Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-18
2001-06-26
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
Reexamination Certificate
active
06252591
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to a method for mapping a text-oriented user interface of a program to a graphics user interface without having to amend the program itself where the graphics user interface can be started from a network environment.
At the present time there is a very large number of mainframe computer applications which are distinguished by matured functionality, robustness, security and high flexibility. These applications communicate with their users through a text-oriented interface. The application exchanges a data stream which corresponds with the contents of the screen with a terminal and formatted by the terminal is used as a screen mask by the user using a keyboard. For the implementation of the data stream which is exchanged between the mainframe computer and the terminal there are various architectures, the most widespread of which is IBM's 3270 architecture. The IBM 3270 architecture is hereinafter used to represent all other architectures.
FIG. 1
shows this type of user interface.
With the introduction of PCs, however, it has become necessary to make the 3270 interface available to these PCs. For this purpose software programs have been developed which emulate the traditional terminal in a PC window. The interface in this emulator window is still text oriented and operable through the keyboard, since the emulator is limited to reproducing the capabilities of a terminal.
FIG. 2
shows this type of user interface.
Since a PC with a graphics user interface offers very much greater user-friendliness, it is desirable to provide mainframe applications also with such a graphics user interface. The most economical approach to this is so-called face-lifting or screen-scraping. For this, the application including its 3270 interface remains unaltered. PC windows are only defined for each screen mask which the graphics interface offers the user and accesses the 3270 data stream for the application page and thus represents input and output values between the fields of the screen mask and the graphics elements of the PC window. Instead of the emulator window, which is no longer in evidence, the user interacts with the PC graphics interface.
FIG. 3
shows this type of user interface.
The interface described in
FIG. 2
can be transferred in an Internet/Intranet environment. The mainframe computer takes over the role of a web-server and the 3270 emulator runs within a web browser. The communications protocol between the mainframe computer and emulator is TCP/IP and the emulator is implemented in Java (to enable it to run independent of the operating system and within a web browser).
At the present time there is no effective method for transferring the above-described process to the Internet/Intranet environment, in order to place a graphics interface on the 3270 interface in this (web browser) environment.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to provide such a method, which is capable-of representing a text-oriented user interface through a graphics user interface, which can be started without problem from a network environment without the necessity for alterations to the existing application.
This object is achieved by the features in claims
1
and
10
. Preferred embodiments of the present invention are set out in the sub-claims.
The development tool can be used to produce a graphics mask quickly and simply for each individual text-oriented mask. The graphics masks thus produced can be stored on an Internet/Intranet server and made accessible to specified user groups either free or for a fee. In this case the user may download the masks produced to the working memory of his PC and use them there. This has the advantage that changes in the graphics masks require to be made only on the server. In this way it becomes unnecessary to distribute the software for the amended application to numerous PCs.
A further advantage of the present invention resides in the fact that the programming of the graphics mask is so simple that the code can also be generated automatically if the PC window has been defined by means of a graphics tool, which permits it to access the window definition through a programmed interface.
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Dockweiler Hans Gunter
Weber Joachim
Bayerl Raymond J.
Clay A. Bruce
Hailu Todesse
International Business Machines Corp.
Myers Bigel Sibley & Sajovec P.A.
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