JPH0451312A - Information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the operability by allowing a button on a mouse or a key on a keyboard to have a selection control function for a pull-down menu and an icon like a software. CONSTITUTION:When a turn-on click is executed to a middle button, an arbitrary pull-down menu is displayed, and a mouse cursor is also moved to an item name display area of the menu. When a turn-off click is executed on a menu element, a function of the menu element is executed, and also, the pull-down menu is also erased, and the mouse cursor is moved to its original editing area. When a turn-on click is executed to the right button, the mouse cursor is moved onto the element selected at present in an icon area. When a turn-off click is executed on the icon area, an icon function becomes the present selection item, its element code is informed to a processing program, and the mouse cursor is displayed in the original editing area.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an information processing device, and particularly to an information processing device that uses a mouse or a keyboard as an input device and uses a CRT or the like as a display device, in which pull-down menus and icons are used. The present invention relates to an information processing device with improved menu selection technology.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, in information processing devices such as word processors, when a mouse is used to input coordinates of an editing area and select menus such as pull-down menus and icons, the cursor can be moved between the editing area and the menu area by manually moving the mouse. This is done by In this case, a wide area to be edited is generally secured in the center of the screen, and pull-down menus and icons are generally laid out at the edges of the screen. FIG. 8 shows an example of this,
In the figure, ■ is the editing area, ■ is the pull-down menu area, and ■
indicate icon areas, respectively. The editing operations on the screen configured as described above are as shown in FIGS. 9 and 10 for boat fishing.

FIG. 9 shows an example of operating a pull-down menu, taking graphic editing as an example. In the figure, ■ indicates a state in which the editing target is selected. ■ is for copying,
This shows the cursor being moved to the "Modification" pull-down menu. ■ indicates that the "modification" pull-down menu is displayed by clicking ON, and copying is selected from the pull-down menu. Also, ■ indicates the point where the mouse cursor has been moved to the original editing area.

Further, FIG. 1O shows an example of operating the icon menu, taking graphic editing as an example. In the figure, ■ indicates that the mouse cursor is moved from above the editing area. ■ indicates that the mouse cursor was moved to the icon area and the dot icon was selected. ■ indicates that the mouse cursor was moved to the editing area again and a point was drawn.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In the above conventional technology, when editing is performed while operating a pull-down menu or icon using a mouse,
The mouse had to be moved back and forth between the editing area and the pull-down menu area or icon area, resulting in poor operability.

In addition, pull-down menus and icons can generally only be operated with a mouse, so in editing where keyboard operations are mainly performed with both hands, such as Japanese editing, in order to use the pull-down function, it is necessary to switch the mouse to one hand. This made the operation difficult.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and its purpose is to solve the above-mentioned problems in the conventional technology, and to enable the use of a mouse to input the coordinates of an editing area and a pull-down menu in an editing processing device such as a word processor. An object of the present invention is to provide an information processing device that enables menu selection without moving a mouse cursor between an editing area and a menu area, even when the information processing apparatus is used to select a menu such as an edit area and an icon. Another object of the present invention is that when keys on a keyboard are used to select a pull-down menu or icon, the menu selection described above can be made without moving the cursor from the editing area to the pull-down menu area or icon area. An object of the present invention is to provide an information processing device that does the following.

[Means to solve the problem]

The above-mentioned object of the present invention is to provide an information processing apparatus in which a mouse is used for inputting coordinates, selecting a pull-down menu, and selecting an icon. An information processing apparatus characterized in that a mouse cursor is controlled by a button operation on the mouse, or an information processing apparatus for inputting information using a keyboard,
The keyboard is provided with a key corresponding to a pull-down mouse cursor processing function and a key corresponding to an icon mouse cursor processing function, and the cursor is controlled to select the pull-down menu and the icon by operating the keys on the keyboard described in 01j. This can be achieved by an information processing device characterized by the following, or by an information processing device combining these.

[Function] In the information processing device according to the present invention, in an information processing device in which information is input using a mouse or a keyboard, a button on the mouse or a key on the keyboard,
Since the software has a pull-down menu and icon selection control function, it is possible to significantly improve operability for the user.

[Example] Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described in detail based on the drawings.

