JPH06131107A - Pen input operation method and information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the operability of pen input by drawing symbol for some operation in a reverse direction and allowing pen input when a pen input instruction shows opposite operation from the operation. CONSTITUTION:A computer body 11 has a display part and a pen input part on its surface. For example, input operation can be performed with a pen 13 in a pen input recognition area 12 overlapping with the display part. Further, a pen input recognition area 12 and a computer body 11 which are separate are also applicable. Characters are inputted in the character recognition area 14 and HIRAGANA (cursive form of Japanese syllabary) is inputted and converted into KANJI (Chinese character), etc., but a pen input recognition area 12 and a character recognition area 14 in one body are also applicable. For example, when one character is copied or its copy is canceled by inputting predetermined gesture 41a, a gesture 43a which is in the same shape with the gesture 41a, but has the opposite input order 44a from the input order, i.e., writing direction 42a of the gesture is inputted.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method of erasing characters and figures when using a pointing device such as a pen, and a pen input operation method suitable for changing attributes.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, as an input device of an information processing device,
Pen input devices are attracting attention. As a method of inputting a command for instructing an operation with a pen, a unique symbol (gesture) is registered in advance for each of a plurality of commands, and the user's pen input trajectory is compared with the registered gesture contents to execute a command. Is being made to be recognized. For example, when a character string is copied by inputting a gesture meaning a copy operation and then the copy of the character string is canceled (undo), another gesture meaning cancel is input. Similarly, in order to perform the enlargement operation of the character and the contraction operation opposite thereto, the respective pre-registered gestures are input.

[0003]

In the above-mentioned conventional technique, when canceling a certain operation, a gesture input registered separately from the certain operation is required. In addition, separate gesture inputs must be performed for contradictory operations such as enlargement and reduction. Therefore, it is necessary to remember different gestures in order to perform various operations. In particular,
Gestures may differ depending on the OS and application of the system used, and in such a case, the number of gestures to be remembered increases, which hinders operation.

An object of the present invention is to provide a pen input operation method capable of improving the operability of pen input by minimizing the number of gestures that the user can remember.

[0005]

According to the pen input operation method of the present invention, in an information processing apparatus equipped with a pen input means, a predetermined unique symbol for a plurality of operations is designated by a trajectory of the pen. A pen input operation method for instructing a desired operation, characterized in that the same symbol is assigned to conflicting operations, and the conflicting operations are identified by the input order of the same symbols. .

Further, the information processing apparatus having the pen input means according to the present invention is a representative coordinate point for extracting a plurality of representative coordinate points representing a locus of the pen with respect to the symbol inputted by the pen input means in the order of input. Extraction means, symbol registration means for assigning a unique symbol to only one of the contradictory operations among a plurality of operations, and registering the representative coordinate points representing the trajectory of the pen in a normal order, and the representative coordinate points. By comparing the representative coordinate points obtained by the extracting means with the representative coordinate points of the plurality of registered symbols, in the normal order and the reverse order,
It is provided with a collating means for specifying which of the plurality of operations and the contradictory operations the operation instructed from the input means is.

[0007]

When an operation opposite to a certain operation is instructed by the pen input instruction, the opposite operation can be instructed by reversing the writing direction of a certain operation (gesture) and inputting the pen. For example, for enlargement and reduction operations, the same symbol is assigned and their directions are reversed to identify the two. Regarding copying and moving operations, the contradictory operations are considered to be cancel operations, and the immediately preceding operation instruction is canceled by pen input in the opposite direction.

[0008] With this, the user does not have to remember a separate symbol for an operation opposite to a certain operation, and the number of gestures that the user should remember can be reduced by half.

[0009]

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

FIG. 1 shows an external view of a computer device to which the present invention is applied. The computer main body 11 has a display section and a pen input section on its surface. In this embodiment, it is possible to input with the pen 13 in the pen input recognition area 12 that overlaps the display unit. It should be noted that the present invention can be applied to the case where the pen input recognition area 12 and the computer main body 11 are separately provided in addition to this configuration. In this example, characters are input in the character recognition area 14, and hiragana or the like is input in this area to be converted into kanji or the like, but the pen input recognition area 12 and the character recognition area 14 are the same. May be

FIG. 2 shows the main functional blocks of the computer system of FIG. 1 and the flow of control data. Reference numeral 21 denotes a pointing input unit for inputting characters and figures, which is a pen in this embodiment. Reference numeral 22 is a coordinate analysis processing unit for converting input coordinate data into input data. Reference numeral 24 is a part for storing gesture character symbols registered in advance. Further, as the writing order of the gesture, the coordinates of several places are also stored.
Reference numeral 23 is a backward direction recognition processing unit that performs matching between the input data and the data of the gesture storage unit 24. Two
Reference numeral 5 denotes a screen display unit that displays these processing results.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an example of the hardware configuration of the computer device shown in FIG. 1. In this embodiment,
The case where it is applied to an editing system for characters and figures will be described. This device is mainly a central processing unit (CP
U) 31, a main storage device 32 for storing programs and data executed by the CPU 31, a display device 33 for displaying the executed command results, a printer 36 for printing the executed command results, a program and data, etc. The external storage device 35 includes a pen input device 34 which is a pointing device for inputting characters and figures.

