JPH07261914A - Input control method for multidevice - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make a single device driver possible to control plural pointing devices by deciding the effective pointing devices based on the flag value rewritten by a fact whether an input operation is applied to each pointing device. CONSTITUTION:A coordinate reading part 22 reads the relative coordinates of a mouse to calculate the difference to the value PMO that is precedently read and increases (by +1) a flag F stored in a flag register 21 when detecting an operation of the mouse. Meanwhile, a coordinate reading part 23 reads the absolute coordinate PT of a tablet and resets the flag F at 0. A flag check part 25 checks the value of the stored flag F and decides whether the coordinate value PM and PTM and the interruption signals IRM and IRT should be validated or not. Further, a cursor control part 26 reads the mouse relative coordinate data PT or PTM out of one of validated parts 22 and 23 and converts the read data into the cursor position coordinates PC to store it in a cursor position storage part 27.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a multi-device input control method for controlling a cursor on a display screen by simultaneously controlling a plurality of pointing devices such as a mouse, a tablet device, a digitizer, a joystick, and a trackball. Regarding

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when a mouse, a tablet or the like is connected to a computer system for use, the mouse and the tablet are driven by different software drivers. For this reason, it has been impossible to control a common cursor using a plurality of pointing devices. Also, as a system for controlling one cursor on the display with two or more pointing devices such as a tablet and a mouse, "Windows for pen"
(Trademark: Microsoft Corporation) is known, but in this system as well, the tablet and the mouse are controlled by separate device drivers.

[0003]

As described above, in the conventional system for controlling a multi-device, since a plurality of pointing devices are controlled by different drivers, a common cursor is controlled by a plurality of pointings. Is impossible, or special processing for linking a plurality of drivers is required.

The present invention has been made to solve such a problem, and an object thereof is to control a plurality of pointing devices by one device driver.

[0005]

An input control method for a multi-device according to the present invention is a method for simultaneously controlling a plurality of pointing devices for designating a position on a display screen, wherein each of the plurality of pointing devices is controlled. Is detected, the flag indicating which pointing device is valid is rewritten according to the detection result, and the coordinate data is fetched from the pointing device validated by the value of the flag The feature is that a specified position on the display screen is calculated and the information is written in a predetermined storage area.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, when an input operation from a predetermined pointing device is continuously detected, the flag is continuously rewritten, and in the process of rewriting the flag, the flag has a predetermined value. When it reaches, the predetermined pointing device is validated.

[0007]

According to the present invention, the flag is rewritten depending on the presence or absence of an input operation for each pointing device, and the valid device is determined by the value of this flag. The process after the flag check can be handled by a common process for multiple devices, and since it is a common process, a common cursor can be controlled by different devices. Will be possible.

If the pointing device is not immediately switched by one rewriting of the flag and the device is switched when the flag reaches a predetermined value by continuous rewriting of the flag, the device is switched by an erroneous operation. In addition to being able to prevent it, it is possible to set a priority when operating a plurality of devices at the same time.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a schematic configuration of a system using a multi-device according to an embodiment of the present invention. On the display screen of the display device 2 which displays predetermined image information under the control of the computer body 1,
The cursor 3 is displayed. The cursor 3 is controlled by the mouse 4 and the tablet device 5 connected to the computer body 1, and is displayed at the position on the display screen of the display device 2 designated by these devices.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of this system. The system bus 11 includes a CPU 12, a memory 13,
The image memory 14, mouse interface 15, interrupt timer 16, RS-232C interface 17, and interrupt controller 18 are connected. The CPU 12 executes a predetermined process based on the application program stored in the memory 13, and controls the input from the mouse 4 and the tablet device 5 according to the multi-device driver resident in the memory 13. In addition, the CPU 12
Displays the cursor 3 on the display screen of the display device 2 during execution of the application program based on the coordinates of the cursor display position recorded in the memory 12 according to the multi-device driver.