FIG. 2 is a system configuration diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a CPU, 2 is a main memory, 3 is a keyboard, 4 is a three-button mouse that will be detailed later, 5 is an image display, 6 is a screen memory, 7 is an image memory, 8 is a disk, and 9 is a graphic Processor, 10 is an image processor, 11 is a CG processor, 1
2 indicates a page printer, and 13 indicates a bus.

FIG. 3 shows a processing block diagram of this embodiment.

21 to 24 are input systems, including code input using the keyboard, menu display/input, and coordinate input using the mouse;
Display/enter menu. 25 indicates a processing program for a word processor according to the present invention. 26-30
1 is a display/printing system, and the processing program 25 described above displays menus and editing status on the screen, prints editing results, etc.

Since the present invention relates to processing in the above-mentioned input system, the input system will be particularly described in detail below.

In FIG. 3, reference numeral 21 is a mouse input unit, which is a part that moves the mouse cursor, converts to screen coordinate values, and notifies buttons based on mouse movement data and button notification data. Button notification data includes button type and state,
That is, it is notified whether it is an ON click state or an OFF click state.

A keyboard input section 22 notifies the user of the pressed key code and data after conversion into kanji. Reference numeral 23 denotes an input merging section, which merges data from the mouse input section 21 and data from the keyboard input section 22, and converts the data into serial data. Reference numeral 24 denotes an input processing section, which is a section that performs the processing of this embodiment.

The features of this embodiment are realized by adding menu operation functions to the mouse buttons and keyboard.

First, a first embodiment corresponding to claim 1 will be described. This embodiment shows an operation example of menu operation using a mouse button.

FIG. 4 shows the definition of mouse buttons in this embodiment. Here, a mouse with three buttons as shown in figure (a) is used, and the left button is used for inputting the coordinates of the editing area,
Use the middle button for pull-down menus and selections, and the right button for icon display and selection.

FIG. 4(b) shows the function of the left button. The left button is
Movement and button notifications are performed only in "edit area" 2, and relative coordinates from the top left of the window are notified as coordinate data.

FIG. 4(c) shows the function of the middle button. In the figure, ■ indicates that the mouse cursor is initially in the editing area. In this state, when the mouse button is clicked, an arbitrary pull-down menu is displayed, and the mouse cursor is also moved to the menu item name display area (see ■). Furthermore, when the mouse cursor is moved in the direction of an element within the pull-down menu area in the ON-click state, the element area under the mouse cursor position is reversed (see ■). When you click OFF on a menu element, the function of the menu element at the position of the mouse cursor is executed, the pull-down menu is also deleted, and the mouse cursor is moved to the original editing area (see ■).

FIG. 4(d) shows the function of the right button. In the figure, ■ indicates that the mouse cursor is initially in the editing area. In this state, when the right button is clicked, the mouse cursor is moved to the currently selected element in the icon area (see ■).

Also, if you move the mouse cursor to another element while it is ON-clicked, the inverted area will also be moved accordingly (
■Reference). Furthermore, if you click OFF on the icon area, the icon function at the mouse cursor position becomes the current selection item, the element code is notified to the processing program, and the mouse cursor is displayed in the original editing area (see ■).

The above-mentioned operations are mainly executed by the input processing section 23 shown in FIG. The input processing unit 23 operates under the O8 (operating system) and performs processing by referring to various definition files. All interfaces with processing programs are performed using the O8 pipe function.

FIG. 5 shows an input/output related diagram of the input/output section 23 described above.

In the figure, 25 is a processing program. Processing program 2
In step 5, after setting the editing window and displaying the icon, the window position and size, initial position of the icon, and initial pull-down menu number are notified as parameters for the input processing unit 23, and the process waits for command input. Also,
Reference numeral 24 denotes an input processing unit. The input processing unit 24 internally sets the parameters sent from the processing program 25 as an operating environment, and at the timing of inputting a command from the processing program 25, inputs the mouse and keyboard from the input merging unit 23. Waits for input of data.

