AU610904B2 - Display device - Google Patents

Description

Form COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA PATENTS ACT 1952-69 COMPLETE

SPECIFICATION

(ORIGINAL)

Class It. Class Application Number: Lodged: :Complete Sp-wification Lodged: I 10 000 Accepted: Published: V. Priority: 0 0 @0 6 0 00 00 0 Name of Apdlicant: Address of Applicant: Actual lnvevntcr: CHINESE COMPUTERS LIMITED 1802, Capitol Centre, Jardine Bazaar, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Address for Service: EDWD. WATERS SONS, QUEEN STREET, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, 3000.

Complete Specification for the invention entitled: DISPLAY DEVICE The following statement Is a full description of this invention, including the best method of performing It known to us DISPLAY DEVICE This pocketable display device for displaying characters or graphic images received by radio. It relates particularly, but not exclusively to non-alphanumeric (English) languages, i.e general pictographic, written languages including Oriental languages such as the Chinese language and to a radio paging device for uFP with such languages.

10 It is known to be extremely difficult to implement a S pager receiver for pictographic Oriental languages for the 0o following two reasons:- 00 0o a) Most Oriental languages have a huge number of 0 000 o0 characters o. pictograms as compared tn English style o o 015 European languages. In particular, the Chinese language is 0 000000 ooo composed of more Lhan 50,000 different characters.

Therefore, without the invention of d special storage technique, it would lie impossible to accommodate such a a00 0 00 large vocabulary in any form of storage device which would o 0 20 enable the pager to have a size comparable with the size of oo a pack of 20 cigarettes. This is essential for a pocket 0 0. radio pager receiver.

b) Normally, longer air-time (which is a valuable factor in the paging business) is required to transmit a .000 25 character of an Oriental language than a usual alphanumeric character due to the large number of characters which require a longer code to identify individual characters.

Unless a special message recognition technique can be devised and built into the radio pager receiver, an Oriental language radio pager receiver will be too expensive in terms of running cost for its air-time message transmission.

At present, there are, of course, numerous radio pager receivers which can provide the user with information in English and alphanumeric characters. There still does not exist a radio pager receive7 which can receive/ a.nd display i 0909 0 0 0 00 00 0 0900 000 coo 0 Q 00000 0 00 00 0 0 0 o 00 00 0 0 00 o o 0 60 the Oriental languages; in particular for the Chinese language by overcoming the above mentioned problems. The usefulness and attractiveness of information display pc.gers would be enhanced considerably by the provision of a pager, capable of displaying greater amount of information to the users in different Oriental languages especially in the most popular Chinese language.

A further problem with current pagers is that they have an "Identification Code" (ID) which has been written and fixed permanently into a piece of Read Only Memory, called a code plug to enable the paging company to address individual pager receiver. It would be much more cost effective and convenient to have a pager which uses no code plug but another innovative concept to signify its own identification. At the moment, any change of the pager number (ie ID) requires the replacement of a physical code plug, which may involve the pager being taken back to the paging station physically.

According to a first aspeen 20 provided a display device for displaying alphanumeric a /or pictographic characters such as of an Oriental lan ge including Chinese, Korean and Thai and/or graph' information comprising:radio receiving circuitry for rece ing a radio message 25 in which is encoded characters and/o graphic images to be displayed; at least one display fo isplaying the received as such characters and/or as graphic image: and processing circut ry for receiving the radio message as N-bit message datA- words from the receiving circuitry, the processing circ itry being operative to convert the data words intoi splayed characters and/or graphic images in a mannersuch as to extend the total number of displayable cha-racters and/or graphic images beyond 2N (2 raised to the ~11 -JaLig at least one of tho 2 N po-s ible d-n a word- O 00 0 ft« r* l;i~-iinvl.i. 2a According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided apparatus for implementing floating storage technique (FST) with message data received by a radio paging device, said data forming the basis for displaying characters of a language, particularly an Oriental language, said apparatus comprising: logic means including processing circuitry for receiving said data in the form of an N-bit message data word, said circuitry enabling the N-bit word to address beyond 2 to the power N different entries of a font table, and being adapted to convert said N-bit data word into a character code for the display of a character and/or graphic image.

