JPH09171507A - Information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve operability by eliminating the complexity of the manual setting of an input mode accordingly an application program. SOLUTION: A KANA (Japanese syllabary)/KANJI (Chinese character) conversion part 36 functions by several kinds of input modes. In these input modes, a HIRAGANA (cursive form of Japanese syllabary) input mode, a KATAKANA (the square form of KANA) input mode, an alphanumeric input mode, a full size input mode and a half size input mode, etc., for instance, are included. These input modes can be set even by an application progran 42 in addition to the operation of a keyboard 22. Namely, the application program 42 can operate the input mode of the KANA/KANJI conversion part 36 via an external input interface 44.

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, and more particularly to an information processing apparatus having a kana-kanji conversion function.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, some information processing devices such as personal computers having a kana-kanji conversion function have various input modes. For example, hiragana input mode, katakana input mode, alphanumeric input mode, full-width input mode, half-width input mode, etc.

In general, such an information processing apparatus can execute various application programs, but the user of the system uses an input device such as a keyboard to input each time according to the application program to be used. The mode was set. For example, if the Japanese word processor application program is loaded on a personal computer, the user operates the keyboard to set the kana input mode. In addition to this, run a normal arithmetic processing program,
In order to function as an English word processor, it was necessary to operate the keyboard and set the alphanumeric mode again.

[0004]

As described above, the operation of confirming the input mode of an application program before executing the application program and setting the appropriate input mode is often performed assuming that the input mode is unique to the application program. However, it is easy to forget, and it is a complicated operation.

An object of the present invention is to provide an information processing apparatus having a plurality of input modes with improved operability by eliminating the complexity of manually setting the input mode according to such an application program.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides an input means, an execution control means for controlling loading and execution of an application program, and a kana-kanji conversion means having a plurality of input modes. In the information processing apparatus, the kana-kanji conversion unit selects and sets one input mode of the plurality of input modes in response to an input mode setting instruction from the running application program. Has setting means,
When the input mode is set by the input mode setting means, the kana-kanji conversion process is executed according to the set input mode.

[0007]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 2, the embodiment of the information processing apparatus according to the present invention includes a central processing unit (CPU) 10, a main storage unit 16 connected to the central processing unit (CPU) 10 via an address bus 12 and a data bus 14, and an external storage unit 18. , An input control unit 20, and an output control unit 24. An input device 22 such as a keyboard is connected to the input control unit 20, and an output device 26 such as a display is connected to the output control unit 24.

In the present embodiment, the external storage unit 18 includes, for example, a floppy disk storage device in which various application programs are stored. These application programs also include, for example, Japanese word processor (WP) programs. Central processing unit 10
Uses the storage area of the main storage device 16 to control the entire device. This realizes the kana-kanji conversion function and executes various application programs.

The keyboard 22 has character keys for reading characters such as kana or alphabets, numbers and symbols (phonetic) and inputting them as character strings and data, and function keys for inputting various control commands. The function keys also include a mode setting key for setting the input mode of the present system. This mode setting instruction is incorporated into the device in the form of a command.

The display device 26 displays the input data
It includes, for example, a CRT display that visually displays various data such as kana-kanji conversion candidates and conversion result data thereof.

FIG. 1 conceptually shows the functions of the information processing apparatus realized by such an apparatus configuration.
According to this, the key input data input from the keyboard 22 is taken into the system by the keyboard interface 30 and sequentially written in the input data buffer 34 by the input control unit 32.

The input data stored in the input data buffer 34 is sequentially read by the kana-kanji conversion unit 36, where kana-kanji conversion is performed and stored in the conversion data buffer 38. The data resulting from the kana-kanji conversion, that is, the converted data, is fetched from the converted data buffer 38 by the operating system 40, and undergoes the necessary processing as a host.

