JPH09198229A - Data display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve usability by presenting the whole amount of the data on a displayed and outputted item, the location of the present displayed part and the item name to a user. SOLUTION: This device is provided with a display control means which is capable of supplying a prescribed data quantity of the data of an item to be displayed to a displayed means, for various kinds of data formed by an item unit, and making the data displayed and outputted as main display contents DT, and displaying and outputting a display B which is capable of shaping the location within the item for the present displayed data and the item name NM for the present displaced data as sub-display contents.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a data display output device for displaying and outputting document data read from a recording medium.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A publishing form called an electronic book, for example, using a recording medium such as a CD-ROM is widely used. For example, there are various types of electronic books such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, novels, guidebooks, etc. These are reproduced by a data display output device formed as an electronic book player. Most of these are divided into contents for each item. For example, in an electronic book such as a dictionary, the user can see the document data of the item by inputting the item name.

FIG. 8 shows an image of a reproduction display state from an electronic book used as a national language dictionary. For example, by searching for the item "Japanese", the text data included in the item "Japanese" is displayed as the text DT, as shown in FIG. Also, in this case, the amount of sentences in the item is large, and the entire sentence cannot be displayed in one display, but in such a case, the display state is such that the sentence advances according to the scroll operation of the user. Will be updated. FIG. 8B shows a state in which the text of a portion that is a certain distance from the portion displayed in FIG. 8A is being displayed by scroll display. As a display other than the text DT on the display screen, an operation guide display G or the like may be displayed as shown in FIG.

[0004]

By the way, there are the following inconveniences while looking at a sentence or the like about a certain item in such an electronic book.

For example, when reading a sentence about an item "Nihon" as shown in FIG. 8, it is not known how much sentence there is, and the sentence in the item is scrolled while being read. There was a problem that I couldn't know how much of the text in the item I was reading, that is, what was being displayed. For example, the sentence displayed in the state of FIG. 8B cannot be known as to which sentence in the item "Japanese".

In addition, in the case where the text is long and scroll display is required as in this example, when the text displayed by scrolling is advanced, the first item name "Nihon [Japan]" is displayed. Since it will not be done, sometimes you forget the item name on the way. Because of this, there has been a problem in that the usability is poor at the time of use.

[0007]

In view of the above problems, the present invention takes into consideration the above-mentioned problems and the total amount of data of an item being displayed and output, the position of the current display portion in the data, and the item name. Is intended to be presented to the user to improve usability.

Therefore, in the data display / output device, a predetermined data amount of the data of the item to be displayed and output is supplied to the display means with respect to various data formed in item units, and is displayed and output as the main display content. With
A display control means is provided which can output a display indicating the position within the item for the currently displayed data as the sub display content.

With respect to various data formed in item units, a predetermined data amount of data of items to be displayed and output is supplied to the display means to be displayed and output as the main display contents, and currently displayed. Provided is a display control means capable of displaying and outputting the item name of the existing data as the sub-display content.

As described above, by displaying the position in the item and the item name of the displayed data portion by the display control means, it is possible to provide the user with a proper guide for use.

[0011]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. This example is a data display output device realized as an electronic book player. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an electronic book player. The disc 1 is a CD-ROM provided as a so-called electronic book, and is an electronic publication medium such as a dictionary or an encyclopedia. The disc 1 is loaded into the disc driver 2 in the electronic book player and reproduced.

The disk driver 2 has a so-called CD-R.
A playback mechanism compatible with OM is installed. That is, a spindle mechanism that rotationally drives the disk 1, an optical head mechanism that reads information from the disk 1, a servo mechanism that controls spindle rotation and the operation of the optical head, and a decoding circuit that decodes data from a signal read by the optical head mechanism. Etc. are provided. This disk driver 2 is based on the control of the CPU 3
Search / playback operation is performed, the requested information is read and supplied to the CPU 3.

The operation unit 7 is provided with various keys for the user to instruct the reproduction operation of the electronic book, and the operation information is supplied to the CPU 3. For example, a search operation key for various data recorded on the disc 1 and a scroll key for moving a displayed sentence forward and backward are provided. The CPU 3 includes operation information from the operation unit 7,
The operation control for the disk driver 2 and the display control for the display unit 4 are performed based on the operation program stored in the ROM 5.

