JPH05189152A - Method for controlling cursor with pointing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To easily move a cursor by automatically moving the cursor in a designated moving direction and automatically stopping the move of the cursor when the cursor arrives at a display object displayed on a display screen. CONSTITUTION:When the moving direction of a cursor 1 is designated by the previously decided operation of a pointing device, the cursor 1 is automatically moved in the designated moving direction and when the cursor 1 arrives at the display object displayed on the display screen, the move of the cursor 1 is automatically stopped. Namely, when a user executes the previously decided operation from the pointing device, an information processor calculates a moving passage 4 of the cursor 1 based on the instructed moving direction and retrieves a fixed range 2 fixed with the cursor moving passage 4 as a center in the moving direction and when any element data are founded out, the cursor 1 is stopped at that position. Thus, the pointing device (cursor can be easily moved to an existent graphic and further, convenience is improved as well.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus using a pointing device such as a mouse.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a general cursor control method using a pointing device has been to move the cursor smoothly by following the movement of the pointing device. That is, using a pointing device,
When drawing a figure, a table, etc., the pointing device had to be continuously operated to move the cursor to a desired position. For example, when moving the cursor to the position where a certain figure exists, the user needs to perform the following operation. Check the current cursor position, determine the direction and distance to move the cursor, operate the pointing device while checking the cursor position one after another, and immediately stop the pointing device when the target position and the cursor overlap. ..

In this conventional method, when the cursor is to be moved for a long distance, the pointing device needs to be reciprocated several times, which is complicated.

As a means for solving this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Sho-6 has been published.
There is a cursor movement control system disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 1-80421. With this method, when the mouse movement speed exceeds the low speed setting value, the cursor is moved in proportion to the mouse movement speed, and when the mouse movement speed becomes lower than the low speed setting value, the previous mouse movement speed is higher than the high speed setting value. If it is, the cursor moving speed is kept at a high speed, and when the mouse moving speed becomes a value equal to or higher than the low speed set value from the stationary state or the semi-static state, the high speed state of the cursor is released.

[0005]

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION Problems to be Solved by the Invention
According to the conventional technique described in Japanese Patent No. 421, when the cursor is moved for a long distance, the mouse may be actually moved only near the starting point and the destination point of the mouse, so that the complexity of the mouse operation is reduced. To be done.

However, even in this method, it is necessary to stop the cursor near the target point, so that the user is burdened if the position to which the cursor is to be moved must be accurately determined. For example, when drawing a figure using an existing line or point as a starting point (such as a table frame), it is necessary to carefully position the cursor in order to prevent it from protruding, and conventional technology still has room for improvement in this respect. there were.

An object of the present invention is to provide a cursor control method by which a user can easily move the cursor to the existing position of a figure, character, etc. already drawn.

[0008]

In order to achieve the above object, a cursor control method according to the present invention is a cursor control method for moving a cursor on a display screen by operating a pointing device. When the moving direction of the cursor is specified by the specified operation, the cursor is automatically moved in the specified moving direction, and when the cursor reaches the display object displayed on the display screen, the movement of the cursor Is to automatically stop.

[0009]

As a typical operation of the present invention, when the user performs a predetermined operation from the pointing device, the information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied calculates the moving path of the cursor based on the instructed moving direction. Then, a certain range centered on the cursor movement path is searched in the movement direction, and when the display data is found, the cursor is stopped at that position.

[0010] It should be noted that with this cursor moving method alone, the cursor may stop each time it touches an existing figure, which in turn puts a burden on the user. Therefore,
The conventional cursor movement method that follows the operation of the pointing device is combined with the method of the present invention so that the user can freely select the cursor movement method.

Hereinafter, the conventional cursor moving method will be referred to as a "following moving method", and the cursor moving method newly introduced in the present invention will be referred to as a "path moving method".

A speed selection method and a time selection method can be considered as a selection method for selecting one of the two types of cursor movement methods. The speed selection method is a method of calculating the moving speed of the cursor from the pointing device, and selecting the follow-up moving method if the moving speed is less than the threshold value, and selecting the path moving method if the moving speed is above the threshold value. On the other hand, the time selection method is a method that selects the follow-up movement method when the input to the pointing device is continuous and the path movement method when the input to the pointing device is instantaneous.

