JPH0473157B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a character input/display method for a terminal device that inputs characters and sends a character code to a central unit and displays it, particularly for a kanji input terminal device that can input many types of characters. It is suitable.

It has been conventional practice to execute software requiring character input on a central device (hereinafter referred to as a host) and to provide the character input from a character input terminal connected to the host.
Conventional character input terminal devices for such uses generate character codes corresponding to characters input from a keyboard etc. and send them to the host, as well as input characters to the CRT for confirmation by the operator. It is usually displayed on a display or the like. Therefore, these terminal devices have not only character code information but also pattern information for display (dot pattern information, stroke information, etc.).

However, in the case of a kanji input terminal device, if an attempt is made to display all kanji, the required display pattern information will become enormous. Therefore, many kanji input terminal devices have a standard character set of about 2,000 to 6,000 characters, and provide only these display patterns. Normally, kanji are input within the range of this standard character set. In addition, if there is a necessary kanji other than the standard character set, it is stored as an external character area in the pattern storage device of the kanji input terminal so that the user can associate the character pattern using an appropriate free code. Leave a margin of several tens to hundreds of characters. However, the number of kanji that can be registered as custom characters is limited, and it is extremely difficult to deal with the need for more custom characters. Another problem arises when, for example, several departments within one company each introduce a kanji input terminal. In other words, even if you define custom characters for each department, or try to unify the definitions of custom characters, the total number of characters required by each department exceeds the number of characters that can be accommodated by each terminal device, making it impossible to unify them. Sometimes it happens. In such a situation, even if the terminal devices are connected to a common host, their respective character sets are partially different, causing inconvenience in sharing and exchanging data.

Furthermore, in a system in which a plurality of kanji input terminals are connected to a host, a pattern storage device may be provided not in each terminal but in the host and shared by the plurality of terminals. In this method, the number of characters that can be accommodated in the pattern storage device can be increased, and the above-mentioned problem of non-uniformity of external characters between terminals does not occur. However, this method also has significant drawbacks. That is, each time a Kanji character is input to a terminal device, the host must retrieve the display pattern of that Kanji character from the pattern storage device and send it to the terminal device. Therefore, the load placed on the processing capacity of the host for this processing and the amount of traffic on the transmission line or input/output bus between the host and the terminal device become considerably large. In addition, due to the increase in host load and traffic, the response time from when a kanji is entered on a terminal device to when that kanji is displayed tends to become long, which is ergonomically unfavorable and extremely uncomfortable to use. Become. This tendency becomes more noticeable as the number of terminal devices connected to the host increases.

The present invention eliminates the drawbacks of the conventional methods as mentioned above,
The purpose of this project is to provide a low-cost character input/display method that allows the use of character sets that include a large number of character types and is free from problems such as inconsistency in external characters between terminal devices and delays in display response time. The display pattern of some characters in the character set is stored in the device, and when the character code of the input character is sent to the host, the display pattern corresponding to that character code is stored in the terminal device. Information regarding whether or not the character code is used is added to the character code.
This allows the host to pass the sent character code to the software running on the host, and the information added to it means that the terminal device does not have a display pattern that corresponds to the character code. If this is determined, the display pattern held by the host is sent back to the terminal device.

The invention will be explained in detail below based on the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a kanji input terminal device that operates according to the method of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the portion of the host configuration related to the present invention. 3 and 4 are flowcharts showing the operation of the kanji input terminal device shown in FIG. 1, and FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation of the host shown in FIG. 2.

