Coded data generation or conversion – Bodily actuated code generator – Including keyboard or keypad
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-03
2003-11-11
Edwards, Timothy (Department: 2735)
Coded data generation or conversion
Bodily actuated code generator
Including keyboard or keypad
C341S022000, C400S110000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06646573
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates generally to reduced keyboard systems, and more specifically to reduced keyboard systems generating text composed of the hiragana, katakana and kanji characters of the Japanese language.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
For many years, portable computers have been getting smaller and smaller. The principal size-limiting component in the effort to produce a smaller portable computer has been the keyboard. If standard typewriter-size keys are used, the portable computer must be at least as large as the keyboard. Miniature keyboards have been used on portable computers, but the miniature keyboard keys have been found to be too small to be easily or quickly manipulated by a user.
Incorporating a full-size keyboard in a portable computer also hinders true portable use of the computer. Most portable computers cannot be operated without placing the computer on a flat work surface to allow the user to type with both hands. A user cannot easily use a portable computer while standing or moving. In the latest generation of small portable computers, called Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or palm-sized computers, companies have attempted to address this problem by incorporating handwriting recognition software in the device. A user may directly enter text by writing on a touch-sensitive panel or screen. This handwritten text is then converted by the recognition software into digital data. Unfortunately, in addition to the fact that printing or writing with a pen is in general slower than typing, the accuracy and speed of the handwriting recognition software has to date been less than satisfactory. In the case of the Japanese language, with its large number of complex characters, the problem becomes especially difficult. To make matters worse, today's handheld computing devices which require text input are becoming smaller still. Recent advances in two-way paging, cellular telephones, and other portable wireless technologies has led to a demand for small and portable two-way messaging systems, and especially for systems which can both send and receive electronic mail (“e-mail”).
It would therefore be advantageous to develop a keyboard for entry of text into a computer device that is both small and operable with one hand while the user is holding the device with the other hand. Prior development work has considered use of a keyboard that has a reduced number of keys. As suggested by the keypad layout of a touch-tone telephone, many of the reduced keyboards have used a 3-by-4 array of keys. A number of the keys in the array are associated with multiple characters. There is therefore a need for a method for the user to indicate which of the characters associated with a given key is the desired character.
One suggested approach for unambiguously specifying hiragana characters entered on a reduced keyboard requires the user to enter two or more keystrokes to specify each kana. The keystrokes may be entered either simultaneously (chording) or in sequence (multiple-stroke specification). Neither chording nor multiple-stroke specification has produced a keyboard having adequate simplicity and efficiency of use. Multiple-stroke specification is inefficient, and chording is often complicated to learn and use.
Each syllable in the Japanese syllabary consists of either a single vowel, or a consonant followed by a vowel. There are two exceptions: the syllable
which has no vowel, and the “small”
which is used to indicate the “doubling” or “hardening” of the pronunciation of the following consonant. These syllables can be written as hiragana (commonly used when writing native Japanese words) or katakana (commonly used when writing words of foreign origin). The term kana is used to refer to either hiragana or katakana. The syllabary is commonly represented as a table of rows and columns (shown in Table 1), wherein each row may have up to five entries in columns corresponding to the five Japanese vowels
, and
. Each row corresponds to an initial consonant, although a given consonant may undergo sound changes for certain entries in a row (e.g. s(a)
sh(i)
; t(a)
ts(u)
; etc.). The first row consists of five syllables corresponding to each of the five vowels with no initial consonant. The 8
th
row consists of the palatalized vowels
, and
(YI and YE are not used in modern Japanese). The diacritic marks ″ and
∘
are used to indicate changes in the pronunciation of the consonant, generally indicating a change from an unvoiced to a voiced consonant. Table 2 shows the basic syllables formed by adding the diacritic marks ″ and
∘
to syllables in Table 1. Smaller versions of the syllables
, and
are also used in combination with syllables in the second, or “
” columns of Tables 1 and 2 to represent syllables consisting of the corresponding consonant and the palatalized vowel (e.g.
followed by “small”
to represent
). These syllables with palatalized vowels are thus written as a pair of kana, as shown in Table 3, which includes forms written with diacritic marks.
Lexicographic order in Japanese is generally represented by the sequence of syllables in the first column (corresponding to the vowel A) of Table 1:
,
, and
, where each of these syllables (except
) represents a sub-class of up to five syllables composed from the vowels
, and
, in that order. Currently, products such as cellular telephones that require Japanese text input generally use a multiple-stroke specification method wherein each of nine keys is associated with each of the first nine rows (
through
). Multiple strokes on a key are used to indicate which of the syllables of the corresponding row is intended, wherein each additional stroke on a key sequentially changes the character to be output to the character appearing in the next column of Table 1 or 2. A separating key or a timeout method is used to allow entry of consecutive characters associated with the same key. A tenth key is used for the syllables
, and the katakana “bo” symbol, which indicates a vowel-only syllable that repeats the vowel of the preceding syllable. The “small”
, and
are also associated with the
key, requiring additional keystrokes to be selected. An additional key is commonly used to add the diacritic marks following a syllable.
Entering Japanese hiragana (or katakana) using a reduced keyboard continues to be a challenging problem. With the current multi-stroking approach as described above, generating a single kana syllable requires an average of at least three keystrokes. Syllables with palatalized vowels which are represented by two characters (i.e. those in Table 3 consisting of a syllable from the second, or “
”, column of Tables 1 and 2, followed by a “small”
, or
) can require up to eight keystrokes to generate. It would therefore be desirable to develop a reduced keyboard system that tends to minimize the number of keystrokes required to enter hiragana, and is also simple and intuitive to use.
Typing standard Japanese text, which includes Chinese characters (kanji) in addition to kana, on a reduced keyboard is an even more challenging problem. Entering text on a standard computer with a full keyboard and a large display is generally achieved by first typing the pronunciation of the desired text using the letters of the Latin alphabet (called “romaji” in Japanese) corresponding to each hiragana syllable as shown in Tables 1-3. As the letters are typed, the input is automatically converted to the corresponding hiragana syllables and displayed on the screen. In many cases, the user then needs to convert the text which is initially displayed as hiragana into the specific textual interpretation desired. The hiragana that are displayed represent the phonetic reading of the combination of kanji and hiragana that the user actually wants to enter, and which conveys the user's intended meaning. Due to the large number of homophones in the Japanese language, there can be a number of possible meaningful combinations of kanji and hiragana that correspond to the hiragana
Bradford Ethan R.
Flinchem Edward P.
Kushler Clifford A.
Matsuo Daiju
America Online Inc.
Edwards Timothy
Glenn Michael A.
Glenn Patent Group
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