Data processing: software development – installation – and managem – Software program development tool – Translation of code
Reissue Patent
1999-03-17
2002-05-28
Butler, Dennis M. (Department: 2182)
Data processing: software development, installation, and managem
Software program development tool
Translation of code
C345S215000, C709S241000, C713S001000
Reissue Patent
active
RE037722
ABSTRACT:
Portions of this patent application contain materials that are subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document, or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office. All other rights are expressly reserved.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to improvements in computer systems and, more particularly, to operating system software for managing user interface objects in a windows-oriented graphical user interface.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
One of the most important aspects of a modern computing system is the interface between the human user and the machine. The earliest and most popular type of interface was text based; a user communicated with the machine by typing text characters on a keyboard and the machine communicated with the user by displaying text characters on a display screen. More recently, graphic user interfaces have become popular in which the machine communicates with the user by displaying graphics, including text and pictures, on a display screen and the user communicates with the machine both by typing in text-based commands and by manipulating the displayed pictures with the pointing device, such as a mouse.
Many modern computer systems operate with a graphic user interface called a “window environment” in which the main user interface object is the “window”. In a typical window environment, the graphical display portrayed by the display screen is arranged to resemble the surface of an electronic “desktop” and each application program running on the computer is represented as one or more electronic “paper sheets” displayed in rectangular regions of the screen called “windows”.
Each rectangular region generally displays information which is generated by the associated application program and there may be several window regions simultaneously present on the desktop with each window region representing information generated by different application programs. An application program presents information to the user through each window by drawing or “painting” images, graphics or text within the window region. The user, in turn, communicates with the application both by “pointing” at objects in the window region with a cursor which is controlled by a pointing device and manipulating or moving the objects and also by typing information into the keyboard. The window regions may also be moved around on the display screen and changed in size and appearance so that the user can arrange the desktop in a convenient manner.
There may be several types of windows associated with each application program—these windows include the main window, which is always present, and other windows such as “pop-up” windows which appear in response to a specific user or program action. Pop-up windows include a type of window called a “dialog” box which is a type of pop-up window that appears on the screen for a short duration of time and accomplishes a specific task, such as obtaining a file name or performing a selection. Simple applications may include only the main window, while complicated applications may use tens and ever hundreds of pop-up windows and dialog boxes. There are also windows, called palettes and panels that are always on the screen and utilized in conjunction with the main window. They typically float above the main window facilitating easy access to commands, colors or direct manipulation elements.
The windows, in turn, include other user interface objects such as, scroll bars which can be used to move or change the portion of the window which is displayed and menu systems that allow a user to select various commands and actions. In addition, window environments also typically provide “standard” user interface objects called “controls” which can be displayed in the windows and manipulated by the user. The standard objects allow all of the application programs which run with a given GUI to have the same “look and feel” and, thus, user learning time is generally reduced.
The standard objects can include push buttons which are generally rectangular areas of the window which are rendered to appear as a “three-dimensional” button. The push-button has built-in behavior which is controlled by the window system to change the screen appearance of the button so that the button appears to be “pushed in” when the button display area is selected. Other selection displays include “checkboxes” which can display a check mark or other indicia to indicate a selection and “radio buttons” which are a set of check boxes in which selection of one box deselects the other boxes in the set.
Other standard user interface objects include objects which display items. These displays include text display areas and graphics display areas. The text display areas may include a simple line of text which displays text but cannot be edited. More complicated displays include list boxes which display a scrollable list of either graphical or text items and drop-down list boxes which appear as a single line but expand to a list when a predefined area is selected. With list boxes and drop-down lists the user may be able to select items as well as manipulate the displays. Still more complicated display areas include edit areas which are rectangular areas that allow the user to edit text using predefined commands. Some window environments allow the users to design their own controls which may be combinations of existing controls or entirely new controls with custom behaviors.
The graphic display areas can include user-designed bit map graphics, icons and customer user graphics.
In most windows systems, the overall behavior and appearance of the aforementioned windows and controls are determined by the portion of the operating system known as a “graphical user interface” (GUI) or the “graphical device interface” (GDI). Instead of an application program drawing and controlling the user interface, object, the GUI system actually renders the interface object on the display screen and controls appearance changes due to user selection movement and manipulation. User manipulations of the object are communicated to the application program by messages that are sent from the GUI to the application program and the application program controls the interface objects by sending messages to the GUI.
Even though an application program does not actually control drawing of the interface objects, the application program must initially specify parameters such as the size, position and appearance attributes (such as colors) for each user interface object to the GUI so that the object can be initially rendered in the desired position with the proper appearance. In many windows environments, the user interface object parameters are stored in a “resource” file in which each user interface object is assigned an identifier and associated with a list of parameters for that object. During the normal application program development cycle, after the application program is written and compiled, the resource file is also compiled and the resource object file is “bound” to the object file of the application program. Thereafter, during the operation of the application program, a user interface object is drawn on the screen by making a function call to the GUI and including the resource file identifier as a parameter in the function call. The GUI then reads the resource file and extracts the necessary parameters to render the interface object.
The structure and format of the resource file are fixed by the GUI and it is possible for an application program developer to directly compose and edit the resource file. However, direct composition and editing of the file is extremely tedious since each interface object generally has many separate parameters, all of which must be included to properly render the object. In addition it is often very difficult to position the objects with respect to each other and compose and entire screen display simply by looking at the parameter lists for each object.
Accordingly, user interface
Burnard David J.
Taylor Thomas H.
Butler Dennis M.
Morgan & Finnegan , LLP
Object Technology Licensing Corp.
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