A second aspect of the invention provides a display device for displaying alphanumeric and/or pictographic characters such as of an Oriental language including Chinese, Korean and Thai and/or graphic information O° 0l comprising:- 0o radio receiving circuitry for receiving a radio 00 0 00.0 message in which is encoded characters and/or graphic images 00 o to be displayed; at least one display for displaying the received oo°° message as such characters and/or as a graphic image; and 0o processing circuitry for receiving the radio message as N-bit message data words from the receiving circuitry, the processing circuitry being operative to convert the data words into displayed characters and/or o0o graphic images in a manner such as to enable the display of o0 0 characters and/or graphic images which include characters, 0 graphic images, phrases containing a number of characters 0 o0 0 and/or graphic images, pictograms or text message, by means of floating storage technique (FST), which enables the N-bit 0 o o o 00*« I :iji:/ _iliij/ii: _i~-Y-li li i.---_II~Lii L 2b words to address beyond 2 to the power N different entries, the entries including fixed character sets, programmable character sets, programmable phrase sets, expansion vocabularies to incorporate additional characters or words required by a particular language and/or graphic information.

it tc 4 oooo 0 0 o o 0 0 00 oI 0 0 0 0 a 0 0 «t «a oo 0 i 3 and/or usage.

A second aspect of the invention provides display device comprising:radio receiving circuitry for receiv' g a radio message; at least one display for disp .ying the received radio message as such characters and/ r as a graphic image; and processing circuitry f converting data words of the received message into di layed characters and/or graphic 0°0: images; 0 0o means for sto ing, between the receipt of radio 0 messages by tho ra!dio receiving circuitry, the value of at 00 0 least one p -rameter used by circuitry of the device for oo 15 definin a characteristic of its operation; o na de an espo .nd. means responsive to at least one command encoded in o x a received message to set at least one such parameter to a 0 00 o These aspects of the invention are applicable to a 0o° 20 cisplay device, particularly a radio paging device independently of one another or combination with one o another.

As will become apparent from the following description, the two aspects of the invention may be used to solve the 25 above mentioned problems, and when used together, may provide a pager which can receive and display any type of 0rienta languages, in particular, the Chinese language and which requires no code plug but yet can still be addressed by the paging company individually. By using a custom made "Single Chip Microprocessor Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)" controller loaded with a special designed software program, the radio pager receiver can have the capability to store the message data collected by an electronics data reception module via a radio frequency channel into a random access memory device RAM, and at the 0

,ALI

0 4 same time through searching from a character fonts table residing partly in a character generation read only memory ROM and partly in a re,.d/write memory RM by executing an innovative floating storage technique (to be described later) to display the message received on a graphic LCD module and a dynamic identification (to be described later) concept to identify a particular pager receiver among all receivers.

The radio pager receiver itself can store up multiple messages for the user to examine later. The control means 0a. of the pager can be arranged to enable the displayed a9 messages to be viewed one by one either in the forward or ao o .9 ao reverse directions-and when it reaches the end, it will 0 0 000 display the first message again, the second message and so 0 0 S°ooo 15 forth again. It also enables each message, if too long, to o0o be displayed frame by frame (ie one display's worth at a time). The user can also select messages to be deleted from the memory. The control means can also enable the user to switch on/off the LCD display background lighting, and ooo 20 switch off the audio tone upon receipt of a message.

The first aspect of the invention enables 0..4 °implementation of the above mentioned floating storage technique (FST) which is an innovative idea by using an optimum number of bits to address a unique entry from a 0 C a o 25 fixed size character fonts table which has the capability to cover an unlimited number of characters or pictograms. This can be explained as follows:- Let it be assumed that bits are used to represent an address code representing one character of, for example, an Oriental language. An N-bit code can normally address a maximum of "2 to the power N" entries, each code corresponding to a respective character, The FST involves different usages of the 2N total number of available codes along the lines of the following, In particular, it may divide the 2

N

codes into 4 usages: Usage 1 combinations Usage 2 comibinations 0000 0 00 00 0 o o 00 0 000 0 0 0 0*0 0 00 0 0 0 0 00 00M.000 0 0 0 0 0 00 .0.00.