The screen display unit 25 of FIG. 2 corresponds to the display device 33, and the input unit 21 corresponds to the pen input device 34. Further, the coordinate analysis processing unit 22 and the backward direction recognition processing unit 23 in FIG. 2 correspond to the function of the CPU 31. The gesture storage unit 24 corresponds to the main storage device 32 or the external storage device 35.

Next, referring to FIG. 4, a pen operation method and its function for canceling (undoing) an operation with a character string and changing the attribute of a figure in this embodiment will be described.

FIG. 4A shows an operation of copying a certain character (here, "A") by inputting a predetermined gesture 41a. FIG. 11B shows an operation for canceling the copy. That is, the copy is canceled by inputting the gesture 43a that has the same shape as the gesture 41a, but has an input order 44a that is the reverse of the input order (writing direction) 42a of the gesture 41a. In this example, for convenience of explanation, it is shown that when a copy gesture is performed on a character in the character recognition area 14 in FIG. 1, the character is copied to the adjacent position, but in general, copy and paste is performed. In the operation of, when the copy operation is performed by specifying the range to be copied on the screen, the copied content is written to the specific storage area,
Next, when the paste operation is performed by designating the copy destination position, the contents of the storage area are copied to that position. This embodiment can also be applied to such a copy operation.

FIG. 5 shows an operation of inputting a gesture for enlarging a certain character to enlarge it (FIG. 5A) and an operation of reducing the same (FIG. 5B). The gesture 41b for instructing enlargement and the gesture 43b for instructing reduction have the same shape, but the input order 42b and 44b are opposite.

FIG. 6 shows an operation of inputting a gesture for enlarging a certain figure to enlarge it ((a) in the figure) and an operation to reduce the same (FIG. 6 (b)). Similar to FIG.
The gestures 41c and 43c have the same shape, but the input order 42c and 44c are opposite.

As described above, gestures of the same shape having different input orders are assigned to the contradictory operations (a certain operation and the operation of canceling the same operation are also contradictory operations), so that the gestures to be actually memorized. It is possible to halve the number.

A plurality of gesture commands registered in advance for a plurality of operations will be described with reference to FIG.

The symbols shown in FIGS. 7 (a1)-(a4) are as follows:
The symbols corresponding to the copy, enlargement, color inversion, and fill commands are shown respectively. Here, we have selected symbols that can be written in one stroke. "X" in the figure
Is the center of gravity of each symbol, and “•” is the representative coordinate point when describing each symbol. There are several ways to obtain the number of representative coordinate points, but in the present embodiment, four points are used to simplify the description.

In FIG. 7 (a1), (x01, y01), (x
02, y02), (x03, y03) (x04, y0
4) is a relative coordinate up to each representative coordinate point when the center of gravity is the origin in the copy gesture. The former of the two subscript numbers of each coordinate value indicates the serial number of the gesture, and the latter indicates the input order of the coordinates. The same applies to other gestures.

FIG. 7B shows a locus of characters actually input by a pointing device such as a pen,
This is collated with the gestures (symbols) shown in FIGS. 7 (a1) to 7 (a4). Also for this character, the center of gravity and the representative coordinate point are determined. In the figure, (X01, Y01), (X0
2, Y02), (X03, Y03), (X04, Y0
4) are relative coordinates up to the respective representative coordinate points when the center of gravity is the origin.

FIG. 7C shows a gesture representative coordinate table 240 in which four gesture representative coordinates are registered for each of the above gesture commands. For each gesture command, a gesture reverse command representing an operation contradictory to the operation is also registered. The gesture command may be a character code, a command name, or the like. As the gesture reverse instruction, a character code of a character opposite to the gesture instruction, a reverse command, or the like can be used.

Next, a processing flow for realizing these operations will be described with reference to FIGS. These are a series of processing flows for matching an input character with a gesture registered in advance.

