GB2328126A - Computational Icon - Google Patents

Abstract

A method of reducing the memory required for the internal storage of numbers in a computerised system comprises creating a computational icon having a plurality of locations. One of a plurality of characters is inserted into one or more of the locations and the icon is displayed by representing each character in its assigned location. Each character is stored in a predetermined sequence according to the character's location. Examples of decimal, Fig 3 and hexadecimal Fig 6 numerical notation displays are given, using an icon sub divided into four, one sub-area being allocated the letter d to indicate the decimal notation mode.

Description

COMPUTATIONAL ICONS The present invention relates to computers and computerised systems and, in particular, to memory storage and display formats in a digital computer or computerised system.

In a conventional computer, symbols such as numbers and characters are displayed as ASCII characters.

However, since every ASCII character uses a byte of memory it is inefficient to store the symbols in display format i.e. as they would be written. Symbols are therefore stored internally in binary form. Thus, for example, the number 255 uses 3 bytes of memory in display format but is stored in binary as "11111111" which corresponds to one byte (8 bits).

The present invention has been made from a consideration of the above and in order to provide a method whereby what is displayed on a screen corresponds more closely to what is stored in memory. Thus, the invention seeks to provide a more efficient display and storage system such that the memory required for displaying symbols is reduced and the computer can internally store the symbols without converting the format and without any increase in internal memory being required.

According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a method of reducing the memory required for the internal storage of numbers in a computerised system comprising creating a computational icon having a plurality of locations, inserting one of a plurality of characters into one or more of said locations, displaying the icon by representing each character in its assigned location and storing each character in a predetermined sequence according to the character's location.

According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided apparatus for displaying and storing characters comprising means for displaying characters in a plurality of locations in a computational icon and means for storing each character in a predetermined sequence according to its assigned location.

Preferably, the computational icon comprises four locations. Preferably, the characters are decimal based (0 to 9) or hexadecimal based (0 to F). Preferably, the locations comprise upper right and left and lower right and left locations. Preferably, means is provided for assigning a negative sign to one or more of said characters.

By convention, there are 256 different characters in each character set on for example DOS based personal computers. For normal decimal numbers 10 symbols i.e. 0 to 9 are required; for hexadecimal 16 symbols i.e. 0 to F are required.

The method of the invention allows a full character set to be obtained e.g. 000 -, 999 i.e. 1000 characters for decimal or 0000 e FFFF i.e. 65536 characters for hexadecimal which is not possible with the standard DOS character set.

With the invention, each computational icon has four sites for allocating characters. Each site uses a nibble (4 bits). In the decimal format, only 3 sites or nibbles are required, the remaining site being used to indicate decimal format (e.g. symbol 'd'). Each site can specify one of 10 symbols (0 to 9) in decimal and using binary coded decimal the memory requirements of a single computational icon is 1.5 bytes.

Similarly, in the hexadecimal format, each site can specify one of 16 different symbols (o to F) and all four sites are used. Each symbol uses 4 bits so that the total memory requirement of the computational icon is 2 bytes to give 65536 characters.

By contrast, in conventional methods a 4 digit hex number requires 4 bytes to specify it in display format i.e. in the normal character display form or 2 bytes in binary storage format.

One or more function keys may be used to put the data into the required location or site on the computational icon. For example, a standard character key may be used to locate in one site, alt with the character key may be used to locate in a second site and shift and control with the character key may be used to locate in the third and fourth site.

The computational icon may be stored in memory by using the binary form of the character key and storing in sequence according to the site location. Thus, for example, it is not necessary to store 65536 characters.

In practice, the reduced size of symbols for the computational icon e.g. O to F can be put on spare characters or relatively unused characters in the conventional set. Thus, 16 existing characters can be modified to represent the 16 symbols required to implement the hexadecimal form of the invention. Preferably, a standard keyboard is used.

The character set of the method of the invention may be further expanded or doubled by providing a suitable symbol which may be used on one or more of the computational icon symbols.

The invention will now be described further by way of example only and with reference to the accompanying drawings which illustrate several examples of computational icons according to the invention. Typically an 8 x 14 bitmap matrix is used.

Referring to Figs. 1 to 3, the decimal base computational icon is denoted by the symbol "d" in the lower right corner site. Each icon has four sites. In Fig. 1, the icon represents zero by having a zero symbol in the lower left site. The maximum icon symbol is shown in Fig. 2 where the symbol 9 is represented in three sites. Numbers ranging from 0 to 999 may be displayed in this format on each key or computational icon. Fig. 3 shows an example of a sequence of four icons which together represent 999,999,999.99 (for example in pounds); the first icon represents digits after the decimal and the second, third and fourth icons represent in sequence numbers of increasing power such as hundreds, thousands and millions respectively.

Referring to Figs. 4 to 7, the hexadecimal base computational icon uses all four sites. Fig. 4 shows the computational icon for zero and Fig. 5 shows the computational icon for FFFF. Numbers between 0 and FFFF may be displayed in a similar fashion. Fig. 6 shows a sequence of three FFFF computational icons, the first representing units up to 65535, the second representing units times 65535 and the third representing powers of 65535.

As shown in Fig.7, the number of characters represented by the hexadecimal icon may be doubled from 0 to 65536 to -65536 to 65536 by using an appropriate symbol such as a bar to denote the negative element of a particular character or characters.

Fig. 8 shows an example of the decimal type icon in use. The sequence of four icons represents 265, 984, 671.52 which can be stored as four characters or six bytes compared to conventional display formats which would require 12 bytes.

Fig. 9 shows an example of an hexadecimal type icon in use. The sequence of two icons represents FFOCBA or 16, 714, 938 stored as two characters using 3 bytes compared to a conventional display format requiring 6 bytes.

Fig. 10 shows an example of an alternative icon arrangement in use, having eight character locations.

Each character 1 to 8 is represented by three lines, each line capable of displaying one of two symbols, either two spaced squares or a bar. Thus each pair of characters can represent any number between 1 and 64. The icon can therefore give a full character set from 1 to 16777216.

It will be appreciated that the present invention is not intended to be restricted to the details of the above embodiments which are described by way of example only.

In particular, any features described with respect to one aspect of the invention may be included or incorporated into any other aspect of the invention.

Claims (12)

CLAIMS:

1. A method of reducing the memory required for the internal storage of numbers in a computerised system comprising creating a computational icon having a plurality of locations, inserting one of a plurality of characters into one or more of said locations, displaying the icon by representing each character in its assigned location and storing each character in a predetermined sequence according to the character's location.

2. Apparatus for displaying and storing characters comprising means for displaying characters in a plurality of locations in a computational icon and means for storing each character in a predetermined sequence according to its assigned location.

3. A method or apparatus according to any preceding claim, wherein the computational icon comprises four locations.

4. A method or apparatus according to any preceding claim, wherein the characters are decimal based.

5. A method or apparatus according to any of claims 1 to 3, wherein the characters are hexadecimal based.

6. A method or apparatus according to any preceding claim, wherein the locations comprise upper right and left and lower right and left locations.

7. Apparatus according to any preceding claim, wherein means is provided for assigning a negative sign to one or more of said characters.

8. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein a negative sign is assigned to one or more of said characters.

9. A method or apparatus according to any preceding claim wherein each computational icon has four sites for allocating characters.

10. A method or apparatus according to claim 9, wherein each site uses a nibble.

11. A method or apparatus according to claim 9 or claim 10, wherein one such site is used to indicate format.

12. A method or apparatus substantially as described with reference to Figures 1 to 10.