JP2008033096A - Display device and display method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a display device and a display method which can correctly and easily display Kanji (Chinese character) complicated in formation even when a dot size can not be enlarged and does not affect an image display other than characters. <P>SOLUTION: In a display panel composed of rectangular pixels, the height and width of one pixel size are made to differ from each other; preferably, the height is made to a half of the width; the height-width ratio of the number of pixels is configured to 2:1 when displaying a character; two pixels in a row in the height direction are used as one pixel except for displaying characters; and thereby a character in a complicated form such as Kanji complicated in formation can be displayed accurately, meanwhile, in displaying an image other than the characters, the image generated by another display means can be displayed. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The display panel of a display device that is a flat panel type display screen such as a liquid crystal display device is formed so that the aspect ratio of the size of the pixels constituting the display panel is different, and the display of characters such as Chinese characters having a particularly complicated configuration is accurate and easy The present invention relates to a display device and a display method.

  In recent years, as a flat panel display, a thickness comprising a display panel such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), an electrophoretic display (electronic paper), an organic EL display, an inorganic EL display and a driving circuit (having a driver IC) for driving the display panel. A wide variety of displays with a small thickness and a small screen size have been proposed, and they are widely used in various applications depending on their characteristics.

  In addition, a display is capable of expressing images in detail by arranging many fine pixels in parallel and increasing the definition. However, when the number of display pixels increases, it is necessary to increase the number of electrodes for displaying images on the display and to increase the density of connection portions of the drive circuit connected to the electrodes.

In a display device that displays an image by combining pixels as described above, when displaying characters such as hiragana and kanji, the vertical and horizontal directions are 16 × 16 dots, 24 × 24 dots, 32 × 32 dots, etc. A dot font is used. It consists of a set of characters necessary to express such a sentence. These characters are designed as fonts and are simply called fonts.
In order to display these fonts on the display panel, for example, character codes such as JIS code, shift JIS code, JIS division code, EUC code, and UNICODE are assigned. It is displayed.

In general, kanji has a complicated configuration that requires more pixels (dots) than other characters, hiragana, katakana, and alphabet. Among display panels, if the display can be time-division driven as a display method, it is possible to display a font with a large number of dots without increasing the number of drive electrodes, but a display that is difficult to time-division drive In the case of a display of the system, when displaying a font with a large number of dots accurately, it is necessary to increase the number of pixels and drive electrodes for driving the pixels.
If the dot size (character frame) for displaying characters is very large, there will be no problem because the display device will be large. However, if the dot size is small, the mounting area of the drive circuit is limited and a large number of drive electrodes are arranged. If it does, it becomes a design problem physically. For this reason, it is preferable that the number of dots is small for the convenience of drive circuit design.

  However, if the number of dots is reduced, character display, particularly kanji notation, is affected. For example, in a display of 16 × 16 dots in length and breadth, kanji with a large number of strokes such as “轟” and “depressed” cannot be displayed as they are, and the number of strokes can be reduced by simplifying and omitting part of the kanji character configuration. It was unavoidable to use the “lie letters” unique to display devices for convenience. Such inaccurate characters are difficult to read, and displaying characters different from the original characters is problematic from an educational standpoint and is not preferable.

  Therefore, the present invention sets the pixel configuration to have different lengths in the vertical and horizontal directions, increases the number of vertical pixels in the character frame, and displays images other than characters and characters, according to the font for characters having a large number of strokes. By displaying pixels as they are, and displaying images other than characters, by controlling the pixels used for the display by displaying at least two pixels as one pixel so that the sizes in the vertical and horizontal directions are substantially the same, Even when the dot size cannot be increased, it is an object to provide a display device and a display method that make it possible to accurately and easily describe kanji characters having a complicated structure and do not affect image display other than characters.

   According to a first aspect of the present invention, in the display device that displays a display image on the display panel in pixel units, the substantially rectangular pixels that constitute the display panel have a vertical length and a horizontal direction of the display image. When displaying images other than characters having different aspect ratios, there is provided means for displaying two pixels as one pixel so that the sizes in the vertical and horizontal directions are substantially the same. It is a display device.

