components such as grids, tables and tree views, to more sophisticated components such as charts an
Englefield Paul Jonathan
Tibbits Mark Justin Paul
Trainer Raymond
Whiting James
Bayerl Raymond J.
Fitch Even Tabin & Flannery
International Business Machines Corp.
Nguyen Thomas T.
Percello Louis J.
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