From the mouse 4, the X interlocking with the rotating ball
X-axis direction and Y as output of axis sensor and Y-axis sensor
A two-phase pulse signal for each axis indicating the movement amount and the movement direction of the direction and a switch signal indicating that two switches are clicked are supplied. The mouse interface 15 detects the moving direction of each axis of the mouse from the pulse signals of the two phases, and counts the moving amount of each axis by a counter provided inside. This count value indicates the amount of movement from the origin set at the center position on the display screen when the system is started, for example. This movement amount is defined as the relative coordinate PM of the mouse. The interrupt timer 16 issues an interrupt IRM to the CPU 12 at regular time intervals, for example, every 20 ms. As a result, the CPU 12 causes the mouse interface 1
The relative coordinates PM of the mouse output from the device 5 are fetched via the system bus 11.

The tablet device 5 detects the cursor position by scanning in the X-axis direction and the Y-axis direction by, for example, an electromagnetic induction method, and outputs the XY-axis position data in the RS-232C serial transfer format. The position data from the tablet device is input to the RS-232C interface 17 and converted into parallel data. When the XY axis position data is output from the tablet device 5, the interrupt controller 18 uses the CPU 12 via the system bus 11.
Interrupt IRT to. As a result, the CPU 12
The absolute coordinates PT of the tablet are fetched from the RS-232C interface 17 via the system bus 11.

Next, the multi-device driver will be described. FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram of a multi-device input control system realized by the CPU 12 and predetermined software. The flag register 21 stores a flag F that determines which of the mouse 4 and the tablet device 5 is valid.

The coordinate reading unit 22 is activated by a mouse interrupt signal IRM input every 20 ms, for example, to read the relative coordinates PM of the mouse 4 and read the previously read value PM.
The difference from O is obtained to detect whether the mouse 4 has been operated. When it is detected that the mouse 4 has been operated, the flag stored in the flag register 21 is incremented (+1). On the other hand, the coordinate reading unit 23 is activated by the tablet interrupt signal IRT input each time a coordinate value is input from the tablet device 5, reads the absolute coordinate PT of the tablet, and at the same time, the flag F stored in the flag register 21. Is reset to 0. Coordinate conversion unit 2
4 is the tablet absolute coordinate PT from the tablet device 5.
To mouse relative coordinates (mouse emulation coordinates). This is to unify the subsequent processing as an input value from the mouse. Specifically, for example, FIG.
As shown in, the center of the display screen is moved to the origin (0,
0), and the tablet coordinates are converted into relative coordinates from the position on the display screen specified thereby to the origin.

The flag check unit 25 checks the value of the flag stored in the flag register 21 and validates the coordinate values PM, PTM and the interrupt signals IRM, IRT from any of the coordinate reading units 22, 23. Decide The relationship between the value of the flag F and the valid device is as follows, for example. F <25 effective device = tablet device 5 F ≧ 25 effective device = mouse 4 Since the mouse interrupt signal IRM is input every 20 ms, the mouse 4 is not effective unless it is operated continuously for 20 ms × 25 = 500 ms. Therefore, even if the mouse 4 is touched by mistake, the mouse 4 is not switched. Further, when the mouse 4 and the tablet device 5 are simultaneously operated, the tablet device 5 is always an effective device. That is, the interrupt priority of the tablet device 5 is set higher than that of the mouse 4.

The cursor control unit 26 reads the mouse relative coordinate data PT or PTM from either one of the coordinate reading units 22 and 23 validated by the flag checking unit 25 and sets it as the cursor position coordinate PC on the display screen. It is converted and stored in the cursor position storage unit 27.

Next, the flow of the above processing will be described with reference to the flow charts shown in FIGS. (1) Processing started by interrupt signal IRM every 20 ms As shown in FIG. 5, the coordinate reading unit 22 reads the mouse coordinates PM (S1), and checks whether the previously read values PMO and PM are equal. (S2). When PMO ≠ PM, the current read value PM is stored in PMO (S
3), the flag F is set to F + 1 (S4). Therefore, while the mouse is moving, the flag F is incremented every 20 ms. However, in order to prevent the flag F from becoming 0 again by this continuous increment, the flag F becomes 25 or more. Then, the increment is stopped (S5). In addition, the determination result of step S2 is PM
If O = PM, it means that the mouse 4 is not operated, and the process is immediately terminated.