In FIG. 1, a tablet 1 is used as the kanji input means. The top surface of the tablet 1 is divided into a grid, and each section has a Chinese character written on it. Additionally, some sections are used for various mode controls, hexadecimal input, etc. When a certain section of the tablet is pressed (process a in FIG. 3), the tablet control section 2 generates a ticket for the pressed section (process b in FIG. 3). Based on these coordinates, the input control unit 3 searches the kanji reference table 4 and reads out the kanji code corresponding to the kanji written in that section (process c in FIG. 3). Note that the kanji code referred to here includes not only codes representing kanji in the normal sense, but also codes representing alphanumeric characters, kana characters, and special functions (such as input mode switching instructions explained below). The control unit 3 first determines whether the input is an instruction to switch input modes (determination d in FIG. 3).
That is, the kanji input terminal device of this embodiment has two input modes: an on-screen character mode in which when a section on the tablet is pressed, a kanji code corresponding to the kanji written in that section is input, and a 4-digit kanji code representing the kanji code. It also has a hexadecimal mode where you can specify kanji by inputting hexadecimal numbers from the tablet. If it is an input mode switching instruction, the input control unit 3 stores a code indicating the instructed input mode (process e in FIG. 3), and the kanji input terminal waits for input.
If there is no input mode switching instruction, input control unit 3
checks the current mode (determination g in FIG. 3), and if it is the board character mode, transfers control to the pattern search section 5 to search the pattern storage device retrieval table 6 (process j in FIG. 4). If the hexadecimal mode is found in judgment g in FIG. 3, hexadecimal code assembly processing consisting of process f, judgment h, and process i in FIG. 3 is performed. In other words, in FIG. 1, control is transferred to the hexadecimal processing unit 13,
The hexadecimal processing unit 13 gives the given kanji code (actually numbers 0 to 9, representing alphabets A to F) to the lookup table 14 to obtain the corresponding 1 digit hexadecimal number (4 bits of binary number), The built-in buffer register is shifted to the left by 4 bits, and the 4 bits just given are placed in the lower 4 bits (process f in FIG. 3). In addition, the digit counter is incremented by "1", and it is determined whether the count value has reached "4" (determination h in Figure 3). If it has not become "4", the kanji code in the buffer register has not yet been set. Since it is completed, the next digit is waited for input, and if it is "4" again, the kanji card in the buffer register is completed and control is transferred to the pattern search unit 5 (processing i in FIG. 3). If the search in the pattern storage device retrieval table 6 is successful (judgment k in FIG. 4), the address of the pattern storage device 7 is obtained, and the pattern search section 5 gives the address to the pattern storage device 7 to retrieve the read display pattern. The CRT display unit 8 performs display according to (processes m and n in FIG. 4).

The above operation is similar to the conventional kanji input/display device, but in the present invention, only a part of the display patterns of kanji that can be specified are stored in the pattern storage device 7, so the pattern is There are cases in which the search of the storage device retrieval table 6 fails, that is, the address corresponding to the given kanji code is not included in the retrieval table 6. In this case, display is suspended and control is transferred to the transmission/reception control section 9. The transmission/reception control unit 9 generates a code string (in this case, an alphanumeric code string) for transmitting the given kanji code on the transmission line 11.
Finally, a code of number 1 is added as a determination result code indicating that the corresponding display pattern is not stored in the pattern storage device (Process 1 in FIG. 4). These code strings are then given to the interface section 10 and sent out on the transmission line 11 (process q in Figure 4) (of course, the kanji code may be sent out as a simple bit string, and in this case, the discrimination result code is also 1 bit). ). Then, it waits for the host to return the corresponding display pattern (decision r in FIG. 4). When the host returns a display pattern, it is received by the receiving section 12 via the interface section 10 and the transmission/reception control section 9 and stored. Here, the loop of judgment r in FIG. 4 is escaped, and the receiving section 12
The display pattern is sent to the CRT display unit 8. Note that even if the display pattern is stored in the pattern storage device 7, the kanji code is sent to the host in the same way, but in this case, the discrimination result code becomes the number 0 (processes o and p in FIG. 4).

