EP0026269A1 - Système d'affichage pour données digitales de couleurs - Google Patents

Système d'affichage pour données digitales de couleurs Download PDF

Info

Publication number
EP0026269A1
EP0026269A1 EP80103737A EP80103737A EP0026269A1 EP 0026269 A1 EP0026269 A1 EP 0026269A1 EP 80103737 A EP80103737 A EP 80103737A EP 80103737 A EP80103737 A EP 80103737A EP 0026269 A1 EP0026269 A1 EP 0026269A1
Authority
EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
character
colour
display
cell
definition
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Withdrawn
Application number
EP80103737A
Other languages
German (de)
English (en)
Inventor
Peter William Johnson
Raymond Hardiman
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
International Business Machines Corp
Original Assignee
International Business Machines Corp
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by International Business Machines Corp filed Critical International Business Machines Corp
Publication of EP0026269A1 publication Critical patent/EP0026269A1/fr
Withdrawn legal-status Critical Current

Links

Images

Classifications

    • G—PHYSICS
    • G09—EDUCATION; CRYPTOGRAPHY; DISPLAY; ADVERTISING; SEALS
    • G09G—ARRANGEMENTS OR CIRCUITS FOR CONTROL OF INDICATING DEVICES USING STATIC MEANS TO PRESENT VARIABLE INFORMATION
    • G09G5/00—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators
    • G09G5/02—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators characterised by the way in which colour is displayed
    • G09G5/026—Control of mixing and/or overlay of colours in general