  According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the display device that displays the display image on the display panel in units of pixels, the substantially rectangular pixels constituting the display panel have a horizontal length in the display image. When the length of the direction is set to 1/2, the number of pixels for displaying characters is set to 2: 1, and when images other than characters are displayed, two pixels arranged in the vertical direction are displayed as one pixel. It is a display device characterized by comprising means for performing.

  According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the display device according to the first or second aspect, the display panel is a liquid crystal display panel, an organic EL display panel, an inorganic EL display panel, or an electrophoretic display panel. It is either.

  According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the display device according to any one of the first to third aspects, the pixel array is 16 dots wide and 32 dots long.

  According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the display method for displaying a display image on the display panel in units of pixels, the substantially rectangular pixels constituting the display panel have a vertical length and a horizontal length of the display image. When displaying images other than characters having different aspect ratios, two pixels are displayed as one pixel so that the sizes in the vertical and horizontal directions are substantially the same.

  According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the display device that displays the display image on the display panel in units of pixels, the substantially rectangular pixels constituting the display panel have a horizontal length in the display image. When the length of the direction is set to 1/2, the number of pixels for displaying characters is set to 2: 1, and when images other than characters are displayed, two pixels arranged in the vertical direction are displayed as one pixel. It is a display method characterized by doing.

  The invention according to claim 7 of the present invention is characterized in that, in the display method according to claim 5 or 6, the pixel array is displayed with horizontal 16 dots and vertical 32 dots.

  According to the display device and the display method of the present invention, the size of one pixel of a display panel composed of rectangular pixels is made different vertically and horizontally, preferably the vertical length is ½ of the horizontal length, When the character is displayed, the aspect ratio of the number of pixels is 2: 1, and in other than the character display, two pixels arranged in parallel in the vertical direction are set as one pixel, so that characters such as kanji having a complicated shape can be accurately displayed. On the other hand, in displaying images other than characters, even if an image created by other display means is displayed, display effects such as image distortion do not occur.

  In particular, if one character is composed of 16 dots horizontally and 32 dots vertically, it has the same Kanji expression power as this even though it has fewer pixels than the case of 24 dots horizontally and 24 dots vertically. It becomes possible to have.

The present invention will be described in detail below along the embodiments.
FIG. 1 shows a display device 1 that can be used in the present invention, and a display drive circuit mounting board provided with a display panel 2 having a display section 5 and a drive circuit (such as a display drive driver IC 4) for operating the display panel. 3 is combined. Although not described in detail, a liquid crystal display panel, an organic EL display panel, an inorganic EL display panel, or an electrophoretic display panel (electronic paper) can be used as the display unit 5.

  The display panel 2 has a drive electrode 6 on a substrate, and a drive electrode line extraction portion 8 electrically connected to the drive electrode 6 by a drive electrode line 7 on the back surface of the substrate. The substrate 9 includes a transparent electrode substrate 11 having a transparent electrode 10 as a counter electrode facing the drive electrode 6, and a display unit 12 sandwiched between the display drive circuit substrate 9 and the transparent electrode substrate 11.

The drive electrode 6, the drive electrode line 7, and the lead-out portion 8 need only have conductivity, and a wiring pattern made of foil or plating made of a conductive material such as metal, or a wiring pattern made of conductive printing ink is formed.
Since the transparent electrode substrate 11 is a substrate on the observation side, the transparent electrode substrate 11 can be selected from the materials shown in the display drive circuit substrate 9 as long as it must be transparent so that an image can be observed. Can be used.
Examples of the material for the transparent electrode 10 include, but are not limited to, indium tin oxide (ITO) and indium zinc oxide (IZO).
The transparent electrode 10 is connected to a conductive member 12 formed on the side surface of the display panel 2, and the conductive member 12 is further connected to a display drive circuit mounting printed board 3 through an electrode pad 13.

The display drive circuit mounting substrate 3 is connected to the drive electrode 6 through the electrode 14 and the electrical connection portion 15 and the electrode 17, and the electrode 16 on the opposite surface is connected to the driver IC 4 and a conductive connection material 18 such as a solder ball. Electrically connected.
Although not shown, the display drive circuit mounting substrate 3 has wiring patterns formed on both surfaces of an insulating material (bakelite, epoxy resin, etc.), and may be formed in multiple layers as necessary. These wiring patterns have via holes. And electrically connected to each layer. Further, a drive circuit including a semiconductor element such as a transistor, a capacitor, a resistor, an electrode, and the like is formed. Note that a power supply circuit, a clock, a shift register, a memory buffer, and the like can be incorporated.

