JP2001117685A - Method for switching pen operation and mouse operation and information equipment using the method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To attain an operation, while confirming an application screen opened to the back part, and to improve visibility, and to dispense with providing the switching button of a pen operation/mouse operation. SOLUTION: A transparent window display part 30 is generated, and event information is obtained, and whether an event is generated inside the transparent window 30 or outside the transparent window 30 is decided by a monitor part 60. When the event is generated inside the transparent window 30, a series of event information is fetched as handwritten inputting operation information, and position coordinate data attended with pen movement are held, and trace- displayed on a screen 20. After the generation of the events, a trace displaying and deleting part 50 deletes the trace display after the lapse of a fixed time, and releases a handwritten input mode. When the event position is outside the transparent window 30, the monitor part 60 transfers the event information generated by a series of operations to a system (OS), and this is processed as a mouse operation mode.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to Windows
A method and apparatus commonly used for a system supporting handwriting input on the (registered trademark), which avoids confusion in operation due to forgetting to depress a switching button and has good visibility. The present invention relates to a method for switching between a pen operation and a mouse operation that can improve operability, and an information device using the method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a pointing device (pen or mouse, hereinafter using a mouse as an input medium for handwritten characters) mainly using a pen computer, a touch panel, a tablet or the like is also referred to as a pen for convenience here. In a system that supports handwriting input according to (1), the pointing device may be used as a pen for handwriting input, or may be used simply as a mouse. In such a case, when the user operates the pointing device, an operation of “trying to input a character as a pen” (hereinafter referred to as a pen operation)
Or an operation of “trying to pick or drag as a mouse” (hereinafter referred to as a mouse operation) in some cases.

[0003] In the following, generally used pen operation /
The method of determining the mouse operation and the respective problems are described. (1) A character input frame is displayed on the screen, and only an event input (hereinafter, simply referred to as pen-down or pen-up) by a pointing device in this frame is a pen operation, and all pen-down operations outside the character input frame are performed with a mouse. There is a way to treat it as an operation. In this method, it is necessary to display a plurality of character input frames having a size equal to or more than a certain size in order to make it easy to input characters, and thus there is a problem that the screen of the application open behind cannot be seen. (2) There is a method of setting a mode switching button for pen operation / mouse operation and determining the handling by switching this button. In this method, it is necessary to depress the button every time the mode is switched, so that the operation becomes complicated and the operator often forgets to depress the button.

As an application example of the method (1), there is, for example, a "display position designation method" described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-234905. In this method, since the mouse is a pointing device for indicating a relative position, and the pen input device is a pointing device for indicating an absolute position, the pen mouse is an input area formed corresponding to the display screen. It is determined whether or not an input operation has been performed on the input area, and if it is determined that the input operation has been performed on the input area, the detected displacement on the input area is regarded as the displacement of the absolute coordinates and the display position of the display position of the display data is determined. When the control is performed and it is determined that the input operation is performed for an area other than the input area, the display position of the display data is controlled using the output displacement information as the displacement of the relative coordinates. In this method, 1
Although one pointing device can be used to specify both an absolute position and a relative position, the problem of (1) above is that the application screen open behind cannot be seen. Occurs.

[0005]

As described above, in the conventional method, there are a method of displaying the character input frame and a method of pressing the switch button to switch between the pen operation and the mouse operation. The method (1) also has a problem that visibility of operation data is poor or operability is poor. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to solve these conventional problems and realize switching between pen operation and mouse operation of a pointing device in a system supporting handwriting input without imposing a burden on a user, An object of the present invention is to provide a method of switching between a pen operation and a mouse operation with good operability and an information device using the method.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, a method for switching between pen operation and mouse operation according to the present invention comprises:
A step of generating a transparent window on the screen whose position and size can be freely changed (100 in FIG. 4), and detecting a pen down event and not passing it to the system (OS),
A step (110) of performing a “message hook” to be imported into the own application; and a step (140) of determining whether the pen-down event has occurred within the transparent window or outside the transparent window.
When the pen-down is within the transparent window, a series of event information generated by a pen operation beyond the range of the subsequent transparent window is taken into its own application as a handwriting input operation without passing it to the system (OS). A message hook "step (160); a mouse operation when the pen down is outside the transparent window; a subsequent series of operations as a mouse event; In the case of an operation, a step (170, 180) of holding the position coordinate data accompanying the movement in the pen-down state and displaying the trace, and in the case of a handwriting input operation, after the occurrence of a pen-up event Erasing the trace display after a certain period of time and canceling the handwriting input mode (1) 0, 200) and a. This makes it possible to perform pen operation and mouse operation with good visibility and modelessly.