Definitions

  • This invention relates to digital data display systems and particularly to such a system as described in our copending UK Patent application No. 7933533 and in which a display unit is used that can display in more than one colour.
  • UK Patent Specification 1,330,748 (Applied Digital Data Systems Inc.) and US Patent 3,891,982 (Adage Inc.) both describe apparatus for forming a display of graphical and alphanumeric data.
  • the UK Patent Specification describes a system in which alphanumeric and graphical data are treated separately until they are applied to a screen through a video signal generator.
  • the apparatus described operates to repetitively generate a video signal for driving a raster scan display from data encoded in data words representing image components.
  • the raster scan is considered as being divisible into a rectilinear array of rows and columns of cells, each image component, as encoded, lying within a single cell. More than one image component can be provided in each cell.
  • the apparatus includes a serial refresh memory for holding, in cell order, data words defining an image to be displayed.
  • the contents of the memory are selectively advanced to read out all data words relating to a given cell and as those data words are successively read out they are decoded to generate signals defining corresponding image elements.
  • An accumulation register accumulates the picture elements defined by a succession of data words relating to a given cell and means are provided for storing and serially reading out the accumulated data as a video signal to the raster scan display.
  • US Patent 3,293,614 and 3,351,929 both assigned to H azeltine Research Inc. relate to digital data systems, the first (614) describes a system in which the screen is divided into a plurality of illuminable dot elements, or picture elements (pels) and the associated storage means has a separate storage element for each pel. This entails using a very large storage device.
  • the second patent (929) describes an attempt to reduce the amount of storage required by storing character information according to address information included with each character word.
  • the addresses are divided into a coarse address and a fine address.
  • the coarse address determines within which character sized segment of the display the character is to begin and the fine address locates the character within the segment.
  • the combination of the coarse and the fine address allows the character to be located at any point on the display.
  • a digital data display system for presenting a graphical picture on an output device in which the area or screen from which the picture is to be viewed is notionally divided into a plurality of character cells each of which comprises a predetermined number of picture elements (pels), the system comprising means for creating, in response to input information, a first level description of all the elements of a picture to be presented, means for storing a screen definition table having an entry for each character cell of the display area, means for calculating for each element of the picture the pattern of pels in associated character cells required to display the elements, storing the calculated pattern in a table in a character cell store and associating the respective entry in the screen definition table with the required pattern in the character cell store, means to determine when a particular character pel pattern has already been calculated as required for a picture and to associate the respective screen definition table entries with only one copy of the particular character cell pel pattern and means for transferring the screen definition table to a screen definition buffer store and the
  • a digital data display system including an electronic display device capable of presenting pictures on a screen in more than one colour, and means controlled by an operator to construct pictures on the screen characterized in that means are provided to allow an operator to determine the colour of points at which two or more different coloured lines or areas of a picture intersect.
  • a central processing unit 1 which may for example be an IBM System 370/168 machine (IBM is a Registered Trade Mark).
  • the central processing unit 1 performs the main processing tasks required to control the display unit and also includes means for processing the display information in accordance with the invention.
  • the central processing unit may have a direct connection to a display controller 2 and/or may be connected remotely to such a display controller 3 through a network controller 4 which is connected remotely to another network controller 5 which in turn may be connected to several display controllers 3. (Only one shown.)
  • Each of the display controllers controls a plurality of display devices 6.
  • the display devices usually comprise a visual display unit, such as a cathode ray tube and a separate keyboard, by which a user enters commands into the system.
  • the display devices 6 each include a random access store as will be described below.
  • a character position may either contain a character (which may not actually be displayable i.e. it may be blank or null), or a field attribute (which displays as a blank, but contains attribute information about how the characters in the following field are to appear, e.g. highlighted, invisible, etc.).
  • the entry in the character buffer contains an index which is used by the hardware character generator to access the definition of the pel pattern for that character.
  • the definitions themselves are held in read only storage, so they may not be altered.
  • Figure 2 shows in schematic form a display head incorporating the principles of the present invention.
  • the head contains one or two sets of character definitions held in read only stores 7 and 8 and up to six sets of character definitions contained in random access stores 9, 10 and 11 (each of which in the drawing represents two random access stores).
  • the definitions contained in these stores 9, 10, and 11 can be changed by input information from the central processing unit 4 ( Figure 1).
  • the character buffer 12 is supplemented by an extended attribute buffer 13, which contains, again on a character basis (except for the positions at which field attributes occur), additional information about the highlighting for that character position. If the display head uses a colour tube, this information will include the colour of the character and also the number of the character set from which the character definition is to be taken.
  • the display head may have provision for displaying character cells in a single colour or a plurality of colours, using for example combinations of red, green and blue.
  • the character definition buffers 9, 10 and 11 storing the programmed symbols contain one bit for each pel in a character cell (i.e. a single definition for a 9x16 character cell may be held in 18 bytes of storage).
  • the pattern defined by the 18 bytes will be displayed in a single colour (of necessity in a monochrome display, though not necessarily the same colour in a colour display), in each display position where it is referenced by the character buffer 12.
  • the actual colour where a single colour character display is used is determined by the colour bits in the appropriate position in the extended attribute buffer 13.
  • triple character cells are used. There are then three bits for each screen pel, one for each of the primary colour guns, red, green and blue. When only the red bit is on for a particular pel, that pel will be displayed in red; if red and green bits are on the pel will be yellow and so on. As the colour definition is now within the character definition rather than in the extended attribute buffer 13, a triple referenced in more than one screen position by the character buffer 12 will always appear with the same combination of colours.
  • Methods of using programmed symbols may be divided into two main categories: firstly they may be used to define different character fonts (e.g. italic or Greek) and secondly they allow graphic objects to be drawn, to pel accuracy. These methods may be combined in the same picture display.
  • the preferred embodiment described in this specification will be concerned with the drawing and displaying of graphic objects.
  • a user of the digital data display system communicates interactively with a particular application program through a display unit 6.
  • the application program will normally be stored in a back-up store connected with the central processing unit 1.
  • the system control services of the digital data display system will load the application program into the central processing unit's 1 working store and perform all the control and supervising services needed to run the application.
  • the application program will, typically, have been written so that at some point it will require the system control services to display data at the display unit 6.
  • the data may have been supplied to the application program by the user directly from the keyboard contained in display unit 6 or it may have been obtained from a file in a data base to which the central processing unit 1 has access.
  • the application program will request that the system control services display the data in a particular form, say for example a bar chart. Having received the request and the data from the application program the system control services then perform the necessary functions to display the data as required at the particular display unit 6 which the user is using.