00 0 00 00 0 moo 0 00 0 oo 0000 Usage 3 combinations to address fixed entries with a character font table residing in read only memory (ROM).

to address fixed entries with the character font table residing in RAM which can be altered via the system controller through receiving a craommand from the radio frequency channel.

to address "phrases" composed of a number of pointers to cascade a seqx"ence of single character entries within the fixed vocabulary from table 1X" and These pointer sequences are located also in RAM which can be altered by the system controller through receipt of a command from the radio frequency channel.

in case the required character font does not exist in the and "Y" table or the display of some graphic is required, this yecific address code can instruct the system to construct the Usage 4 combinations

I

i

I

6 required graphic or character fonts from the direct bit pattern data received from the radio frequency channel; tho end of the bit pattern can be indicated in any suitable way, eg, by a bit pattern following it (such as the bit pattern indicating the start of 2o 00 00 ausage 4) or by a preamble 0o o0oo00 which indicates the 00 0 °oo lengths, width and 0 1o° 15 coordinates of the image 0 being sent, 000000 0 It is obvious that the sum of 11", and 1 will still equal to 2N. However, this te'chnique offers the 0 0C 20following unique advantages over other methods being used:- 0o.oO 20 Usage I can be used to hold the most frequently o oo used characters/pictograms, in the language in 0 0 question for efficient and fast processing and translation.

Usage 2 can be used to expand the system's o 25 capability to recognise the whole 00oo character/pictogram set of that particular language without any pre-set limit.

USage 3 enables the use of just bits to represent a frequently used phrase which might comprise string of any length of characters or pictogram,4. This represents a considerable saving ot data space and licence transmission time; the transmission time for message transmission is the most expensive and important element in the paging industry.

-ffi

V.

Ir Usage 4 further expands the system t, nise information more than text messages, .o any form of graphic information. In the paging business, it makes the pager receiver become a small facsimile receiver.

As an example of applying the FST to the Chinese language in particular to the radio pager receiver application, we found from statistic that by appropriately selecting them, the fixed 4,000 characters can cover over 11 99% of the vocabulary used in the paging industry.

Therefore, it is possible to use a unique 12 bits (one and half byte) address 1 to identify a character font entry. In other words, Where 12 bits and 15 4,000 combinations to address total 4,000 0000 o 0 0 o0 0 o o.

0 11 0 040 0 0 0 0 00 0 0 0 o oo 0D o 0 00 32 combinations fixed characters font residing in a 128K x S bits ROM.

to address a to+a! of 32 programmable characters from a font residing in par of the 8K 8 bits

RAM.

63 combinations to address a total of 6i 0 25 programmable phrases residing in part of the SK x 8 bits RAM.

I combination to addreass general graphic information.

The second aspect o the invention can be used to avoid having to change the ID ROM to alter the pager ID. The paging company simply send a command through wireless transmission to the pager to achieve the same result. The removal of the code plug will also save some space so pager can be made smaller. Thus, this aspect of the different usages of the 2N total number of available codes along the lines of the following, In particular, it may divide the 2N codes into 4 usage: Usage 1 combinations to address fixed entries with a character font table residing in read only memory

(ROM)

8 invention provides a dynamic identification (DI) technique whereby the pager's identification code (ID) is stored in a portion of the message RAM which is non-volatile, eg by being backed up by a 10 year life lithium battery, instead of being stored in ROM. Through intelligent control by a custom microcontroller, this iden' !ication code is no longer pre-fixed but can be changed easily under authorisation of the paging company to simply issue a command to the receiver via the radio frequency channel. In addition, iore than one identification code for different purposes of application can be stored simultaneously which makes different categories of news broadcasting to a particular group o'f subscribers easy and cost effective.

The term "radio paging device" as used in the present description and claims is not intended to be limited to a device dedicated solely to that purpose but is intended to include all devices which provide that function in a personally portable form. In particular, apart from its implementat or, as a dedicated device, the invention may also be put i4nt effect by providing an accessory, attachment or insert to a personally portable electronic device having a Ssuitable display and effective to receive radio paging transmissions and display them on that display.

The invention will be further described by way of nonlimitative example with refere'ce to the accompanying drawings in which:- Figure 1 's a block diagram illustrating the circuitry of a pager in accordance with the invention; and Figure 2 shows how the different sub-modules are a,..sr=auled together to form a complete radio pager receiver unit.

The pager illustrated in the attached figures comprises a pocketable housing (not shown) preferably of the order of of 2 1/2" x 3" x 1/2" (63.5 x 76 x 12.7 mm) which includes a custom one-chip MCU 1 (Microcontroller Unit 9 HD614080 from Hitachi, Japan) loaded with a specially written computer program to implement each of the above described functions, a character generator custom masked RoM 3 (Read Only Memory, HN62321BP from Hitachi, Japan) a graphic liquid crystal display module capable of showing 16 x 128 decs graphic or to display one frame of a certain number of characters for a particular language (eg, for the Chinese language, 8 characters' can be shown in 16 x 16 dots font) which comprises of 2 drivers IC 4 and 5 (LCD segments driver HD61102 and LCD common driver HD61103 from Hitachi, o a Japan) and a high contrast LCD display 6 custom made by Seiko with which the whole LCD module is powered by a 0o specially designed LCD power supply 2ircuit 7, a lithium- S battery-backed message storage read/write RAM 2 (HN6264FLP-3 from Hitachi, Japan) of capacity 8K x 8 bits for storing Sa message data, one or iaore pager identification codes and some programmable Oriental language characters; in So particular, the Chinese character fonts and phrases. A key panel 10 comprises one 3 position sliding mode switch to activate the prger and 5 push-buttons for users operations.