The data read by the CPU 3 causing the disk driver 2 to read the necessary data is stored in the RAM 6. And CP
Of the data stored in the RAM 6, the U3 supplies the display unit 4 with the data that can be displayed on the display unit 4, and causes the screen display of the data to be executed. The display unit 4 is equipped with a display screen such as a liquid crystal display, and displays information such as sentences sent from the CPU 3.

For example, if the disk 1 contains data as a national language dictionary, the user can use the operation unit 7 to search for words / words to be searched.
Enter the character string. Then, the CPU 3 causes the disk driver 2 to read the item corresponding to the character string specified by the search from the disk 1, and the reproduction information for the item (or the items before and after the item) is stored in the RAM.
6, and the necessary amount is supplied to the display unit 4 to be displayed. For example, if the user searches and designates the character string "Nihon", the data of the item "Nihon" is reproduced from the disc 1 in response to the search, and the reproduced data is displayed on the display unit 4 as shown in FIG. Will be displayed as the body data DT.

Data such as sentences is recorded for each item on the disk 1 which is a national language dictionary, but the amount of sentences for each item is not a fixed amount. For example, for the item "Japanese" described above, a relatively large amount of explanatory text is recorded as data as shown in FIG. 4, for example. On the other hand, "Asa"
As an example of the item, a relatively short description is recorded as data as shown in FIG.

When displaying the item "Japanese",
First, the screen display as shown in FIG. 5A is executed, but the displayable amount of the display unit 4 (screen size and number of dots)
Due to the limitation of No. 3, the text displayed here is a portion shown as DS1 in FIG. 4, that is, only a part from the beginning of the explanation text.

Therefore, the user has to perform a scroll operation on the operation unit 7 in order to read the text before that. In response to the scroll operation, the CPU 3 shifts the display area for each line, for example. That is, every time one-step scroll operation is performed, the data supplied from the RAM 6 to the display unit 4 is changed to the DS2 portion and the DS3 portion in FIG. As a result, the sentence displayed on the display unit 4 advances one line at a time, and the user can read the entire sentence included in the item.
When the scrolling has proceeded to the portion of DS4 in FIG. 4, the display state of the text data DT on the display unit 4 is as shown in FIG.
In addition, when the scroll has proceeded to the DS5 portion in FIG. 4, the display state of the text data DT on the display unit 4 is as shown in FIG. 5C.

In the present example, even when the sentences in the item are sequentially viewed by scrolling as described above, FIG.
As shown in (c), by separately displaying the main body data DT based on the reproduction data from the disc 1, the item name NM and the position indicating bar B are always displayed as a sub display. The user can check the position of the currently displayed sentence within the item, the guide for the total amount of the item, and the item name. As shown in FIG. 2, the position indicating bar B represents the total amount of text in an item in the entire rectangular frame,
The shaded portion (for example, the portion where the inside of the frame is filled on the display screen) indicates the position of the currently displayed text portion in the entire item. That is, the beginning of the frame represents the beginning of the item, the end of the frame represents the end of the item, and the position of the last line of the currently displayed sentence is represented as the end of the shaded area.

Therefore, in the case of FIG. 5 (a) showing the DS1 portion in FIG. 4, since the displayed portion is about 1/5 of the head of the entire item, the position at that time is set. The presentation bar B is a display in which approximately ⅕ is filled, as shown in the figure. Further, in the case of FIG. 5C showing the DS5 portion in FIG. 4, the displayed portion has already reached the last line of the item, so that the position indicating bar B is all as shown in the figure. The display will be filled with minutes. FIG. 5 showing the DS4 portion in FIG.
In the case of (b), since the displayed portion is up to the vicinity of the last line, most of the portion of the position indicating bar B is displayed according to the position.

Further, regarding the item "Asa" as shown in FIG. 6, since the text amount of this item is relatively small, for example, the portion indicated by DS6 is displayed in FIG.
In the state of, most of the text in the item is displayed. Therefore, as the position presentation bar B, in the state of FIG. 7, most of the display is already filled.

In other words, the position presentation bar B presents the entire frame of the bar as the amount of text in the item, and presents the current display position as a ratio to the whole. By displaying the position indicating bar B in this way, the user can roughly estimate the total amount of the item currently being viewed from the amount of displayed text, and the currently displayed text is You can know which sentence is in the item. Further, by displaying the item name NM, it is possible to avoid scrolling and not knowing the item name.