  • the system control services which control the operation of the digital data display system are shown schematically in Figure 3.
  • the central processing unit 1 which as mentioned above may be an IBM System 370/168, has an operating system 14 which may be IBM Virtual Machine Facility/370 (VM/370) described generally in the Introduction to IBM Virtual Machine Facility/370 GC20-1800-9 published by International Business Machines Corporation.
  • VM/370 IBM Virtual Machine Facility/370
  • VM/370 manages the resources of an IBM System/370 in such a way that multiple users have a functional simulation of a computing system (a virtual machine) at their disposal. That is, the virtual machine runs as if it were a real machine simulating both hardware and software resources of the system. These simulating resources can be either shared with other virtual machines or alternatively allocated to each machine for a specified time. Virtual machines can run the same or different operating systems simultaneously, thus a user can create and adapt a virtual machine to meet the users needs. A description of the component parts and how VM/370 operates is found in the above referenced manual.
  • a user at a remote terminal 6 communicates with the central processing unit through the network controller using the services of a communications access control system 15 ( Figure 3).
  • the communication access control system 15 operates under the control of the operating system and organises the transmission and reception of information (commands and data) to and from the remote network controllers.
  • VTAM Virtual Telecommunications Access Method
  • a third part of the system control services is the interactive or data communication system 16.
  • the on-line real-time data base/data communication differs from batch processing systems in the amount and types of concurrent activities that are likely to occur within the processing system at a given time.
  • a batch processing system schedules each application independently and provides data support unique to each application
  • a DB/DC system controls many transactions arriving on a random non-scheduled basis and provides an integrated data base supporting each application.
  • a DB/DC system requires the interactive or DC system 16 in addition to the basic operating system.
  • An example of such a system is the Customer Information Control System (CICS) described in Customer Information Control System (CICS) General Information Manual (GH20-1028-4) published by International Business Machines Corporation.
  • the system control services which have been described above as blocks 14, 15 and 16 of Figure 3 perform the basic control of a large scale data processing system enabling a user at a remote terminal to run specific application programs which are also stored in a storage device to which the processing unit has access. These are indicated at 17 in Figure 3.
  • Application programs can be directed to many different and diverse requirements from weekly or monthly accounting and payroll routines to planning analysis and tracking of space satellite systems. Such applications can be run on the same digital data processing system simultaneously with users at adjacent terminals 6 ( Figure 1) using the system for very different applications.
  • One thing that most applications require or result in is the presentation of data to the user often during the running of the application.
  • the present invention is directed towards facilitating the presentation of data at the display units either visual display units or printers represented as the units 6 of Figure 1.
  • the central processing unit has two further parts to the system control services. These are shown as a graphics manager 18 and graphics routines 19 in Figure 3. The operations of the graphics manager and the graphics routines and how they interact with the character definition buffers 7-11 of Figure 2 will be described in more detail below.
  • call statements may be issued by the application which involve the graphics manager 18 and the graphics routines 19 of the system control services.
  • the application program passes the address of the data to be displayed, together with information concerning the form that the display is to take, whether as a bar chart, pie chart, venn diagram etc., together with the axes where appropriate and the area of the particular display device where the data is to appear, eg. a graph may appear in only the top half of the display with an alphabetic character explanation in the bottom half.
  • the graphics routines 19 and graphics manager 18 perform the following functions which are described in general terms.
  • the graphics routines 19 accept information passed by the application program in the call statements and then decides how the picture is to be drawn. If the picture is not to be a full screen or page this information is passed to the manager. If the axes of the graph are to be drawn then the coordinates relating to two lines are passed to the manager. The data to be displayed is then fetched from the storage address given in the call statements and the appropriate processing carried out.
  • the graphics routines 19 include several sub-routines for manipulating and processing data so that the appropriate picture can be drawn.
  • the present invention is concerned with presenting pictures in multicolours and particularly with determining the colour to be displayed at the crossing and meeting points of two different coloured lines or areas.
  • Figures 4-10 illustrate the operations involved in determining which colour a particular pel in a character cell definition should be.
  • Figure 4 shows one cell with all three options in use.
  • the cell which is a matrix of 9 x 16 pels has a red line 40 drawn first.
  • a green line 41 is then drawn with the overpaint option which means that at the meeting point 42 a green pel will be on.
  • a blue line 43 is then drawn with the underpaint option so that at point 44 a red pel will be on.
  • a second blue line 45 is drawn with the mix option so that at point 46 both the red and blue pels will be on giving in a crt a pink colour.
  • the graphics routines pass the coordinates to the graphics manager and a series of character definition cells are constructed.
  • the construction of the cell shown in Figure 4 will be described.
  • the information passed to the manager will include the fact that the line is to be in red and the graphics manager will work out that at screen buffer position 48 it will require a definition cell that has pels on as is shown in Figure 5. If there is already a cell definition having the same 'on' pel pattern then the manager will construct a screen buffer pointer to that pattern in buffer position 48 and will update the extended attribute buffer to indicate that the colour at cell 48 is to be red. If the cell pattern does not exist then one will be constructed and stored in the character cell definition array. Because at this point only one colour is used in the cell then only a single cell definition is required. The graphics routines then pass to the graphics manager the request to draw a green line 41 as shown in Figure 4 with the overpaint option. Figure 9 shows a flowchart of the steps that are taken.
  • Step 90 is the recognition of the need to generate a cell definition.
  • the manager has the coordinates of the green line 41 it determines that it must pass through screen buffer cell position 48.
  • the first decision that then has to be taken is shown as step 91, that is 'Is there anything previously in that screen buffer cell position 2?'. If there is not, as there was for the drawing of the red line 40 then step 92 is entered, which was explained above. If there is already something in the cell then the next step 93 is to determine if the new line is to be in the same colour. If the colours are the same then at step 94 a new definition is generated and OR'd with the previous definition to give a single cell definition with two lines of the same colour.
  • the extended attribute buffer is not altered unless the new definition is stored in a different Programmed Symbol Set but the new definition will be stored at a new address in the character definition array so the screen buffer pointer is updated to point to the new address.
  • a definition is constructed.
  • a triple definition is three 9 x 12 bits one for each of the cathode ray tube colour guns, red, green and blue.
  • the extended attribute buffer 13 ( Figure 2) for each screen buffer point has three bit positions which are allocated to determine colour. If only one colour is used, as when only the red line was drawn, then only the bit associated with red is 'on' and only a single definition is required, when red and green are required then the red and green bits are 'on' and blue 'off' and a triple definition is used.
  • step 96 the decision as to whether any one of the three is 'on' is taken according to the decision table shown in Figure 10.
  • the decisions are as follows, if the pel was previously 'off' and the new cell pel in that position is also 'off' then all three colours bits for that pel are 'off'. If the new colour pel is 'off' and the previous is 'on' then no change is made.
  • step 97 the screen buffer pointer is updated to point to the new address of the triple definition.