I 0 A radio frequency (RF) receiver module 8 comiprises RF tune circuit, amplifier, filters and wave shaping circuits as a hybrid unit for capturing data signal from the air, a beeper and a light-emitting diode (LED) to generate tne audio and visual alert signal upon message received, one piece of volt AA-size battery 11 to power the RF receiver module 8, a DC-DC converter 9 to step up the voltage from battery 11 to power the remaining system and finally s small light bulb 12 or some other lighting device to provide background lighting to LCD module.

The pager is constructed (refer to Figure 2) and programmed so that it can receive specially coded message and displa characters of the Oriental languages, in particular, the Chinese language under user's control. The following paragraph describes the operation principle of the r L a

CLAI

1. A display device for displaying alphanumeric and/or i pictographic characters such as of an Oriental language including Chinese, Korean and Thai and/or graphic information comprising:radio receiving circuitry for receiving a radio pager.

The paging company transforms the message in the Oriental language, in particular, the Chinese language or graphic information context using the paging computer system into a binary bit stream based on the floating storage technique coding algorithm, and then associate the message with either a specific pager receiver subscriber or the group broadcasting subscribers plus some redundant bits for self error correction and finally encode all data bits as a 10 complete message packet according to the Universal POCSAG o 0 °0 0 ltandard (CCIR radio paging code No 1) and broadcast to the air through a particular radio frequency channel.

04 f at w Assuming the pager' has been switched active, the MCU 1 ooo wakes up the RF receiver module 8 from time to time to 15 detect if there is any message which requires its attention goos* Sby comparing the identification code associated with the message with its own identification stored in the RAM 2 O ac ,lring to the dynamic identification concept. If the 0 result is positive, MCU 1 stores the message into the RAM 2 o 0 for later repeated examination, and at the same time, o searches the character generator ROM 3 and other o u 0 0 00 programmable characters font or phrases table in RAM 2 to transform the message into the Oriental language or Chinese o o00° character or other graphic information then shows the message on the LCr module. In addition, a alert tone is generated by the beeper unit and the LED is flashed inside the RF module 8 which is controlled again by the MCU 1. The user can switch off the tone by hitting any button on the key panel 10; otherwise, the tone will be turned off automatically after about 8 seconds by the MCU 1.

Batte-y 11, DC/DC converter' 9 and LCD power circuit 7 j to serve to distribute the power to individual working modules of the pager. If the environment is dark and the LCD cannot be seen clearly, the user can press and hold the "LIGHT" buttooZ on the key panel 11 to turn on the light bulb 11 or to the lighting devices 12 to have display illumination.

TLh be:.p tones can be substituted by a vibration alert unit if the user does not wish the tone to disturb other people.

The pager may provide both manual and auto time shutoff features to conserve power consumption. Battery low alert/indication is also provided.

The program of the MCU 1 can interpret information which has been encoded into a bit stream according to the 0o00 10 Oriental language; in particular the Ch:.nese character, :i coding sys.tem specially designed for the present invention i based on the said forth floating storage technique and transmitted in standard POCSAG format in 512 baud speed or a 0 a a higher band speed switchable by the paging company. It can o""o 15 also support standard POCSAG alphanumeric display.

During data reception, the pager may provide 2 bits 0 self rror correction and 3 bits error detection capability for identification code matching while 1 bit self error o o0 correction and 2 bits error detection capability for message recovery to ensure maximum receiving reliability.

0oo o With RAM 2, the said pager can store up to 32 separate messages, the maximum length of each message is depending on o0 0 how the floating storage technique is being used, with no practical restriction. Standard alphanumeric messages transmitted in POCSAG format can also be recognised. The screen formats of the LCD module are different between the Oriental language; in particular the Chinese characters, and alphanumeric-characters display mode. In the former, each Sframe can display a number of Oriental language characters; in particular, 8 Chinese characters in 16 x 16 dot fonts; in the latter, each frame can display 2 lines x 21 characters Sin 5 x 7 dot font. .In addition, the pager can support both small and capital letter alphabets. The next paragraph will describe the detailed user operation of the pager.