As a conductive member that connects the electrical connection portion 15 that connects the display panel 2 and the display drive circuit mounting substrate 3, a conductive adhesive, a conductive tape, an anisotropic conductive film, or the like can be used. Adhesives can be composed by mixing conductive materials such as silver paste and carbon paste with binders such as epoxy resin adhesives and acrylic resin adhesives, but they are conductive and have adhesive strength that can be bonded and fixed. However, the present invention is not limited to these. The conductive adhesive can be formed by dripping an amount necessary to form the electrical connection portion 15.
Conductive tape is a tape in which a conductive adhesive is applied to a metal foil such as aluminum foil or copper foil so that conduction can be obtained. An anisotropic conductive film has a thickness of the crimped part by thermocompression bonding. It has electrical anisotropy that exhibits electrical conductivity with respect to the direction and exhibits insulation with respect to the surface direction of the crimping portion.

  As shown in FIG. 3, the display drive circuit 9 of the display panel 2 can adopt either a known (a) passive matrix method (simple matrix method) or (b) active matrix method, depending on the application. select.

  For example, when an active matrix system is described with an equivalent circuit of TFT, each pixel has one transistor (TFT: Thin Film Transistor) built in, and this operates as a switch for writing the voltage of the data line to the pixel electrode. To do. An analog voltage corresponding to the luminance of the pixel is supplied to the data line. A pulse voltage for turning on and off the transistor is supplied to the gate line, and data is simultaneously written to all the pixels in one horizontal row. This operation is repeated a number of times corresponding to the number of vertical pixels, and a 11-field screen is completed. The voltage written in the pixel is accumulated in the electrostatic capacitance in the pixel, and the voltage is held until the next data is written.

  The passive matrix system has a simple configuration in which orthogonal stripe electrodes are provided on both the display drive circuit substrate 6 and the transparent electrode substrate 10 to drive each pixel at the intersection.

  Note that a display panel that requires current control, such as an organic EL, requires at least two TFTs to control one dot, so the equivalent circuit is complicated, but the basic idea for designing a substrate is The same.

  As the driver IC, a simple controller IC is sufficient for the passive matrix system, but in the active matrix system, there are a gate driver IC and a source driver IC for the gate line and the source line, respectively. Each is mounted on a substrate. This printed circuit board includes an output connector for TFT control output to which output from the driver IC is connected, an input connector for driver control input that receives input to the driver IC, and a connector that allows input to the driver of the next printed circuit board A total of three connectors (output connectors for driver control output) are provided.

  The output connector is connected to the gate connector or the source connector of the substrate on which the TFT described above is formed. The input to the driver IC needs to match the specifications of the IC, but if it is necessary to cascade-connect printed circuit boards on which the driver ICs are mounted, a buffer IC or a serial / parallel conversion IC may be provided.

  When a voltage is applied between the drive electrode 6 and the transparent electrode 11 opposed thereto, an image is displayed on the display unit, which becomes a pixel. FIG. 2 conceptually shows the arrangement of the pixels, and the pixels 20 are configured corresponding to the drive electrodes 6 of the display panel 2. Usually, the pixels 20 are formed in a lattice shape, and the pixels are displayed on the image to be displayed. It is turned ON / OFF accordingly. The number of dots is defined according to the character frame 21 for displaying characters.

  The pixel 20 is conceptually formed in a rectangular shape. In the present invention, the pixels 20 are formed to have different vertical and horizontal sizes. In particular, the pixel X has a vertical length that is ½ of the horizontal length. Thus, when displaying characters, especially kanji, the number of pixels in the vertical direction is doubled, and in the case of kanji having a complicated structure, the number of pixels to be displayed is increased to enable accurate display. . The inventors have a tendency that kanji having a complicated configuration has more horizontal lines than vertical lines, and it is not always necessary to display them with the same aspect ratio of the number of pixels. It has been found that typically the lines that make up a character are thicker than the horizontal line, which leads to readability of kanji. It was found that the same applies to letters such as alphabets.