Landscapes

  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Computer Hardware Design (AREA)
  • General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
  • Controls And Circuits For Display Device (AREA)
  • Digital Computer Display Output (AREA)
  • Image Generation (AREA)
EP80103737A 1979-09-27 1980-07-01 Système d'affichage pour données digitales de couleurs Withdrawn EP0026269A1 (fr)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
GB7933537A GB2059729A (en) 1979-09-27 1979-09-27 Multicolour display of digitally processed data
GB7933537 1979-09-27

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
EP0026269A1 true EP0026269A1 (fr) 1981-04-08

Family

ID=10508106

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP80103737A Withdrawn EP0026269A1 (fr) 1979-09-27 1980-07-01 Système d'affichage pour données digitales de couleurs

Country Status (3)

Country Link
EP (1) EP0026269A1 (fr)
JP (1) JPS5648680A (fr)
GB (1) GB2059729A (fr)

Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP0121311A2 (fr) * 1983-03-07 1984-10-10 Tektronix, Inc. Dispositif de visualisation à balayage à trame comportant un générateur de lignes lisses

Families Citing this family (6)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
JPS60205584A (ja) * 1984-03-30 1985-10-17 横河電機株式会社 カラ−グラフイツクデイスプレイ装置
JPS61146592U (fr) * 1985-02-26 1986-09-10
US4839828A (en) * 1986-01-21 1989-06-13 International Business Machines Corporation Memory read/write control system for color graphic display
JPS6474596A (en) * 1987-09-16 1989-03-20 Nec Corp Multiplex display controller
JPH01248186A (ja) * 1988-03-30 1989-10-03 Toshiba Corp 表示属性変換装置
GB2261144B (en) * 1991-10-30 1995-06-21 Thomson Consumer Electronics Apparatus for generating graphics