First, in FIG. 8, when a character or figure is input by a pointing device such as a pen, the center of gravity of the character or figure is determined, four input representative coordinates are extracted, and from the center of gravity to the input representative coordinate point. Calculate relative coordinates (10
1). In order to sequentially match a plurality of gestures registered in the gesture representative coordinate table (240 in FIG. 7), the first address of the gesture representative coordinate table is designated (102). In the gesture representative coordinate table, n gestures are registered, and it is assumed that the gesture starts from the 0th at the beginning. The address variable n of the gesture representative coordinate table is set to 0, which is the 0th meaning (1
03). The sum of the absolute value of the difference between the first point of the input X coordinate and the first point of the gesture representative X coordinate and the absolute value of the difference between the first point of the input Y coordinate and the first point of the gesture representative Y coordinate (Tn1 )
To calculate. Sum of absolute value of difference between input X-coordinate second point and gesture representative X-coordinate second point and absolute value of difference between input Y-coordinate second point and gesture-representative Y-coordinate second point (Tn
2) is calculated. Sum of absolute value of difference between input X-coordinate third point and gesture representative X-coordinate third point and absolute value of difference between input Y-coordinate third point and gesture representative Y-coordinate third point (Tn3 ) Is calculated. The sum of the absolute value of the difference between the fourth point of the input X coordinate and the fourth point of the gesture representative X coordinate and the absolute value of the difference between the fourth point of the input Y coordinate and the fourth point of the gesture representative Y coordinate (Tn4 ) Is calculated (104). Tn1, Tn
The sum of 2, Tn3 and Tn4 is calculated and saved as TA (105). In order to acquire the representative coordinate data of the next gesture, the pointer of the gesture representative coordinate table is incremented by one (106). Since the pointer in the gesture representative coordinate table has advanced by 1, the value of n is also incremented by 1 (107). For the contents of the n + 1th gesture representative coordinate table, step 104
The same calculation process is performed (108), the sum of Tn1, Tn2, Tn3, and Tn4 obtained by this is calculated, and this is saved as TB (109).

Proceeding to FIG. 9, the previously saved TA and TB are compared (110). When TB is smaller than TA, it is considered that the n + 1th gesture representative coordinate has less error than the 0th gesture representative coordinate with respect to the representative coordinate of the input symbol, and the n + 1th gesture command is set as a candidate. Save (111). And TB
The value of is saved in the variable Tt (112). Conversely, T
When A is smaller than TB, it is considered that the 0th gesture representative coordinate has less error than the n + 1th gesture representative coordinate with respect to the representative coordinate of the input symbol, and 0
Save the th gesture command as a candidate (11
3). Then, the value of TA is saved in the variable Tt (114). In order to advance the pointer of the gesture representative coordinate table, the value of n is incremented by 1 (11
5). To get the representative data of the next gesture,
The pointer of the gesture representative coordinate table is incremented by 1 (116). Subsequently, the same calculation processing as in step 104 is performed (117), and the calculated Tn1 and Tn are obtained.
The sum of 2, Tn3 and Tn4 is calculated and saved as Tc (118).

Proceeding to FIG. 10, the Tt previously saved
And the value of Tc are compared (119). When Tc is smaller, it is considered that the current gesture representative coordinate has a smaller error than the previous gesture representative coordinate of the input symbol, and the gesture command of the current gesture representative coordinate table is saved. (120). Then, the value of Tc is saved in Tt (121). These are performed for all the gestures registered in the gesture representative coordinate table (122). When the processing for all gesture representative coordinate tables is completed, it is checked whether the value of Tt is within the threshold range (123). Here, the threshold value is a reference value of whether the value of Tt is acceptable as an error. If Tc is within the threshold range, the finally saved gesture command is selected (124). T
If t is out of the threshold range, the process proceeds to FIG.

In FIG. 11, in order to match the input character with the gesture reverse instruction, the head address of the gesture representative coordinate table is redesignated (225). Then, the initial value 0 is set (226). Input X coordinate 1st
The sum (Tn1) of the absolute value of the difference between the point and the gesture representative X-coordinate fourth point and the difference between the input Y-coordinate first point and the gesture representative Y-coordinate fourth point is calculated. Sum of absolute value of difference between input X-coordinate second point and gesture representative X-coordinate third point and absolute value of difference between input Y-coordinate second point and gesture representative Y-coordinate third point (Tn2 ) Is calculated. Sum of absolute value of difference between input X-coordinate third point and gesture representative X-coordinate second point and absolute value of difference between input Y-coordinate third point and gesture representative Y-coordinate second point (Tn3 ) Is calculated.
The sum of the absolute value of the difference between the fourth point of the input X coordinate and the first point of the gesture representative X coordinate and the absolute value of the difference between the fourth point of the input Y coordinate and the first point of the gesture representative Y coordinate (Tn4 ) Is calculated (227). The sum of Tn1, Tn2, Tn3 and Tn4 is calculated and saved as TA (228). In order to acquire the representative coordinate data of the next gesture, the pointer of the gesture representative coordinate table is incremented by 1 (229). Since the pointer in the gesture representative coordinate table has advanced by 1, the value of n is also incremented by 1 (2
30). The same calculation processing as in step 227 is performed on the (n + 1) th gesture representative coordinate table (23
1), the calculated sum of Tn1, Tn2, Tn3 and Tn4 is calculated and saved as TB (232).

