JP2000163195A - Graphical user interface - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize scrolling in plural display areas through the use of a single position designation means by switching the display area where scrolling is executed to the adjacent display area when display information of the display area where scrolling display is executed becomes a continuous state with display information on the adjacent display area. SOLUTION: When a position on a document displayed on a first display area 7 is adjacent to a position displayed in a second display area 8 with scrolling by the operation of a scrolling key 6, subsequent scrolling display is stopped in the first display area 7 and scrolling display is continued in the second display area 8 instead. Thus, the second display area 8 moves downward in a state where the first and second display areas are adjacent. When a user continuously moves the scrolling key 6 downward and the document position displayed in a third display area 9 is adjacent to the document position displayed on the second display area 8, the display area where third scrolling is executed is switched to the third display screen 9 from the second display area 8.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a graphical user interface for dividing and displaying information such as documents and tables.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there has been known a graphical user interface for dividing one word processing document or the like and displaying the divided words in a plurality of display areas as shown in FIG.

[0003] In such a graphical user interface, scroll bars 1 and 2 are provided for scrolling a displayed document in respective display areas. When the user moves the scroll button of the scroll bar up and down with the mouse, display information is displayed in proportion to the amount of movement of the scroll button.

In a plurality of display areas, a portion of a document can be displayed in an overlapping manner.

[0005]

Conventionally, in this type of graphical user interface, since there are a plurality of scroll bars, it is necessary to operate scroll buttons for each divided display area. In addition, each of the divided display areas can be scrolled from the beginning to the end of the document, and the end of the document can be displayed in the display area at the top of the display screen, or the divided display area at the bottom of the display screen can be displayed. The first part of the document can be displayed in the display area. However, in such a display mode, the correspondence between the positions of the document parts displayed in the respective display areas is not understood, and the operation for displaying the desired document part is rather complicated.

In view of the above, an object of the present invention is to provide a graphical user interface that enables scrolling in a plurality of display areas using a single position specifying means (for example, a scroll button). To provide.

[0007]

In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, a display screen is divided into a plurality of display areas, and a graphical display capable of scrolling display in each of the divided display areas. In the user interface, instructing means for instructing a moving direction of scrolling and execution of scrolling display, and display information of an n-th display area for performing scrolling display by the instructing means is n-th display area.
When the display information of the adjacent display area of either the first display area or the (n + 1) th display area (n is an integer) is in a continuous state, the scrolling display area is set to the adjacent display area. Display control means for continuing switching and scrolling.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the graphical user interface according to the first aspect, the instruction means changes a single scroll bar displayed on the display screen and a scroll direction along the scroll bar on the display screen. It is a scroll button for instructing.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the graphical user interface according to the second aspect, a display position of the scroll button on the scroll bar is made to correspond to a position in all information of information being scroll-displayed. Features.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the graphical user interface according to the third aspect, there is further provided a position designating means for designating any position of the information displayed in the plurality of display areas, The display position of the scroll button is changed to a position substantially corresponding to the position instructed by the instruction means.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a display according to the embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 2A, reference numeral 3 denotes a scroll bar. Reference numerals 4 and 5 denote buttons for moving the scroll button 6 by a fixed amount and scrolling the display of the display area designated by the scroll button 6 by a fixed amount. The scroll button 6 can be moved by a pointing device such as a mouse, and the display of a display area described later is scrolled according to the amount of movement of the scroll button 6. 7 to 9 are divided display areas.

In the display areas 7 to 9 of the present embodiment, a displayable range of information is initially assigned in advance, but can be changed as described later. FIG. 3 shows the contents of the initial assignment. In the present embodiment, the display areas 7 to 9 have the same size, and can display information for ten rows.

Also, for example, of the 600 lines of document information, the information of the first 3/6 (1 line to 299 lines) is allocated to the first display area 7, and the middle 1/3 (300 lines) 499 lines) is assigned to the second display area 8. The last 1/6 (500-600 lines) information is the third
Are assigned to the display area 9.