The pager is suitable programmed so as to operate in I one of the following 4 states:a) Active state.

The MCU 1 receives and executes commands from the user via the key panel 10, allocating some spare time periodically to check if any message is coming from the RF receiver. Power is supplied to all components in this state.

b) Sleep state System will go to sleep state from Active State is NO :x 10 key on the keyboard has been pressed for a-proxim.tely 0 seconds or the user has stepped through Fl-1 t1 stored messages. In this state, the LCD module will be switched off.

o c) Disable stage 0 00 The pager will enter this state if a DISABLE command has been received. This state is similar to the Sleep State except that. further users' commands will not be effective 0o until an ENABLE command is received through broadcast.

0 d) Off State User Switches the pager to this state by sliding the o.0 mode switch to the OFF position. All components except the o external RAM chip 2 will be cut off. The pager cannot receive any further message until turned back on.

0°o, In the following, NORMAL operation refers to operating the pager under Active or Sleep state.

The key panel 10 will be provided with the following keys, switches and buttons, the MCU 1 suitably programmed to produce operation as described.

1 Mode switch: A 3 position slide switch with its position to define the different users operation modes: ON: The pager is under Active or Sleep stage while an alert tone will be heard and LED- will be flashed whenever a call has been received.

-I 13 M: Same as ON made except the alert tone will be disabled.

OFF: Pager is OFF. All memorised messages will be erased.

2 Next button: Enable user to examine individual message in frame by frame basis if the message is too long to be fitted within one frame.

3 READ button: Enable user to read next message in 004 10 FORWARD direction. Latest message will 0* 0 be placed at the top position of the RAM 0 0o Soo. buffer.

:00 4 BACK button: Enable user to read next message in o 000 00 BACKWARD direction.

5 DELETE button: Enable user to delete the current 0000 Sexamined message from the RAM buffer.

The delete all messages, user can press both the READ and BACK button.

0 6 Light button: Display illumination will be effective if this button has been pressed and held 00o down.

0 oat, The provision of the above functions, both insofar as they are implemented by programming of the microprocessor o o and by the illustrated circuitry is a matter of routine for *0oo 25 the skilled man.

Claims (3)

1.Adslydvc o iplyn lhnmrcado pictgahccaatr uha fa retllnug 1. ~a dispa deevingcifrcispyfrriing anmrcador includein Chiese Kseoead haiatr and/or graphic i~e ifr ato comps ng:-pa ordslyntercie prdoeciing circuitry for receiving a radi message as N-bit message data words from the receiving circuitry, the processing circuitry being operative to convert the data words into displayed characters and/or graphic images in a manner such as to enable the display of 0. characters and/or graphic images which include characters, 0 oK o graphic images, phrase~s containing a number of characters 00 and/or graphic images, pictograms or text message, by means 0 0.0 of floating storage technique (FST), which enables the N-bit o o o 0 words to address beyond 2 to the power N different entries, 0000 the entries including fixed character sets, programmable 0 00 0000 character sets, programmable phrase sets, expansion vocabularies to incorporate additional characters or words required by a particular language and/or graphic 0 information. 0 0 00 00 0 2. A device according to claim 1, wherein a 0 predetermined number, X, which is less than 2, of a possible 2 combination is used to address characters in a preset character table. 0 0 0 o 000 3. A device according to claim 21 wherein N equals 122 00 and X is approximately 4000. /0141~ 15

4. A device according to claim 1, 2 or 3 wherein a predetermined number, Y, which is less than 2 N, of 2 N possible combinations is used to access characters whose image data are held in a read/write memory or which are held in one of a number of preset tables, the table in use being alterable by the processing circuitry. A device according to claim 4, wherein the image data of alternative or the table in use of alternative can be set by command data received as part of the radio message. ,c 6. A device according to claim 4 or 5, wherein Y is