The Kana-Kanji conversion unit 36 functions in several input modes in this embodiment. These input modes include, for example, hiragana input mode, katakana input mode, alphanumeric input mode, full-width input mode, half-width input mode, and the like. In the present embodiment, these input modes are set by the operation of the keyboard 22 and the application program 4
It can also be set by 2. That is, the application program 42 uses the external input interface 4
It is possible to operate the input mode of the kana-kanji conversion unit 36 via 4.

The input mode setting operation in this embodiment will be described with reference to the flow chart of FIG. First, in a normal key input operation, an interrupt process 100 is performed by operating a key on the keyboard 22. When the key input data is fetched, it is then checked whether the input data buffer 34 is being used (accessed) by another, that is, the external input interface 44 (102). This check is performed by referring to the flag 120 indicating the empty / closed state of the input data buffer 34, and if it is in use, it waits until it becomes empty.

If the input data buffer 34 is empty,
This is locked (104). That is, the flag 120 is set. Then, the code conversion 106 of the key input data is performed to convert it into the code inside the system. This code data is stored in the input data buffer 34 (1
08). If this input data is a command that specifies the input mode in this system, that command is stored. When writing to the buffer 34 indicating the input data, the flag 120 is cleared and the buffer 34 is released (110).
As a result, if this input data is a command that specifies the input mode in this system, this system was set to the input mode specified by that command.

By the way, the application program 4
As a second example, a case where a Japanese word processor (WP) program 150 is loaded into the external storage unit 18 will be described as an example. The application program 42 calls the external input interface 44, and sets the mode of the kana-kanji conversion unit 36 to a mode specific to the program 42, that is, in this example, for example, hiragana mode.
(130).

More specifically, the external input interface 4
4 examines the state of the flag 120, at which time it checks if the input data buffer 34 is in use by another, ie, the keyboard interface 30 in this embodiment (132). If it's in use, wait until it's free.

If the input data buffer 34 is empty,
A flag 120 is set to lock this (13
4). Therefore, the command for setting the input mode in the application program 42 is stored in the input data buffer 34 (136). This command is sent to buffer 34
Writing to the flag clears the flag 120 and releases the buffer 34 (138). This puts the system in a mode specific to the application program, ie, hiragana mode in this example.

After that, the application program of the Japanese word processor executes the processing as the Japanese word processor on the data stored in the input data buffer 34 (154). After that, the external input interface 130 is activated again to execute the above-mentioned operation, and the predetermined mode designated by the program 42, for example, the mode as a normal processing system (personal computer mode) is reset. 156).

The case where the Japanese word processor program 150 is used as the application program 42 has been described, but in addition to such a normal processing program, for example, the characters of the original image are optically read and recognized to output the character code data. It is effectively applied to applications using the optical character recognition device. For example, when such a character recognition program is loaded, the external input interface 44 is called and the hiragana mode is set according to the flow shown in the center of FIG.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, not only the input mode of the present system can be set from the keyboard 22, but also when the application program 42 is loaded, it is automatically set by the program. ing. Therefore, the operability is improved without the complexity of manually setting the input mode according to the application program 42 used.

[0022]

As described above, according to the present invention, the input mode of the kana-kanji conversion processing is automatically set during the execution of the application program. The operability of the system can be improved without the complexity of operating and setting.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual block diagram conceptually showing the functions of an information processing device realized by the device having the configuration shown in FIG.

FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram showing an embodiment of an information processing device according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an input mode setting operation in the embodiment shown in FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 22 keyboard 30 keyboard interface 32 input control unit 34 input data buffer 36 Kana-Kanji conversion unit 40 operating system 42 application program 44 external input interface

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An information processing apparatus comprising input means, execution control means for controlling loading and execution of an application program, and kana-kanji conversion means having a plurality of input modes, wherein the kana-kanji conversion means comprises: An input mode setting means for selecting and setting one input mode of the plurality of input modes in response to an input mode setting instruction from an application program being executed,
An information processing apparatus, wherein when an input mode is set by the input mode setting means, a kana-kanji conversion process is executed according to the set input mode.