Proceeding to FIG. 12, the TA previously saved
And TB are compared (233). When TB is smaller, it is considered that the n + 1th gesture representative coordinate has less error than the 0th gesture representative coordinate with respect to the representative coordinates of the input symbol, and the n + 1th gesture reverse instruction is set as a candidate. Save (234). And TB
The value of is saved in the variable Tt (235). If TA is smaller than the representative coordinates of the input symbol,
It is considered that the 0th gesture representative coordinate has less error than the (n + 1) th gesture representative coordinate, and the 0th gesture reverse instruction is saved as a candidate (236). Then, the value of TA is saved in the variable Tt (237).
To move the pointer of the gesture representative coordinate table,
The value of n is incremented by one (238). In order to acquire the representative coordinate data of the next gesture, the pointer of the gesture representative coordinate table is incremented by one (239). Next, the same calculation process as in step 227 is performed (240), and the calculated Tn1, Tn2, Tn3, T
The sum of n4 is calculated and saved as Tc (241).

Proceeding to FIG. 13, the Tt previously saved
And the value of Tc are compared (242). When Tc is smaller, it is considered that the current gesture representative coordinate has less error than the previous gesture representative coordinate of the input symbol, and the gesture reverse instruction of the current gesture representative table is saved. Yes (243). Then, the value of Tc is saved in Tt (244). These are repeated for all the gestures registered in the gesture representative coordinate table (245). When the processing for all gesture representative coordinate tables is completed, it is checked whether the value of Tt is within the threshold range (246). If Tt is within the threshold, then the finally saved gesture reverse instruction is selected (247). If Tt is outside the threshold range, set an error code (248),
Return without selecting the gesture command.

[0031]

According to the present invention, when a gesture or the like is used to perform a certain operation on a character or a figure with a pointing device such as a pen and then the opposite operation is performed, the gesture just entered You only have to enter the same characters in the reverse order and you do not have to remember separate gestures for both operations. Further, the act of inputting the input order of the characters of the gesture is in conformity with the physiological action of a human, and the user does not feel uncomfortable and the operability is improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

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

FIG. 2 is a main functional block diagram of the computer device in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a hardware configuration example of the computer device of FIG.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a method of a character copy operation and a character cancellation operation in the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a method of enlarging and reducing a character according to the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a method of enlarging and reducing a graphic according to the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of registered gestures according to the embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart of part of the gesture recognition process in the embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of a part of the gesture recognition process in the embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of part of the gesture recognition process in the embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of part of the gesture recognition process in the embodiment.

FIG. 12 is a flowchart of part of the gesture recognition process in the embodiment.

FIG. 13 is a flowchart of part of the gesture recognition process in the example.

[Explanation of symbols]

21 ... Input device, 22 ... Coordinate analysis process, 23 ... Reverse direction recognition process, 24 ... Gesture storage unit, 21 ... Screen display device

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An information processing apparatus having pen input means, comprising: a pen input operation method of designating a predetermined unique symbol for a plurality of operations by a trajectory of a pen to instruct a desired operation. A pen input operation method, wherein the same symbol is assigned to the contradictory operations, and the contradictory operations are identified by the input order of the same symbols. 2. The pen input operation method according to claim 1, wherein the symbol is a symbol that can be written with one stroke, and the writing directions of the conflicting operations are different. 3. An information processing apparatus having a pen input means, and a representative coordinate point extracting means for extracting a plurality of representative coordinate points representing a locus of the pen with respect to a symbol input by the pen input means in an input order. Of the plurality of operations, a unique symbol is assigned only to one of the contradictory operations, and the symbol registration means for registering the representative coordinate points representing the trajectory of the pen in the normal order, and the representative coordinate point extracting means. The obtained representative coordinate points are
By comparing the representative coordinate points of the plurality of registered symbols with the normal order and the reverse order, which of the plurality of operations and the contradictory operation is the operation instructed from the input means. An information processing apparatus comprising: a collating unit that identifies