The document scroll processing according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In FIG. 4, 100 indicates a document, 101 indicates the first page of the document, and 102 and 103 indicate the second and third pages of the document, respectively. Reference numeral 7 denotes a first display area (see FIG. 2A), and reference numeral 8 denotes a second display area. In the first and second display areas, the position of the display portion of the document moves during scrolling. To explain the display position of the document, the first display area 7 and the second display area 8 are shown in FIG.
Will be moved.

In this embodiment, a (character) cursor indicating the position for document rewriting indicates a display area to be scrolled. For example, when the user positions the cursor on the second display area using the arrow keys, the display area including that position, in this case, the second display area can be scrolled. With the movement of the cursor, the scroll button 6 in FIG. 2A also moves to a position on the scroll bar corresponding to the position of the document portion displayed in the second display area. In this embodiment, ten lines of text are displayed. If the first line of the display of the first display area is the A line of the document, the bottom line of the display of the first display area is A.
The text on the + 9th line will be displayed.

For example, when the user positions the cursor on the first display area 7 and presses the scroll button 6 in FIG.
In (A), when the document is moved downward, the display document is displayed in the first display area 7 so as to move upward.
In FIG. 4, this is the same as moving the display area 7 downward.

Such a scroll operation is the same as the conventional one except that the scroll button 6 is single.
However, in the present embodiment, when the position on the document displayed in the first display area 7 is adjacent to the position displayed in the second display area 8 by scrolling by operating the scroll button, that is, in the example of FIG. First display area 7
When a state (shown by a dashed line) is adjacent to the second display area 8, further scrolling is stopped in the first display area 7, and instead, the second display area 8 is stopped. The scroll display is continued with. Therefore, the second display area 8 moves downward from the state where the first and second display areas in FIG. 4 are adjacent to each other. When the user continues to move the scroll button 6 downward, and the document position (for 10 lines) displayed in the third display area 9 and the document position (for 10 lines) displayed in the second display area 8 are adjacent to each other. And then the third
Is switched from the second display area 8 to the third display area 9.

The above description is an example of scroll display performed from the beginning of a document to the end. In the opposite direction,
The third display area 9 can be scrolled until the document display is adjacent to the document position displayed by the second display area 8. Similarly, in the second display area 8, the adjacent display area becomes the first display area 7.

To summarize the above, in the scroll processing of this embodiment, the n-th display area is the position of the document displayed by the (n-1) th display area and the document position displayed by the (n + 1) th display area. Scrollable between. When the document position displayed in the n-th display area is connected to the document position in the adjacent display area, the display area to be scrolled is switched. A scroll instruction is given by a single scroll button (6). When the position of the cursor for specifying the character position is changed to another display area, the scroll button is automatically changed according to the document position of the cursor.

Therefore, when the document is roughly divided into upper, middle, and lower, a) the first display area 7 displays the upper part of the document,
The display area 8 can display the middle of the document, and the third display area 9 can display the lower part of the document. By operating a single scroll button, the user can scroll the document without being aware of the divided display areas.

Further, the positions of the documents displayed in the plurality of display areas do not reverse. b) The last 10 lines of the document are displayed in the third display area 9, and 2 lines from the last 11 lines of the document are displayed in the second display area 8.
If the display areas are adjacent to each other so as to display up to the first line, the first display area can be scroll-displayed from the beginning of the document to the 21st line from the end of the document. Can be used as if it were a single display area that is not divided. c) When the document portions displayed in two adjacent display areas are connected (continuous), the character strings on the same line in the document are duplicated for the bottom line of the upper display area and the first line of the lower display area. When displayed, the user can easily recognize that the document portions displayed in the two display areas are connected.

FIG. 5 shows a configuration of an apparatus for performing such a scroll display. 5, a CPU 11, a storage device (ROM, RAM, hard disk, etc.) 12, and a display controller 13 are connected to a bus 15. As such an apparatus, various general-purpose information processing apparatuses such as a general-purpose computer and a word processor can be used.

An operating system (OS), a scroll bar 3 as shown in FIG.
Areas are provided for storing an image of a basic graphic for displaying the scroll buttons 6 and the like and a display image for one screen displayed on the display 14.

The display controller 13 reads out the display image from the storage device 12 at a constant period and outputs the read image to the display 14. Thereby, the display area for one screen stored in the storage device 12 is displayed on the display 14. The graphical user interface in the present embodiment means a device including the display 14 and the CPU 11 for performing scroll display.