(2) Interrupt signal I at the time of tablet coordinate input
Processing Started by RT As shown in FIG. 6, the coordinate reading unit 23 causes the tablet coordinates P
T is read (S11) and the flag F is reset to 0 (S12). Next, the coordinate conversion unit 24 converts the tablet absolute coordinates PT into mouse emulation coordinates PTM (S13).

(3) Processing Subsequent to (1) and (2) Following the above processing (1) and (2), the flag F is checked by the flag check unit 25 as shown in FIG. 7 ( S21). When F ≧ 25, the coordinate reading unit 22
The mouse coordinate PM from is taken into the cursor control unit 26 (S22), and the cursor position coordinate PC of the cursor position storage unit 27 is updated (S23). If F <25,
Mouse emulation coordinate PT from the coordinate conversion unit 24
M is taken into the cursor control unit 26 (S24), and the cursor position coordinate PC of the cursor position storage unit 27 is updated (S25). In any case, the cursor control unit 26 takes in coordinate values as mouse coordinates.
It is possible to execute the unified processing without being aware of whether the data is from the device or the data from the tablet device.

In the above processing, the tablet device 5
The priority is given to the interrupt of the
The flag rewriting operation from is set to decrement (-1) instead of resetting to F = 0, and the range of the flag F that can be incremented or decremented is set to, for example, 0 to 26. When F is 25 or more, The active device may be switched by determining whether there is or is less than. With this setting, even when the tablet device is accidentally operated once while the mouse is valid, the mouse continues to be the valid device. That is, it is possible to provide a hysteresis characteristic when switching devices.

In the above embodiment, two types of devices, a mouse and a tablet device, are controlled, but it is also possible to control three or more devices. In this case,
A plurality of flags F may be set, and an effective device may be determined from the combination.

[0022]

As described above, according to the present invention, the flag is rewritten depending on the presence / absence of an input operation for each pointing device, and the effective device is determined by the value of this flag. Can be freely rewritten from any device side, and the process after the flag check can be handled by multiple devices in common, and since it is a common process, a common cursor can be used. It is possible to control with a plurality of different devices.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a system using a multi-device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the system.

FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram of a multi-device driver in the system.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a display screen and the origin of mouse coordinates in the system.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a process activated by an interrupt signal IRM in the system.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart of a process activated by an interrupt signal IRT in the system.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of processing of a cursor control unit in the same system.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... Computer main body, 2 ... Display device, 3 ... Cursor, 4 ... Mouse, 5 ... Tablet device, 11 ... System bus, 12 ... CPU, 13 ... Memory, 14 ... Image memory, 15 ... Mouse interface, 16 ... Interrupt Timer, 17 ... RS-232C interface, 18 ... Interrupt controller, 21 ... Flag register, 22, 23 ... Coordinate reading unit, 24 ... Coordinate conversion unit, 25 ... Flag check,
26 ... Cursor control unit, 27 ... Cursor position storage unit.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A multi-device input control method for simultaneously controlling a plurality of pointing devices for designating positions on a display screen, comprising detecting that an input operation is performed for each of the plurality of pointing devices, According to the detection result, the flag indicating which pointing device is valid is rewritten, the coordinate data is fetched from the pointing device validated by the value of the flag, the specified position on the display screen is calculated, and the information is calculated. Is written in a predetermined storage area. An input control method for a multi-device. 2. When an input operation from a predetermined pointing device is continuously detected, the flag is continuously rewritten, and when the flag reaches a predetermined value in the process of rewriting the flag, the predetermined flag is set. 2. The multi-device input control method according to claim 1, wherein the pointing device is enabled.