Further, the information equipment of the present invention is characterized in that a transparent window is set as a handwritten window frame so that the entire surface of the main body window display section is not hidden. As described above, in the present invention, the Windows O
By combining multiple functions that are standardly supported by S (a window generation function with a hole in it and a message hook function that intercepts system messages by the AP), the background is transparent, We propose a method of displaying a window whose size can be changed freely and discriminating a series of operations starting with pen down into this transparent window as pen operations. As a result, it is possible to separate and determine the pen operation and the mouse operation without hiding the display data of the application open behind and without performing an extra operation. Recently, PDA (Personal Digital Assis
In addition to personal information portable devices called “tants”, they are appearing in the personal computer market represented by pen computers. In these systems, a "handwriting input operation using a pen" and a "pick or drag operation using a pen instead of a mouse" are mixed. Further, even in a normal personal computer or the like having only a mouse as a pointing device, handwriting input using a mouse may be used for inputting a kanji character whose reading is not understood. The present invention can be applied to any of these cases, has good visibility and operability, and can be switched without burdening the operator.

[0008]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is an external perspective view of a typical pen computer to which the present invention is applied. In FIG. 1, a pen computer includes a CPU, a pen computer main body 1 including a memory, a display unit and a touch panel unit 2,
And a pen 3. In FIG. 1, since the operation is switched between the pen operation and the mouse operation using the transparent window, there is no fear that the original application screen opened behind becomes invisible, and as a result, the visibility is improved,
Operability can be improved. In FIG. 1, a switch button for pen operation / mouse operation is not provided and is unnecessary, so that unnecessary operations such as pressing a button can be omitted, and as a result, the user can forget to depress the switch button. Can avoid operational confusion.

FIG. 2 is a software functional configuration diagram of a pointing device control unit according to an embodiment of the present invention. The software of the present embodiment includes a main body window display section 20 for displaying a main body window, a transparent window display section 30 for displaying a transparent window, a message hook setting and canceling section 40, a trace display, an erasing section 50, and an event of a pointing device. And an overall control unit 10 for controlling each of the above-mentioned processing units. The main body window display section 20 occupies almost the entire area of the display device and the touch panel 70 constituting the pen computer main body 1, and the transparent window display section 30 occupies only a partial area therein.
It consists of the above character input boxes. The message hook setting / releasing unit 40 turns off the hook function and passes the event to the system (OS) when there is an input with the pen on the entire screen. Also, the transparent window display unit 3
If there is an input to 0, the hook function for taking this event into its own application without passing it to the system (OS) is turned on, pen coordinates are taken, and a trace of the pen is displayed. As indicated by the arrow in FIG.
0, 30 and the setting / releasing unit 40, the trace display / erasing unit 50 all operate on the display device and the touch panel 70, and the event performed on the display device and the touch panel 70 is the event monitor of the pointing device. The monitoring and detection are performed by the unit 60, and the overall control unit 10 is notified.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a display example of a screen according to the pointing device control method. In FIG. 3, reference numerals 95 and 90 denote transparent character input boxes, and reference numeral 80 denotes a data display screen of an application (for example, document creation software) being executed at the same time. The positions and sizes of the transparent character input frames, ie, the transparent windows 95 and 90, can be freely changed, and the positions and sizes of the transparent windows 95 and 90 can be arbitrarily set by separately provided switches or mouse movement. Although only the first character is written in the frames of the transparent windows 95 and 90, once it is determined by the monitor that the event has occurred in the transparent window, a series of event information written continuously is transparent. Even if the data is written in a range beyond the range of the windows 95 and 90, it is taken in as a series of information. Here, two transparent character input frames 90 and 95 are displayed in the application screen 80.
For example, when a normal document is created first, the transparent character input frames 90 and 95 are set downward, and characters are input and displayed sequentially from the top to create a sentence. If there is an input location of the handwritten character "pen" on the way, the character "pe" is input in the area of the transparent character input frame 95, and the character "n" is input in the area 90. As shown in FIG. 3, according to the present embodiment, the user performs an operation that is originally unnecessary, such as a button operation for mode switching, while checking the text being created for the word processor software or mail software that is the original input target. Without this, the input operation of the handwritten character and the operation as the mouse can be executed in a natural manner.

FIG. 4 is an operation flowchart of a method for switching between pen operation and mouse operation according to an embodiment of the present invention. The processing flow of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. First, a transparent window is generated and displayed by the transparent window display unit 30 (step 100). Next, the message hook setting / release unit 40 does not pass the event of the entire screen by the pen to the system (OS), and turns on the hook function for taking in the own application (step 110). Next, the above processing, that is, the generation of the transparent window and the turning on of the hook function are performed by the event monitor unit 60 of the pointing device (Step 100,
110), or the event with the pen (O)
After performing the process of passing to S) (step 150), the first pen-down event is obtained (step 12).
0). When the end button set in the overall control unit 10 is pressed, the hook function is turned off by the message hook setting / release unit 40 and the transparent window is closed (step 1).
30). If it is not the end button, the overall control unit 10 determines whether the pen down position is inside or outside the transparent window (step 140).

