JPH0635657A - Method and device for displaying hypertext model - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To quickly display a real icon corresponding to a designated reference node in a browser display area together with the lower rank structure, in a browser display by a tree structure of a hypertext. CONSTITUTION:In a hypertext system having a browser tool for displaying a network structure by converting it to a tree structure by utilizing a real icon and a reference icon, a node opened by a pointing device through a browser is detected as an attention node, and whether a display state of its attention node is a reference state or not is decided, and in the case of being a reference icon, the attention node is converted to the real icon and the lower rank structure is displayed adjacently in the lower part of the attention node.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a hypertext model display method for facilitating the understanding of data relationships in a large amount of data such as a network structure, and an apparatus used for implementing the method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there is a tool called a browser for visualizing a hypertext model device. Browsers provided by many hypertext systems display the network structure as it is (CHI'87 Proceedings, (198
7), Frank G.M. Halatsz, Thomas
sP. Moran, Randall H .; Trig
g, “NoteCards in a Nutshell
l ", p. 45-52). However, when the amount of data increases in the network structure and the relationship between the data becomes complicated, it becomes difficult for a human to grasp the relationship from the displayed structural diagram.

On the other hand, there is a method of simplifying and displaying a network structure in a tree structure (DG.
Borow, M .; Stefik, “The LO
OPS Manual (Japanese version) ", (1983-1
2), p. 124-125). In this method, as shown in FIG. 2, the first appearing node is displayed as a real icon, and the others are displayed as reference icons. When a node has a substructure, it is displayed adjacent to the bottom of the real icon. Here, the real icon is a display state of an icon indicating that the entity of the node exists therein, and the reference icon is an icon indicating that the entity of the node exists in another place. As a method of displaying the status, a method of distinguishing the reference icon from the real icon by graying out the reference icon is used.

[0004]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional display method, there is a problem when the amount of hypertext data is large and all the data cannot be displayed inside the browser display area. Here, the inside of the browser display area refers to a rectangular area divided by windows. As shown in FIG. 2, when you want to open a node of a reference icon in the browser display area and display the structure related to the node, if the corresponding real icon is not displayed inside the browser display area, The user had to scroll through the browser screen to find the corresponding real icon, and the operation was troublesome. Furthermore, even if the corresponding real icon is found, the upper structure is in the browser display area before scrolling and the lower structure is in the browser display area after scrolling. Therefore, it was difficult to understand the structure.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a hypertext model display method and device for solving the above-mentioned problems that the troublesomeness of scrolling and the overall structure cannot be grasped.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, the hypertext display method of the present invention has a browser tool for converting a network structure into a tree structure using a real icon and a reference icon and displaying the tree structure. In the hypertext system, the node opened by the pointing device via the browser is detected as the target node, and it is determined whether the display state of the target node is the reference icon state. If it is the reference icon, the target node is selected. It is characterized in that a substructure is displayed as a real icon so as to be adjacent to and below the target node.

The hypertext model display device of the present invention is used for display in a hypertext system (FIG. 1) having a browser tool for converting a network structure into a tree structure by using a real icon and a reference icon and displaying the tree structure. A means (133) for storing display data including a data structure and a display state, and a means (1) for monitoring a user operation of which node the user has opened.
35) and means for generating a display structure for displaying an actual icon corresponding to the opened node in the browser display area based on the user operation information obtained by the monitoring and the display data (138, 139) and.

[0008]

In the method of the present invention, the display positions of the reference icon, the real icon, and their substructures are dynamically changed and displayed with respect to the "node the user is paying attention to". When the user points the icon of a node with a pointing device through a browser and opens it, it is considered that the user is paying attention to this node. If the node is a reference icon and has a lower structure, change the display data model to replace the real icon with the reference icon, and place it next to the node under the user's attention to make it more detailed. Display substructures. FIG. 3 shows an example of changes in the display structure of the hypertext model according to the present invention. The left side shows the display state before the display of the subtree structure is changed, and the right side shows the display state according to the user's focused node. The state after the display is changed is shown. If the reference icon in the browser display area is opened by the user before the change, the corresponding reference icon is not in the browser display area. Therefore, the reference icon opened is replaced with the real icon, and the node below the real icon is replaced. Is also displayed adjacent to the real icon. Therefore, when the user designates the node of the reference icon, even if the node in the real icon state is not in the browser display area, the real icon is displayed along with the subordinate node at the position of the node of the reference icon. Therefore, there is no need to perform an operation that involves moving the viewpoint or scrolling.

Further, in the operation of the hypertext model display device of the present invention, the means for monitoring the user operation can obtain information about the node the user is paying attention to. Based on the acquired information about the node of interest and the information about the display state of the hypertext display data, is the means for generating the display structure properly displaying the information about the node of interest to the user in the browser display area? It makes a judgment, generates an appropriate display structure, and generates a layout to display the result in the browser display area on the display. Therefore, according to the present invention, the degree of detail of display can be changed and displayed according to the node the user is paying attention to.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a hypertext device for implementing the display method of the present invention. This hypertext device has a configuration for executing a hypertext system having a browser tool that converts a network structure into a tree structure using a real icon and a reference icon and displays the tree structure. That is, this hypertext device performs processing of information of the hypertext system, an input / output unit 11 having a pointing device through which a user inputs a node instruction, a display device 12 for displaying a hypertext model. Information processing unit 13
It has and. The information processing unit 13 includes a hypertext model data storage unit 131 that stores hypertext model data, a display data generation unit 132 that generates hypertext model display data, and a display data storage that stores hypertext model display data. An interface control unit 134 that controls the interface between the data storage unit 133 and the input / output unit 11 or the display device 12.
A hypertext model search unit 136 for searching for a hypertext model, and a browser display unit 137 for creating data for browser display using the hypertext model data stored in the display data storage unit 133. There is. Further, the information processing unit 13 includes, as a characteristic feature of the present invention, the interface control unit 134.
The user event monitoring unit 135 is provided, and the browser display unit 137 is provided with a display data operating unit 138 and a layout generating unit 139.