32. 0 0 t 0°ooo 7. A device according to any one of the preceding oo0o claims, wherein a predetermined number, Z, which is less Oo oo. than 2 N of 2" possible combinations is used to address ooo. stored sequences of codes which the processing circuitry 0 translates into multiple character displayed messages or portions thereof. ooooo 8. A device according to claim 7, wherein Z is 63. 0000 o 0o oo 0 0 9. A device according to claim 7 or 8, wherein the 0.o0 stored sequences can be set by command data received as part of the radio message. 00ooo claims, wherein the processing circuitry is responsive to one of 2 1 combinations received as a message word to treat one or more following words as bit-image data to generate a graphical image. 16 11. A display device comprising:- radio receiving circuitry for receiving a radio message; at least one display for displaying the received radio mesage as such characters and/or as a graphic image; processing circuitry for receiving the radio message as N-bit message data words from the receiving circuitry, the processing circuitry being operative to convert the data words into displayed characters and/or graphic images in a manner such as to enable the display of characters and/or graphic images which include characters, graphic images, phrases containing a number of characters and/or graphic images, pictograms or text message, by means of floating storage technique (FST), which enables the N-bit words to address beyond 2 to the power N different entries, CB the entries including fixed character sets, programmable a o oos character sets, programmable phrase sets, expansion o o0o vocabularies to incorporate additional characters or words 0 required by a particular language and/or graphic 0 0 o oo information; 0 0 0 o means for storing, between the receipt of the radio message by the radio receiving circuitry, a value of at least one parameter used by the circuitry for defining a characteristic of its operation; and means responsive to at least one command S encoded in a received message to set at least one such o parameter to a required value. 12. A device according to claim 11, wherein the device is a radio paging device and the at least one parameter includes an identification code used by the circuitry of the Sdevice t.o determine whether a particular received radio 0 ae paged message is addressed to that device. O, rL c a r" o 17 13. A radio paging device including the device in accordance with any one of claims 1 to 14. A device according to any one of the preceding claims, and including control means adapted to enable the message displayed to be scanned in either a forward or backward direction. A device according to claim 14, wherein the control means is arranged to enable each individual message to be examined frame by frame if its length exceeds a single frame display capacity. 16. A device according to claim 14 or 15, wherein the control means is arranged to allow contents o the storing 0o means to be repeatedly displayed, in its entirety or only a 0 o00 part thereof. 0 00 17. A device according to any one of claims 14 to 16 when appended to claim 11 or 12, wherein the control means is arranged to allow contents of the storing means to be deleted entirely or selectively. 000.00 t o 18. A device according to any one of the preceding claims, and including memory means having a capacity to store codes for at least 1,000 Oriental language characters; in particular, the Chinese characters. o 0 0 0 19. A device according to claim 18 wherein the memory AS means has a capacity to store the codes for at least 1,500 alphanumeric characters. /I I this specific address code can instruct the system to construct the 18 0000 0 o 0 00 0 0 o 0 0 0 0 0i 00-0~0 00 a 4 00 a, 0 4 0 *o 0 0 0 0 04 a0 0 o D o 4d Q A portable radio pager incorporating a display device according to any one of the preceding claims for displaying received messages. 21. A device according to any one of the preceding claims which is of a pocketable size. 22. A device according to any one of the preceding claims whose external dimensions are about 2 1/2" x 3" x 1/2". 23. A device according to 'Iny one of the preceding claims implemented by means of an accessory, attachment or insert to pocket sized digital radio transceiver, portable telephone, television set or video tape/disc player. 24. Apparatus for implementing floating storage technique (FST) with message data received by a radio paging device, said data forming the basis for displaying characters of a language, particularly an Oriental language, said apparatus comprising: logic means including processing circuitry for receiving said data in the form of an N-bit message data word, said circuitry enabling the N-bit word to address beyond 2 to the power N different entries of a font table, and being adapted to convert said N-bit data word into a character code for the display of a character and/or graphic image. 25. An apparatus as claimed in claim 24, wherein said font table is segmented into a plurality of fixed size character tables, each character table containing at least one character code, said N-bit data word representing a unique character code from one of said character tables. -1 ti d 19 .1 1 1 coo 00 0 0 0V 0 o 0 00 0 0 0 000 Il 419 0r1 0 o 9 o u 9099b 0 00 0r 01 9 O 4 41 26. An apparatus as claimed in claim 25, wherein a first character table contains most frequently used characters/pictograms, addressable by said unique c' racter code. 27. An apparatus as claimed in claim 25 or 26, wherein said font table includes a second character table containing at least one phrase or text message, addressable by said unique character code. 28. An apparatus or device as claimed in claim 1, 11 or 24, substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying drawings. DATED this 13th day of February 1991. CHINESE COMPUTERS LIMITED WATERMARK PATENT TRADEMARK ATTORNEYS THE ATRIUM 290 BURWOOD ROAD HAWTHORN, VICTORIA 3122 AUSTRALIA LCG/RCS/CH (2.32)