Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-29
2001-03-27
Bayerl, Raymond J. (Department: 2773)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06208344
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a human-computer interface for displaying and operating on data elements in a computer database that describe the characteristics of physical objects existing outside of the data base. This human-computer interface graphically represents the locations of its corresponding physical objects in physical space and uses graphical icons as a means by which the user can associate one data element with another in a hierarchical relationship. The contents and properties of container object parent data elements may be viewed in a manner analogous to the means by which the corresponding physical objects could be opened for deeper views of their contents and properties.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs), including representation of data elements through icons, are in common use in a variety of computer applications. However, prior art GUIs fall short in making visually clear the correspondence between data elements and objects in the physical world represented by those data elements. They are particularly weak in visually depicting the nature of parent-child relationships among data elements to elucidate their correspondence to hierarchical, or container, relationships among the physical objects they represent.
In prior art graphical user interfaces, the “opening” of an icon on a computer video display through use of a computer pointing mechanism, such as a mouse, results in the opening of a computer application (e.g., a word processing application comes up on the screen when the user “double clicks” on its icon), the display of other icons from which corresponding applications can be opened (e.g., as occurs when the user opens an icon representing a program group), or the display of similar icons with different text labels depicting a subordinate relationship to the selected icon (as occurs in utilities for navigating to particular files existing in hierarchical relationships). These mechanisms do not represent physical relationships of physical objects existing in three-dimensional space that are being represented as data elements in a computer data base.
Since some computer applications require graphical representation of “real world” objects, including their relative positions in space, and since the real world objects sometimes contain other objects, it is important for the computer application user to be able to see the location of the container object (parent data element) in a spatial representation as well as the contents (child data element or object) of the container, the properties of the container, and the properties of the objects it holds.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention allows users to drag iconic representations of data elements, corresponding to physical objects outside of the computer, and drop them into iconic representations of other data elements, spatially depicting relationships between data elements that correspond to the relationships between their physical world counterparts. In computer science terminology, “data elements” and “data objects” (sometimes shortened to “objects”) are used interchangeably and will be used as equivalent terms here as well.
The relationships represented by dropping one icon into another are frequently termed “parent-child,” “container,” “hierarchical,” or “superordinate-subordinate.” “Parent,” “container,” and “superordinate” are equivalent terms, referring to the “larger” object, the one represented by the icon into which the other icon is “dropped” by dragging and placing it on the same two dimensional coordinates of the graphical user interface as occupied by the parent, container, or superordinate object. “Child” and “subordinate” are equivalent terms, referring to the object that is dragged with the mouse or other pointing device so that it occupies the same two-dimensional space as the parent, container, or superordinate object. Once one icon is dropped into the other, the icon representing the child data element disappears from immediate view in much the same way that a physical object disappears from outside view once it is placed into a larger container. In this way, the present invention uses manipulations performed on a two-dimensional visual user interface to produce results corresponding to three-dimensional placement of objects inside each other.
When the user passes a graphical pointer over the icon for the parent data element, or container object, that icon is “blown up” to show the icons corresponding to the child data elements it contains. When the pointer is moved off of the blown up icon, it reverts to its previous iconic form, with icons and text corresponding to the child data elements no longer visible.
The present invention allows the developer to specify logical relationships between the icons so that the user cannot erroneously place one icon inside another for which there is no corresponding reality in the physical world.
This invention also allows the user to obtain a display of the properties of a data element by moving the computer's pointer (e.g., through mouse movement) over the icon corresponding to that element and then taking an additional action (e.g., mouse button click). The result is a display of properties of that data element or object as well as a display of the properties of any child data elements or objects it may have.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5754176 (1998-05-01), Crawford
patent: 5835094 (1998-11-01), Ermel et al.
patent: 5917492 (1999-06-01), Bereiter et al.
Amin Dick S.
Holzman Thomas G.
Bayerl Raymond J.
Luu Sy D.
NCR Corporation
Needle & Rosenberg P.C.
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