[0013]

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

First, FIG. 10 shows a typical hardware configuration of an information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied. This information processing apparatus includes a display unit 9 such as a CRT and a flat display panel.
1, a processing unit 92 including a CPU, an internal storage unit 93 such as a ROM and a RAM, an external storage unit 94 such as a hard disk device and a floppy disk device, and a keyboard 95.
And a mouse 96 as an example of a pointing device.
Consists of.

Now, in such an information processing apparatus,
The concept of the route movement method according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.
In order to move the cursor 1 in a specific direction by the path moving method, the mouse is momentarily moved in that direction. In the example of FIG. 1, in order to move the cursor 1 to the position of the graphic data 5, the mouse is operated in the direction of arrow 3 in the figure. The moving path 4 is obtained from the direction obtained in this way, image data is searched with a certain area centering on the moving path 4 as the search range 2, and if no data exists within the search range, the search range is moved. Shift in the direction. This process is repeated until data is found, and if found, the cursor is stopped at that position. In this example, the cursor moves to the figure data 5 and stops there.

Such processing according to the present invention is realized by a program. This program can be located in the operating system OS (RAM BIOS) in the system hierarchy shown in FIG.
It can be located in the BIOS or application program.

According to this cursor control method, when the user wants to move the cursor to a specific figure or the like, the cursor is rotated once in the direction toward the target figure or the like. Automatically continues moving in that direction and stops when it reaches the top of the figure.
Therefore, a complicated mouse operation for determining the stop position of the cursor is unnecessary.

FIG. 2 shows a flow chart of a concrete process of the route moving method explained in FIG.

First, with respect to the operation of the cursor, the moving path is calculated based on the moving direction (2a). continue,
The search range 2 is set (2b). The larger the width of the search range 2 in the moving direction is, the smaller the number of searches is, but the cursor may stop before reaching a position where the target display object can be pointed. The width is 1 dot or several dots. The larger the width of the search range 2 in the direction perpendicular to the moving direction is, the higher the probability of hitting the display object is, but the possibility that the cursor is separated from the target display object and stopped is also high. Select the appropriate width. The search within the search range 2 determined in step 2b is performed (2c), and it is checked whether or not the display data exists within the search range 2 (2d). If it exists,
This process is stopped, and if it does not exist, it is checked whether or not the stop condition of the cursor is met (2e). The cursor stop condition is a condition for stopping the cursor that has started to move by operating the mouse, and here, the stop condition for cases other than finding the figure data is defined. That is, when the cursor is moved by the path moving method, if the only condition for stopping the cursor is to find the graphic data, when there is no data on the cursor moving path calculated by the path moving method, the data is searched for permanently. to continue.
In order to avoid this infinite loop state, an effective cursor stop condition is determined regardless of the search result. An example of the cursor stop condition is to stop the cursor on the screen boundary when the search range exceeds the display screen. In step 2e, if the stopping condition of the cursor is met, the process is terminated, and if not, step forward in the search range (2f) and the process returns to step 2c.

As described above, a system having only the path moving method as the cursor moving method is not realistic.
For example, when trying to move the cursor over existing figure data, if the figure data is filled data or complicated data, the cursor will stop many times and move the cursor to the target position. However, it requires an extra operation instead. Therefore, it is preferable that the conventional tracking movement method and the path movement method can be freely selected.

Therefore, the "speed selection method" is proposed as one of the methods for selecting the cursor movement method (following movement method or path movement method). A flow chart of the rate selection method is shown in FIG. In the speed selection method, the moving speed v of the cursor is calculated from the information obtained from the mouse (3a), and when the speed v is equal to or higher than a predetermined threshold value Vind, the following moving method is selected (3b, 3).
d) If it is smaller than the threshold value, the route moving method is selected (3b, 3c).

An example of a cursor movement speed calculation formula when the mouse gives the relative movement amount as information is shown in (Equation 1) to (Equation 3). Here, Lx and Ly are components of the amount of relative movement in the horizontal and vertical directions.

V = | Lx | + | Ly | (Equation 1) v = Lx ² + Ly ² (Equation 2) v = √ (Lx ² + Ly ² ) (Equation 3) Next, for selecting the cursor movement method As another method, a "time selection method" is proposed. The time selection method is a method in which the route movement method is selected when the user momentarily operates the mouse, and the follow-up movement method is selected when the mouse is continuously operated.