Citations (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US3771155A (en) * 1970-09-09 1973-11-06 Hitachi Ltd Color display system
US4016544A (en) * 1974-06-20 1977-04-05 Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. Memory write-in control system for color graphic display
US4156237A (en) * 1976-08-25 1979-05-22 Hitachi, Ltd. Colored display system for displaying colored planar figures
FR2411446A1 (fr) * 1977-12-09 1979-07-06 Ibm Systeme d'affichage de caracteres graphiques en couleur

Patent Citations (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US3771155A (en) * 1970-09-09 1973-11-06 Hitachi Ltd Color display system
US4016544A (en) * 1974-06-20 1977-04-05 Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. Memory write-in control system for color graphic display
US4156237A (en) * 1976-08-25 1979-05-22 Hitachi, Ltd. Colored display system for displaying colored planar figures
FR2411446A1 (fr) * 1977-12-09 1979-07-06 Ibm Systeme d'affichage de caracteres graphiques en couleur
US4217577A (en) * 1977-12-09 1980-08-12 International Business Machines Corporation Character graphics color display system

Cited By (2)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP0121311A2 (fr) * 1983-03-07 1984-10-10 Tektronix, Inc. Dispositif de visualisation à balayage à trame comportant un générateur de lignes lisses
EP0121311A3 (fr) * 1983-03-07 1987-10-21 Tektronix, Inc. Dispositif de visualisation à balayage à trame comportant un générateur de lignes lisses

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
GB2059729A (en) 1981-04-23
JPS5648680A (en) 1981-05-01

Similar Documents

Publication Publication Date Title
EP0026266B1 (fr) Système d'affichage de données numériques
US4375079A (en) Digital data display system
US5309556A (en) Method for using interactive computer graphics to control electronic instruments
CA1213085A (fr) Methode et appareil de compression et de manipulation d'images
US5504853A (en) System and method for selecting symbols and displaying their graphics objects in a detail window
US6081265A (en) System for providing a same user interface and an appropriate graphic user interface for computers having various specifications
DE69735975T2 (de) System und Verfahren zur Überlagerung von wahlweise in unterschiedlichen nativen Formaten gespeicherten Bildern
US4688167A (en) Screen manager for data processing system
US4890257A (en) Multiple window display system having indirectly addressable windows arranged in an ordered list
EP0154067A1 (fr) Dispositif d'affichage d'images mixées alphanumériques et graphiques
EP0158480A2 (fr) Système d'affichage hybride
US4119953A (en) Timesharing programmable display system
EP0026269A1 (fr) Système d'affichage pour données digitales de couleurs
EP0147542B1 (fr) Système d'affichage à fenêtres multiples
EP0162380B1 (fr) Système de tabulation
CA1229439A (fr) Systeme d'affichage de donnees
US4251816A (en) Method and apparatus for plotting graphics
US6256042B1 (en) Graphic display method and apparatus
US6747681B1 (en) Computer controlled interactive display with dual cursor image storage for a smooth transition during cursor image change
EP0175342A2 (fr) Mixage de lignes et de textes dans un système d'affichage à T.R.C.
Styne et al. Pad structures for the Rainbow workstation
Hoffman et al. an interactive color display station for IC layout
Seitz et al. Flight & Simulation Test Analysis System
JPH04178756A (ja) グラフィック表示処理装置
JPH10254421A (ja) 色選択方法

Legal Events

Date Code Title Description
PUAI Public reference made under article 153(3) epc to a published international application that has entered the european phase

Free format text: ORIGINAL CODE: 0009012

AK Designated contracting states

Designated state(s): DE FR GB IT

17P Request for examination filed

Effective date: 19810428

STAA Information on the status of an ep patent application or granted ep patent

Free format text: STATUS: THE APPLICATION IS DEEMED TO BE WITHDRAWN

18D Application deemed to be withdrawn

Effective date: 19820607

R18D Application deemed to be withdrawn (corrected)

Effective date: 19820807

RIN1 Information on inventor provided before grant (corrected)

Inventor name: JOHNSON, PETER WILLIAM

Inventor name: HARDIMAN, RAYMOND