FIGS. 6 and 7 show display control procedures for performing scroll display according to the present invention. The program describing the display control procedure of FIG. 5 is stored in the storage device 12, but may be implemented from a recording medium such as a floppy disk or CDROM. In addition, scroll bar 3,
It is assumed that the graphic data of the scroll button 6 is stored in the storage device 12. It is also assumed that the position of a mouse cursor moved by a mouse (not shown) and a cursor indicating a character position of a document (referred to as a character cursor) are stored in the storage device 12 under the management of the operating system.

The display procedure shown in FIGS. 6 and 7 is executed as a part of the application for displaying a document when an application such as word processing software for executing document processing is executed. If it is necessary to display a document with the start of the application, the CPU 11 performs initial settings for split display (step S10).

By this initial setting process, the size of the divided display area (the number of display lines), the display start position of the document, and the like are determined according to the initial data shown in FIG. 3, and FIG.
A split display window is displayed on the display screen as shown in FIG.
At this time, the scroll button 6 is located at the top,
In the first display area 7, the first to tenth lines of the document are displayed. The second display area 8 displays lines 300 to 309 of the document. The third display area 9 displays lines 500 to 509 of the document. Hereinafter, the processing of the CPU 11 will be described by limiting to the scroll processing.

When the user wants to scroll the document displayed in the first display area upward (to display the document in the downward direction), the user moves the mouse cursor to the scroll button 6 and presses the mouse cursor while pressing the click button. To move down.

By this operation, the CPU 11 proceeds to step S2.
In step S30 via 0 → S30, the movement of the scroll button is detected. As a result, the procedure proceeds from step S30 to S60. In step S60, the first
It is confirmed whether or not there is a contact between the display document in the display area and the display document in the second display area. In the current state, since the start lines of the documents displayed in the two display areas are the first line and the 300th line, these three document portions do not touch each other. Therefore, the determination result of step S60 is N
Since O is selected, the procedure proceeds from step S60 to S80, and in step S80, scroll processing of a predetermined unit of the first display area, for example, one line is performed. More specifically, the display data in the RAM 12 is rewritten so as to be shifted in the scroll direction.

Hereinafter, while the user is moving the scroll button 6 downward, steps S20 → S30 → S
Loop processing of 40 → S60 → S80 → S20 is repeatedly executed, and scroll display processing in the first display area 7 is executed. As a result, the display is scrolled toward the lower part of the document in the first display area 7.

After displaying the 201st to 210th lines of the document in the first display area 7, the user moves the character cursor with the arrow keys or the mouse cursor to an arbitrary character string (for example, (The character string in line 305 of the document). When this operation is detected in step S20, the CPU 11 determines that the position of the scroll button 6 on the scroll bar is also the current position (corresponding to the 201st line of the document).
Is moved to the display start line (the 300th line of the document) in the display area including the character cursor (step S5).
0, see FIG. 2 (A)).

Next, when the user continues to move the scroll button 6 in the downward direction, in the second display area 8, the start of the display of the third display area 9 (the 500th line of the document) is displayed. Until the descending line is reached, scroll display is performed in the second display area 8 (loop processing from step S20 in FIG. 6 to steps S100 to S150 to S160 to S170 to S20 in FIG. 7). When the bottom line of the display of the second display area reaches the start line of the display of the third display area by scrolling, that is, since the display document of the second display area and the display document of the third display area are connected, scrolling is performed. The display area switches from the second display area 8 to the third display area 9 (steps S20 in FIG. 6 to steps S100 to S150 in FIG. 7).
S160 → S180).

When the user still moves the scroll button 6 in the downward direction to the position shown in FIG. 2B, the scroll display of the document is performed in the third display area 9, and the scroll button is stopped. Scrolling is also stopped in response to (step S20 in FIG. 6 to step S110 in FIG. 7 → S
120 → S140).