When the user operates the mouse, the mouse interrupts the information processing apparatus main body, but the interrupt from the mouse occurs at a very short interval (several milliseconds or less). This indicates that even if the user momentarily operates the mouse, multiple interruptions occur.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing that interrupts occur one after another each time the user operates the mouse. wn indicates an individual interrupt. Δtn is the time interval between the interrupt wn and w (n-1). Here, a group of consecutive interrupts in which _{Δtn is} less than the threshold value tind is defined as an interrupt group Wm. Each interrupt group is considered to correspond to the period during which the mouse operation continues.

In FIG. 4, Δt ₀ and Δt ₆ are t _ind, respectively.
As described above, the interrupt group W consisting of w _{0 to} w _5
1 and an interrupt group W ₂ consisting of w _{6 to} w ₁₂ . In the time selection method, when the time interval in which the interrupt group Wm occurs is ΔTm, it is determined that the path movement method is instantaneous when ΔTm is less than Tind, and continuous when the time interval is Tind or more. It is a method of determining the following movement method and selecting the following movement method. A flow chart of a processing example of this time selection method is shown in FIG.

The process shown in FIG. 5 is a process that is activated each time an interrupt occurs. First, at start-up, the current time is substituted into the variable t2 (5a), the variable t0 (described later) is subtracted from this variable t2, and the difference is substituted into ΔT (5b). Subsequently, a variable t1 (described later) is subtracted from the variable t2, and the difference is substituted for Δt (5c). Therefore, Δt is compared with the threshold value t _ind (5d), and if Δt is equal to or larger than this threshold value, it is determined that the mouse is in continuous operation, and the process proceeds to step 5g. Then step 5e
Go to. In step 5e, ΔT is compared with the threshold value Tind. If ΔT is less than the threshold value Tind, the process proceeds to step 5j. If ΔT is equal to or greater than the threshold value Tind, the follow-up movement method is selected (5f) and the process proceeds to step 5j. On the other hand, step 5g
Then, ΔT is compared with the threshold Tind, and if ΔT is equal to or larger than the threshold Tind, t2 is substituted for t0 (5i), and step 5
If j is less than the threshold Tind, the route moving method is selected (5f) and the process proceeds to step 5j. In other words, if the mouse operation is momentary, the route movement method is selected by the above processing, and if the mouse operation continues further. The following movement method will be selected.

Next, an example of creating a table using the cursor control method according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. 6, but before that, the specifications of the drawing function by the mouse used here will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in the figure, when a straight line is drawn, the start point and the end point are sequentially clicked with the mouse. Further, the time selection method is adopted as the selection method of the cursor movement method. As a cursor stop condition, it is assumed that the coordinates of the boundary (6 in FIG. 6) are continuously detected twice. In addition, when the boundary coordinates are detected for the first time by one cursor operation, the path movement is restarted from a position line symmetrical with respect to the center of the screen (that is, on the opposite boundary) (Note 1). Furthermore, if the mouse is operated while pressing the shift key, the cursor moves only in either the horizontal or vertical direction. The choice between horizontal and vertical is made according to the direction in which the mouse operation is closer.

FIG. 8 shows the tabulation procedure of the example of FIG. 6, and the procedure will be described below.

Regarding the work (7a) of writing the outer frame 7 of the table, the mouse system using the present invention is no different from the work of the conventional mouse system. The outer frame 7 is written by operating the mouse continuously by the follow-up movement method.

Then, the cursor is placed on the point 8 and the mouse is clicked to determine the starting point of the line. While the shift key is being pressed (Fig. 7, remark 2), the mouse is operated to lightly bounce to the right. Then, the route moving method is used to start the search in the horizontal direction, and the cursor finds the graphic data of the outer frame 7 at the position of the point 10 and stops. If you click the mouse there, point 8
A straight line is drawn from to point 10 (7b, 7c, 7d). Next, in order to draw a vertical line 9-11, the cursor is placed on the point 9 and clicked (7e). Here, when the mouse is pushed downward while pressing the shift key, when the cursor moves downward and reaches the horizontal line 8-10, the cursor stops and the lateral polarization 11 is not reached. Although it is one means to re-punch the mouse downward as it is, here, the mouse is repelled upward from the point 9 (7f). Then, it becomes the route movement method, starts searching upward, and finds no data.
Reach 2. Since it is the first detection of the boundary coordinates, it does not correspond to the stop condition of the cursor at the time of moving the route, the cursor is moved to the point 13 on the opposite side of the boundary, and the search is restarted upward (Fig. 7, remark 1). , The graphic data is found at the position of the point 11, and the cursor stops. Then, when the mouse is clicked, a line segment is drawn from point 9 to point 11 (7g).