After being notified of the input data, the input processing unit 24 performs pull-down menu processing, icon processing, key code processing, etc. based on the input data while referring to the icon definition file, pull-down menu definition file, icon data file, and pull-down menu data file. It performs processing such as notification of kana-kanji data, and notifies the processing program of data such as window relative coordinates, pull-down menu number, icon number, key code, kana-kanji data, etc. as a processing result. The processing program 25 receives this and executes the command processing program. In addition, Fig. 6 shows the data formats of the various definition files mentioned above (Fig. 1 (a) to (j)).
2 shows an operation flowchart of the input processing section. Figure 1 (
a) is the main program of the input processing section;
b) to (j) are its subroutines. In addition, the first
FIG. 7(a) also includes operations related to a second embodiment corresponding to claim 2 (shown in FIG. 7), which will be described later.

The operation of this embodiment will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1(a) to (d) and FIGS. 2 to 6.

First, in step 41, the editing mode is set to cursor mode, and in step 42, input data is read. Then, it is determined whether the read input data is mouse data or not (step 43), and if it is mouse data, step 45)
If the data is not mouse data (keyboard data), the process branches to keyboard data processing in step 44.

Hereinafter, first, the contents of the mouse data processing 45 will be explained.

The mouse data processing 45 is a process as shown in FIG. 1(b). That is, if a button notification is not made, the window coordinates are calculated and notified, but if a button notification is made, depending on which button is pressed, the window coordinates are calculated first. ).

That is, when the pressed button is the left button, movement and button notification are performed only on the editing area, and relative coordinates from the upper left of the window are notified as coordinate data. Further, when the pressed button is the left button, an arbitrary pull-down menu is displayed by ON-clicking the mouse button, and the mouse cursor is also moved to the item name display area of the menu. In this state, when the mouse cursor is moved in the direction of an element within the pull-down menu area, the element area under the mouse cursor position is reversed. Here, if you click OFF on the menu element,
The function of the menu element at the mouse cursor position is executed, the pull-down menu is also deleted, and the mouse cursor is moved to the original editing area.

Also, if the pressed button is the right button, turn on the right button while the mouse cursor is in the editing area.
Clicking moves the mouse cursor over the currently selected element in the icon area. In this state, if you move the mouse cursor to another element, the highlighted area will also move accordingly. Further, when an OFF click is made on the icon area, the icon function at the mouse cursor position becomes the current selection item, the element code is notified to the processing program, and the mouse cursor is displayed in the original editing area.

According to the above embodiment, when the mouse is used to select a pull-down menu or icon, the mouse cursor is
It is now possible to select a pull-down menu or icon without moving from the editing area to the pull-down menu area or icon area, which has the effect of greatly improving operability.

Next, a second embodiment corresponding to claim 2 will be described. This embodiment shows an operation example of a menu operation using a keyboard.

FIG. 7(a) shows the definition of the pull-down menu key and icon menu key of the keyboard in this embodiment. Here, by pressing the pull-down menu key, the cursor key on the keyboard operates as a selection key for the pull-down menu, and by pressing the icon key, the cursor key on the keyboard operates as the selection key for the icon.

FIG. 7(b) shows the function of the pull-down key.

When the pull-down key is pressed, an arbitrary pull-down menu is displayed, and a cursor is displayed at the item name display position (see ■). The above-mentioned pull-down menu is set by the processing program. Here, by pressing the down cursor movement key, the element cursor is displayed and the element can be selected (see ■). Note that the element cursor can be moved upward by pressing the up cursor key.

Selection of other pull-down menus is performed by pressing the left/right cursor movement key. To execute the function of a menu element, press the execution key.

When the execution key is pressed, the element code of the selected element is notified to the processing program and the pull-down key is cleared.

FIG. 7(C) shows the functions of the icon keys. When the icon key is pressed, the selected item can be moved up, down, left, and right using the up, down, left, and right cursor movement keys (see ■). By pressing the icon key again, the 1 down, left and right cursor keys are released.

Below, Figures 1 (a,) and (e) to (J), Figures 2 to
The operation of this embodiment will be explained using FIGS. 5 and 7.

First, in step 41, the editing mode is set to cursor mode, and in step 42, input data is read.If the read input data is not mouse data (keyboard data), the keyboard data processing in step 44 is performed.
The branching is as described above.