The operation on the host side will be explained below using FIGS. 2 and 5. In the block diagram of FIG. 2, the control section 22 receives the Kanji code from the transmission line 11 via the interface section 21 (process t in FIG. 5).
Here, the control unit 22 separates the discrimination result code from the received kanji code and determines its value (fifth
Diagram judgment u). If the discrimination result code is the number 0, it means that the display pattern has been stored in the kanji input terminal device, so the control unit 22
The kanji code is stored in the input area 24 above 3 (process w in FIG. 5). Also, if the discrimination result code is number 1,
This indicates that the display is incomplete on the kanji input terminal device side because there is no display pattern. Therefore, the control section 22 searches the large-capacity pattern storage section 25 on the disk 23, reads out the display pattern, converts it into a transmission format, and sends it to the transmission line 11 via the interface section 21 (FIG. , x, y).

As explained above, in the present invention, display patterns that cannot fit into the terminal device are stored on the host side, so the user does not need to consider the display patterns actually stored in the terminal device currently in use. . If you store frequently used character display patterns in the terminal device's pattern storage device,
For example, in the case of kanji, the capacity of the pattern storage device is
By setting it to around 2000 characters, there is almost no access to display patterns held by the host. Therefore, even when a large number of terminals are connected to a host, there is almost no increase in the load on the host due to sending out display patterns, there is almost no delay in response, etc. Also, whether or not it is necessary to transfer the display pattern from the host side is indicated by the information added to the character code representing the character input on the terminal when it is sent to the host. There is no need to provide a separate protocol for requesting display patterns from the host, reducing software complexity and load. Furthermore, since this additional information is small, the increase in the load of information transfer between the terminal device and the host is also small.

Note that the pattern storage device, pattern storage device table, etc. of the terminal device may be configured with a writable storage element, and writing may be performed from the host side as necessary, such as when power is turned on. With this configuration, it is also possible to send an optimal display pattern set depending on the application of the terminal device to its pattern storage device, thereby further improving display responsiveness to character input. In addition, although a tablet was used as the character input means for specifying the characters to be input in this implementation, other means such as a multi-stage shift keyboard,
Associative input, kana-kanji conversion, voice input, etc. may also be used. Furthermore, the character code may be sent from the terminal device to the host not only for each character input, but also for each line, screen, or file. Also, when sending character codes to the host in larger units like this, only when the display pattern of the input character is not stored in the terminal device, the character code is immediately sent to the host and displayed. You may also request a pattern. In addition, the display format on the display unit and display screen has not been described in detail since it is not directly related to the gist of the present invention, but it goes without saying that those skilled in the art can freely adopt configurations in various formats as necessary. stomach. Regarding the characters, although Chinese characters are used in this embodiment, other characters may be used, and the characters mentioned here should be interpreted in a wide sense including symbols and figures. Further, the control of the terminal device may be completely implemented by hardware, or may be controlled by software such as firmware using a microprocessor or the like.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the kanji input terminal device according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the part of the host configuration related to the present invention, and FIGS. 3 and 4 are the kanji characters shown in FIG. FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation of the input terminal device, and FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation of the host shown in FIG. 1...tablet, 3...input control unit, 4...
Kanji reference table, 5 pattern search section, 6... pattern storage device traction chart, 7... pattern storage device, 8...
...CRT display section, 9...Transmission/reception control section, 10, 2
1...Interface section, 11...Transmission line, 12
. . . receiving section, 22 . . . control section, 25 . . . large capacity pattern storage section.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A central device, which is connected to the central device and displays a character specified by a character input means to be given to the central device, and sends a character code representing the character to the central device. and a terminal device having a first pattern storage section for storing display patterns of some of the characters of the specifiable character set, wherein the central device receives the transmitted character code and stores the display patterns of the characters. a second pattern storage unit for displaying a character inputted to the terminal device on the terminal device by being specified by the character input means, and transmitting a character code representing the character to the central device; In the character input display method, the display pattern of the specified character is the first character input display method.
If it is not stored in the pattern storage unit,
When the terminal device sends the character code representing the designated character to the central device, it adds information indicating that the corresponding display pattern is not stored in the first pattern storage unit, and When the central device receives a character code to which information indicating that the display pattern is not stored in the first pattern storage unit is received,
A character input/display method characterized in that the display pattern corresponding to the character code is read from the second pattern storage section and sent to the terminal device, thereby causing the terminal device to display the display pattern.