The above is an example of the scroll processing performed by the CPU 11 in connection with the operation of the character cursor and the scroll button by the user. Display of the second display area and the first
The connection of the display is scrolled by the substantially same processing as described above, but it is worth noting that the display of the first display area 7 is performed when the first to tenth lines of the document are displayed. When the cursor is moved to the second display area 8, in the second display area 7, the tenth line of the document (the bottom line of the display of the first display area) and the start line of the display of the third display area ( (500 lines) can be scrolled by a single scroll button 6 movement operation.

The following example can be implemented in addition to the above embodiment. (1) In the above embodiment, the number of displayable rows in the first to third display areas and the initial display start row are fixed.
It can also be set variably. In this case, the table shown in FIG. 3 is displayed on the display screen, and a numerical value is input from a keyboard (not shown). Also, by specifying the boundary lines P1 and P2 in FIG. 2A with a mouse and moving and displaying the same, the number of lines (10 lines in the above-described embodiment) that can be displayed in each display area can be variably set. (2) When the number of lines of the document information corresponding to the position of the boundary line is displayed near the boundary lines P1 and P2 in FIG. 2, the user is informed of the position of the scroll button 6 in the document information. Can be predicted. (3) In the above embodiment, the scroll display accompanying the movement of the scroll button 6 has been described. However, by moving the scroll button 6 in accordance with the number of operations of the arrow buttons 4 and 5 in FIG. The scroll amount can be specified. (4) In the above-described embodiment, an example in which the display screen is divided in the vertical direction has been described. However, this embodiment is suitable for divided display of a horizontally written document. Of course, a plurality of display areas may be provided. (5) In the above embodiment, when information displayed in adjacent display areas is connected, the display area to be scrolled is switched. Therefore, when the above information is connected, a message indicating the connection of the information is displayed on the display screen, voice,
The user may be notified in the form of a sound.

[0037]

As described above, according to the first and second aspects of the present invention, even when a single pointing means such as a scroll button is used, only display information of a specific display area among a plurality of display areas is used. When the scroll display is performed and the information of the display area being scrolled is connected (continuously) to the information of the display of the adjacent display area, the display area to be scrolled is switched to the adjacent display area. The information displayed in each display area does not overlap or the position in all the information is not displayed before and after as in the related art. Therefore, according to the first and second aspects of the present invention, the operation is easy, and the context of the information displayed in the plurality of display areas is clear.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, the position of the scroll button on the scroll bar allows the user to know the position of the information currently scrolling or the information to be scrolled in all the information.

According to the fourth aspect of the present invention, when information for performing character processing is designated by a position indicating means such as a character cursor, the position of the scroll button is adjusted so that the scroll button also corresponds to the position indicated by the position indicating means. Is changed, it is possible to instruct scrolling in the display area by operating a single scroll button in any of the plurality of display areas.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing a display example of a conventional graphical user interface.

FIGS. 2A and 2B are explanatory diagrams showing display examples of a graphical user interface according to the present invention, respectively.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a relationship between a display area and assignment of information to be displayed.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram for explaining scroll processing according to the embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing a system configuration for realizing a graphical user interface.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure of a CPU 11;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure of a CPU 11;

[Explanation of symbols]

 11 CPU 12 storage device 13 display controller 14 display

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A graphical interface in which a display screen is divided into a plurality of display areas and a scroll display can be performed in each of the divided display areas. Instructing means for instructing a moving direction of scrolling and execution of scrolling display; The display information of the n-th display area where scroll display is performed by the means is the display information of the adjacent display area of either the (n-1) -th display area or the (n + 1) -th display area (n is an integer). A display control unit that switches a display area for scrolling to the adjacent display area when the state is continuous, and continues scrolling. 2. The graphical user interface according to claim 1, wherein said instruction means is a single scroll bar displayed on the display screen and a scroll button for instructing a scroll direction along the scroll bar on the display screen. A graphical user interface characterized by: 3. The graphical user interface according to claim 2, wherein a display position of the scroll button on the scroll bar is made to correspond to a position in all of the information being scroll-displayed. interface. 4. The graphical user interface according to claim 3, further comprising: position indicating means for indicating any position of the information displayed in said plurality of display areas, wherein said position indicating means is configured to receive said information. A display position of the scroll button is changed to a position substantially corresponding to the position of the scroll button.