The contents of the keyboard data processing 44 will be explained below. The mouse data processing 44 is a process as shown in FIG. 1(e). That is, when the cursor mode is icon mode, icon mode processing 51 is performed, when the cursor mode is edit mode, edit mode processing 52 is performed, and when the cursor mode is pulldown mode, pulldown mode processing 53 is performed. This is what we do.

That is, in the icon mode processing 51, the icon key cursor processing shown in FIG. 1(f) and (1) is performed, and in the editing mode processing 52, the editing mode processing shown in FIG. 1(g) is performed. Further, in the pull-down mode processing 53, pull-down key cursor processing as shown in FIGS. 1(h) and (j) is performed.

According to the above embodiment, when keys on the keyboard are used to select a pull-down menu or icon, similar to a mouse, the cursor can be used to select the pull-down menu or icon without moving the cursor from the editing area to the pull-down menu area or icon area. You will now be able to make a selection of
This has the effect of significantly improving operability.

It should be noted that the embodiments described in "1" are merely examples of the present invention, and it goes without saying that the present invention is not limited thereto.

[Effects of the Invention] As described in detail above, according to the present invention, in an information processing apparatus in which a mouse is used for inputting coordinates, selecting a pull-down menu, and selecting an icon, the mouse is compatible with a pull-down mouse cursor processing function. By providing a button that corresponds to the mouse cursor processing function of the icon and a button corresponding to the mouse cursor processing function of the icon, the mouse cursor is controlled by button operations on the mouse, so that the mouse can be used to input coordinates of the editing area, pull-down menus, icons, etc. Even when used for menu selection, it is possible to realize an information processing apparatus that allows menu selection without moving the mouse cursor between the editing area and the menu area.

Similarly, in an information processing device that inputs information using a keyboard, the keyboard is provided with a key corresponding to a pull-down mouse cursor processing function and a key corresponding to an icon mouse cursor processing function, The cursor can now be moved from the editing area to the pull-down menu area or icon area when keys on the keyboard are used to select a pull-down menu or icon. This has the effect that it is possible to realize an information processing device that allows the above-mentioned menu selection without having to move.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is an operation flowchart of the input processing unit in a system showing an embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a system configuration diagram of the embodiment, Fig. 3 is a processing block diagram of the embodiment, and Fig. 4 is a first embodiment of the system. FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the input/output relationship of the input/output section, FIG. 6 is a diagram showing the data formats of various definition files, and FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the definition of the mouse buttons in the second embodiment. A diagram showing the definition, Figure 8 is an explanatory diagram of a system for selecting menus such as pull-down menus and icons using a mouse, Figure 9 is a diagram showing an example of operating a pull-down menu, and Figure 10 is an icon menu. It is a figure which shows the example when operating. 1: cPU, 2: Main memory, 3: Keyboard, 4 Mouse, 5: Image display, 6: Screen memory, 7: Image memory, 8: Disk, 9 Nigella Flick processor, 10: Image processor, 11 :CG
Processor, 12: Page printer, 13: Bus, 21
: Mouse input section, 22: Keyboard input section, 23: Input merging section, 24: Input processing section, 25: Processing program, 2
6-30: Display/printing system. Diagram (Part 3) (c) Full-down mouse force processing diagram (Part 6) (f) Icon moto processing diagram (Part 7) (g) Edit moto processing diagram (Part 2) Diagram (Part 1) ) (b) (a) Diagram (Part 3) Diagram (Part 1) (a) Definition diagram of pull-down menu and icon menu (Part 2)

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) In an information processing device that uses a mouse for inputting coordinates, selecting pull-down menus, and selecting icons, the mouse is equipped with a button that corresponds to a pull-down mouse cursor processing function and a button that corresponds to an icon mouse cursor processing function. An information processing apparatus characterized in that the mouse cursor is controlled by button operations on the mouse. (2) In an information processing device that inputs information using a keyboard, the keyboard is provided with a key corresponding to a pull-down mouse cursor processing function and a key corresponding to an icon mouse cursor processing function, An information processing device characterized in that a cursor is controlled to select a pull-down menu and an icon by key operation. (3) The information processing device according to claim 2, further comprising the mouse according to claim 1.