If the pen down is outside the transparent window, the overall control unit 10 passes the pen down event as it is to the system (OS) as a mouse event (step 150). On the other hand, when the pen down is inside the transparent window, the event monitor unit 60 of the pointing device hooks the subsequent series of events by the pen (step 160), and trace display,
The erasing unit 50 creates a buffer for taking event data into its own application. The pen coordinates are stored as information accompanying the hooked event by the event monitor unit 60 of the pointing device in step 16.
The data is taken into the buffer created in step 0 (step 170). Next, a pen trace is displayed based on the coordinates taken by the trace display / erase unit 50 (step 180). Next, the event monitor 60 of the pointing device monitors the time interval of the occurrence of the event, and the process branches depending on the interval (step 190). If no event occurs for a certain period of time, trace display,
The trace displayed by the erasing unit 50 is erased (step 200), and the process returns to step 120 (that is, the first pen down event acquisition process). On the other hand, if an event occurs within a predetermined time, the process returns to step 160 to hook a series of subsequent events by the pen.

In FIG. 4, "ON ON Hook Function of Event with Pen" in step 110 does not actually hook, but declares a start to turn ON the hook function, that is, to make it usable. On the other hand, in step 160, "Hook event by pen"
Means that the event message is actually hooked, that is, a process of taking the event message into its own application program is performed. In the case of "pass event to system (OS)" in step 150, only the hook function is turned on, so there is no need to turn off the hook. However, when the “end button” in step 130 is pressed, or when another function switching button (for example, switching to a soft keyboard function) is pressed,
"Message hook must be turned off".

[0014]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Switching between pen operation and mouse operation using a transparent window allows you to operate while checking the information of the application that is the original input target open behind,
As a result, visibility is dramatically improved. In addition, since the switch button for pen operation / mouse operation is not required, unnecessary operations can be omitted, and operational confusion caused by forgetting to press down the switch button can be avoided.
Operability can be improved.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external perspective view of a typical pen computer to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is a software functional configuration diagram of a method for switching between a pen operation and a mouse operation according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a display example when the present invention is implemented.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating a method for switching between a pen operation and a mouse operation according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... pen computer body including CPU and memory, 2 ...
Display section and touch panel section, 3 pen, 10 whole control section, 20 body window display section, 30 transparent window display section, 40 message hook setting and release section, 5
0: Trace display and deletion unit, 60: Event monitor unit of pointing device, 70: Display device and touch panel, 80: Application screen opened behind transparent window, Characters in 90, 95: Trace of handwritten characters by pen Display, 90, 95 ... Transparent window.

Continued on the front page F term (reference) 5B087 AA09 AB14 BC03 CC01 CC05 CC26 DD02 DD10 5E501 AA02 AC37 BA03 BA05 CA03 CA04 CB05 CB11 CC04 EA14 EB05 FA02

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A pointing device control method for switching between pen operation and mouse operation, wherein a transparent window whose position and size can be freely changed on a screen is generated, and a pen-down event is generated using a message hook function. Acquiring the information, determining whether the pen-down event has occurred within the transparent window or outside the transparent window by referring to the pen-down event information, and determining whether the pen-down event position is within the transparent window. In the case of, a series of event information generated with the subsequent pen operation is taken in as handwriting input operation information, the position coordinate data accompanying the pen movement in the pen down state is held, and the position coordinate data is trace displayed on the screen. After the pen-up event has occurred, the trace display is erased after a certain period of time. The handwriting input mode is canceled, and when the pen-down event position is outside the transparent window, mouse event information generated by a series of subsequent operations is directly passed to the system and processed as the mouse operation mode. How to switch between pointing device pen operation and mouse operation. 2. The method for switching between a pen operation and a mouse operation according to claim 1, wherein if it is determined that the pen-down event position has occurred in a transparent window, a subsequent series of pen operations is performed on the transparent window. A method for switching between a pen operation and a mouse operation, wherein a series of pen-down events is taken in as handwriting input operation information even if the event occurs in an area beyond the range of the window. 3. A pen operation mode is determined when a pen-down event operated by one pointing device is performed within a character input box, and when the pen-down event is performed outside the character input box, a mouse is used. An information device, comprising: an event monitor unit that determines an operation mode; and a transparent window display unit that generates and displays a transparent window whose position and dimensions can be freely changed as the character input frame.