  Therefore, for example, in the case of character display, a character frame having a limited number of dots can be displayed by setting it to 16 dots horizontally and 32 dots vertically. As shown in FIG. 3, the Chinese character “轟” cannot be displayed accurately as in the case of the character frame having the same aspect ratio so far, as in (a), and in some cases, simplification of the character is required. There was also. On the other hand, according to the present invention, as shown in FIG.

  When displaying characters, especially kanji, on the display panel 2, they can be displayed by the above method. However, when displaying an image (such as an image) other than characters, two pixels arranged vertically with the pixel X are 1 By treating it as a pixel, even if an image created for display on another display panel is displayed on the display panel of the display device of the present invention, there is no influence such as image distortion or inaccurate display of the image. .

  In this case, the display method switches the display method of characters and images by determining the format of data input to the display device, and is input in, for example, a file format as shown in the flowchart of FIG. In this case, switching control is performed by identifying the file attribute such as text and the file format of the image (e.g., extension such as BMP, JPEG, and GIF) to combine two pixels into one pixel.

  The file format of the input data (STEP 1) is determined (STEP 2). In the case of characters, the font data corresponding to the character code constituting the data is expanded (STEP 3), and the characters are displayed. Image data is developed (STEP 4) by treating two pixels arranged in the direction as one pixel, and image display is performed.

  Conventionally, a display panel with a small number of display dots has been difficult to accurately display kanji characters having a complicated structure, and inaccurate display or simplified display must be performed. The size of one pixel of the display panel is different vertically and horizontally, the vertical length is ½ of the horizontal length, and the aspect ratio of the number of pixels when displaying characters is 2: 1. Except for character display, two pixels aligned in the vertical direction are set as one pixel, and pixel control is performed in character display and non-character image display, enabling accurate display of characters such as kanji with complex shapes. On the other hand, in image display other than characters, even if an image created by other display means is displayed, there is no display influence such as image distortion.

FIG. 11 is a cross-sectional view illustrating a structure of a display device that can be used in the present invention. It is a schematic explanatory drawing explaining the structure of the display panel which can be used for this invention. It is explanatory drawing explaining the display of the Chinese character by this invention. It is a flowchart explaining an example of switching control of the character and image display of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Display apparatus 2 ... Display panel 3 ... Display drive circuit mounting board 4 ... Display drive driver IC
DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 5 ... Display part 6 ... Drive electrode 7 ... Drive electrode line 8 ... Drive electrode line taking-out part 9 ... Display drive circuit board 10 ... Transparent electrode 11 ... Transparent electrode board DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 12 ... Conductive member 13 ... Electrode pad 14 ... Electrode 15 ... Electrical connection part 16 ... Electrode 17 ... Electrode 18 ... Conductive connection material 20 ... Pixel 21 ... Character frame

Claims (7)

  In a display device that displays a display image on a display panel in pixel units, the substantially rectangular pixels constituting the display panel have an aspect ratio in which the vertical length and the horizontal length of the display image are different from each other. A display device comprising: means for displaying two pixels as one pixel so that the vertical and horizontal sizes are substantially the same when displaying an image other than characters.   In a display device that displays a display image on a display panel in units of pixels, a substantially rectangular pixel that constitutes the display panel has a vertical length of the display image that is 1/2 of a horizontal length, A display comprising: means for displaying two pixels arranged in the vertical direction as one pixel when an image other than characters is displayed with an aspect ratio of 2: 1. apparatus.   The display device according to claim 1, wherein the display panel is one of a liquid crystal display panel, an organic EL display panel, an inorganic EL display panel, and an electrophoretic display panel.   The display device according to claim 1, wherein the pixel arrangement is 16 dots wide and 32 dots long.   In a display method of displaying a display image on a display panel in pixel units, the substantially rectangular pixels constituting the display panel have an aspect ratio in which the vertical length and the horizontal length of the display image are different, and other than characters A display method characterized by displaying two pixels as one pixel so that the vertical and horizontal sizes are substantially the same when the above image is displayed.   In a display device that displays a display image on a display panel in units of pixels, a substantially rectangular pixel that constitutes the display panel has a vertical length of the display image that is 1/2 of a horizontal length, The display method is characterized in that when the number of pixels for displaying is set to 2: 1 and an image other than characters is displayed, two pixels arranged in the vertical direction are displayed as one pixel.   The display method according to claim 5 or 6, wherein the arrangement of the pixels is displayed by 16 dots horizontally and 32 dots vertically.