FIG. 9 shows an example of viewing a part of the whole view through a window with a figure processor such as CAD. Here, an example in which the route moving method is used to move the window is shown.

In FIG. 9, the first graphic data 18 is currently displayed in the window 15. The cursor is at the position of symbol 16. The second graphic data 19 exists at a position apart from the first graphic data 18. This second graphic data 19 is not in the window 15 and therefore invisible to the user (illustrated in the figure for convenience of explanation). The user next wants to move the window 115 to the position of the graphic data 19 in order to process the graphic data 19. In such a case, in the conventional tracking movement method, it takes time to move the window because the graphic data is re-developed in the video RAM and the window is moved each time an interrupt is input from the mouse. The operability was also poor.

According to the present invention, the user operates the mouse in the direction of arrow 17 where the graphic data 19 is supposed to be, so as to select the route movement method. Then, a search is made in the direction of the arrow 17 to find the graphic data 19 and
The window moves so that the window comes to the position of. As described above, when the window is moved by the route moving method, the window can be moved quickly and easily.

[0035]

According to the present invention, the pointing device cursor can be easily moved to the existing figure, and the usability of the pointing device is improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram of a path moving method as a cursor moving method according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of the route moving method of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of a velocity selection method as a selection method of the cursor movement method according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram of a mouse interrupt time series and an interrupt group.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a time selection method as a selection method of the cursor movement method according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a conceptual diagram of tabulation according to the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of a specification example of a drawing function by a mouse used at the time of tabulating in FIG.

FIG. 8 is a flow chart of tabulation according to the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a conceptual diagram of moving a window by a route moving method.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of an information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 11 is an explanatory diagram of positioning of a program that realizes the cursor movement method of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... Cursor, 2 ... Search range, 3 ... Pointing device operation direction, 4 ... Movement path, 5 ... Existing figure.

Claims (8)

[Claims] 1. A cursor control method for moving a cursor on a display screen by operating a pointing device, wherein when a moving direction of the cursor is specified by a predetermined operation of the pointing device, the specified movement is performed. A cursor control method characterized in that the cursor is automatically moved in a direction, and when the cursor reaches a display object displayed on a display screen, the movement of the cursor is automatically stopped. 2. A cursor speed is calculated based on data input by a pointing device, and the speed is compared with a threshold value to determine whether or not the operation of the pointing device is the predetermined operation. The cursor control method according to claim 1, wherein 3. A continuous operation time of the pointing device is obtained, and the operation time is compared with a threshold value to determine whether or not the operation of the pointing device is the predetermined operation. The described cursor control method. 4. The cursor control method according to claim 1, 2 or 3, wherein the cursor is moved following the movement of the pointing device in the case of an operation other than the predetermined operation. 5. A moving path of a cursor is calculated based on data input from a pointing device, a certain range centered on the moving path is searched in the moving direction, and the cursor is stopped at the position where the data is found. The cursor control method according to claim 1, wherein: 6. The cursor control method according to claim 5, wherein a moving direction of the cursor is calculated based on a predetermined operation of the pointing device, a moving path is calculated from the calculated moving direction, and the moving path is calculated. A search area is set to a certain area centered around, and display data is searched within the search range. If no display data exists within the search range, the search range is shifted along the movement route to continue the search. Then, when the display data is found, the cursor is stopped at that position, which is a cursor control method. 7. When the predetermined operation is performed while pressing a specific key, the cursor is moved linearly in the vertical direction when the moving direction is close to vertical, and when the moving direction of the cursor is close to horizontal. The cursor control method according to claim 1, wherein the cursor is linearly moved in a horizontal direction. 8. A cursor control method for moving a cursor on a display screen by operating a pointing device, wherein data is continuously input by the pointing device and input is performed momentarily. A cursor control method characterized by changing a cursor movement method depending on a case.