The user event monitoring unit 135
An event by a user operation in the input / output unit 11 is monitored, and a node designated by the user is detected as a focused node. The display data operation unit 138 determines whether the display of the node of interest detected by the user event monitoring unit 135 is in the reference icon state or the actual icon state from the stored contents of the display data storage unit 133, and refers to When in the icon state, the hypertext data model search unit 136 is requested to search the node of the real icon corresponding thereto. Further, the display data operating unit 138 determines whether the display of the real icon obtained by searching the node in the reference icon state is in the browser display area, and when it is not in the display area, the display data storage unit 133 is displayed. The data in the above item is operated to exchange the node in the reference icon state with the node in the actual icon state and the lower node. The layout generation unit 139 generates a browser layout based on the display data operated by the display data operation unit 138.

FIG. 4 shows the hypertext model storage unit 1.
The data structure of the hypertext model display data created by the display data generation unit 132 from the data 31 and stored in the display storage unit 133 is shown. This data structure has a data structure in which the network structure of the hypertext data model is converted into a tree structure and displayed, and is composed of data such as a node name 41, a node ID 42, a display state 43, a display position 44, and a lower structure 45. In particular, it is a feature of this embodiment that the information about the display state for controlling the display of the hypertext model is provided. The node name 41 is a name for the displayed node. The node ID 42 is a number for identifying the node corresponding to the node ID of the hypertext data. Even the nodes displayed at two places on the display have the same node ID if the data is the same. The display state 43 is information indicating the display state of the icon. That is, it indicates whether it is displayed as a reference icon or a real icon. The display position 44 represents the display position inside the rectangular area as coordinates. The lower structure 45 represents a list of lower nodes. Reference icons have no subordinate nodes.

FIG. 5 shows an outline of the processing of this embodiment configured as described above. The user event monitoring unit 135 of the interface control unit 134 monitors the user's mouse operation input from the input / output unit 11, and when the node is opened, the browser display unit 137 uses the information related to the node as instruction information.
Input to the display data operation unit 138 (step 5
1). This is the user's attention node. The display data operating unit 138 determines the display state of the node of interest (step 52). The display data storage unit 1 determines whether the node of interest is displayed as a reference node on the browser.
The determination is made by referring to the display data 33. If it is a real icon, processing stops. As a result of the determination, when the focused node is the reference icon, the corresponding real icon is searched from the display data (step 53). From the information 44 on the display position of the real icon, it is determined whether the real icon is displayed inside the browser display area (step 54).
When displayed, the corresponding real icon is blinked to provide visual feedback to the user (step 57), and the process ends. If the real icon is not displayed inside the browser display area, the display data operating unit 138 operates the display data to replace the real icon with the reference icon (step 55). At this time, if the real icon has a lower structure, that information is also changed at the same time. The layout routine is executed by the display routine of the layout generation unit 139 so that the position of the node of interest is not changed. As a result, the real icon and its substructure are displayed in the browser display area (step 56).

[0014]

According to the present invention, when the node of interest is the reference icon, the display data model is changed and the real icon and the reference icon are exchanged, so that it is necessary to perform an operation involving movement of the viewpoint and scrolling. Therefore, when understanding the complicated structure of the hypertext model, it is possible to easily grasp the structure without interrupting the thinking due to the operation involving the movement of the viewpoint.

Further, according to the present invention, when the node of interest is a reference icon and has a subordinate structure, not only is the real icon replaced with the reference icon, but the node below the node of interest is replaced. Since a more detailed substructure is displayed adjacent to, the difficulty of structural understanding due to the fact that the entire structure of the part of interest cannot be seen is alleviated.

Further, according to the present invention, the troublesome operation of scrolling is released in the middle of understanding the structure, and the user interface is improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a display device showing an embodiment of the display device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a case where a real icon and a reference icon are not displayed in the browser display area due to the positional separation between the two by a conventional method.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a display method in the display device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a data structure example of the display data shown in FIG.

5 is a flowchart for explaining a display algorithm of the display device shown in FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

11 ... Input / output unit, 12 ... Display device, 13 ... Information processing unit, 131 ... Hypertext model display data storage unit, 132 ... Display data generation unit, 133 ... Display data storage unit, 134 ... Interface control unit, 135
User event monitoring unit 136 Hypertext data model searching unit 137 Browser display unit
138 ... Display data operating unit, 139 ... Layout generating unit.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A hypertext system having a browser tool for converting a network structure into a tree structure using a real icon and a reference icon and displaying the tree structure detects a node opened by a pointing device as a target node via a browser. Then, it is determined whether or not the display state of the focused node is the reference state, and if it is the reference icon, the focused node is turned into a real icon and the lower structure is displayed adjacent to the focused node. Model display method. 2. A hypertext system having a browser tool for converting a network structure into a tree structure by using a real icon and a reference icon and displaying the tree structure, and storing display data including a data structure for display and a display state. Means, a means for monitoring the user operation of which node the user has opened, and a real icon corresponding to the opened node based on the user operation information obtained by the monitoring and the display data. A hypertext model display device having a means for generating a display structure for displaying in a browser display area.