The processing of the CPU 3 for displaying the item name NM and the position indicating bar B will be described with reference to FIG. Steps
In F101, in response to the user's search input, the CPU 3 causes the disk driver 2 to read the necessary data from the disk 1, stores it in the RAM 6, and further extracts a required amount of data and supplies it to the display unit 4 to send the text data DT. Is displayed. For example, when a search input of "Nihon" is made, the data as shown in FIG. 4 (and the data of the preceding and succeeding items) is loaded from the disk 1 into the RAM 6, and the first part of the item, DS1, is displayed on the display unit. Display with 4.
That is, the display state of the text data DT of FIG.

When the search input "Asa" is performed, the data shown in FIG. 6 (and the data of the preceding and succeeding items) is loaded from the disk 1 into the RAM 6, and the first part of the item, DS6, is read. It is displayed on the display unit 4.
The display of the text data DT on the display unit 4 is in the state shown in FIG.

Here, in order to further display the item name NM and the position indicating bar B, the processing of step F102 and thereafter is executed. In step F102, first, the address of the last line of data in the displayed sentence is acquired. FIG.
In the display state of (a), the address of the last line is as shown in FIG.
Address A2. Further, in the case of the display state of FIG. 7, the address of the last line is the address A9 of FIG. This address may be an address that is read out at the same time as data from the disc 1, that is, an address recorded as subcode data in the CD format.

Next, in step F103, 2 bytes are acquired in the reverse direction for the data to be displayed. Then, in step F104, it is confirmed whether or not the acquired 2-byte data is a search key identifier. If it is not the search key identifier, 2 bytes are acquired in the reverse direction again in step F103, and it is confirmed in step F104 whether or not it is the search key identifier. The search key identifier is a 2-byte code attached to identify the item name. As shown in FIGS. 4 and 6, “1F41” and “1F61” are placed before and after the item name.
It is sandwiched by the code, "1F41""1
Each 2 bytes of "F61" is a search key identifier.

That is, the loop processing of steps F103 and F104 is
The process is to search for the beginning of the currently displayed sentence. For example, in the state of FIG. 5A, when the address of the portion "... Nihon since the Nara era" is acquired as the address of the last line, "1. Hong ”
Search for 2 bytes at a time such as "Niho", ", Ni", "Descent,""Following" ... We will go back to this and proceed to “1
When "F41" is found, a positive result is obtained in step F104.

If a positive result is obtained in step F104, the item name and the address of the head of the item are acquired in step F105. As the item name, the character string in the portion surrounded by "1F41" to "1F61" is fetched. That is, in the case of FIG.
The character string is "Japanese [Japan]", and in the case of FIG. 6, the character string is "Asa [morning]". Further, the address of the head portion of the item means the address A1 in FIG.
In this case, the address is A8. That is, it is the address of the code portion of "1F41".

Next, in steps F106 and F107, this time, data is acquired in units of 2 bytes in the forward direction, that is, in the direction in which the text advances, and a process for searching for the search key identifier is performed. This is the process of searching for the beginning of the next item. Again,
When "1F41" is found, a positive result is obtained in step F107.

If a positive result is obtained in step F107, the end address of the current item is acquired in step F108. The case where a positive result is obtained in step F107 is the time when the search key identifier “1F41” for the item name “Japan Alps [Japan]”, which is the next item in the example of FIG. 4, is found. The address of "1F41" is the address A7 in FIG. 4, and the address A6 immediately before this is
It will be the end address of the current item "Japan [Japan]". In the example of FIG. 6, the search key identifier “1F41” for the item name “bruise [letter]” which is the next item.
The address A10 immediately before the address A11 of is the end address of the current item "Asa [morning]".

By the processing up to this point, the start address, the end address, and the address of the last line being displayed have been obtained, but in step F109, the addresses in the position presentation bar B are acquired from these addresses. Calculate the length, that is, the length of the filled part in the bar frame.

In this calculation, the address of the last line displayed is Ade, the start address of the item is Aks, the end address of the item is Ake, and the number of dots in the entire bar set as the position presentation bar B is DT. Is calculated as (Ade−Aks) / (Ake−Aks) × DT. That is, the number of display (filling) dots in the total number of display dots, which corresponds to the ratio of the position of the last line currently displayed to the total item amount, is calculated.

In the example of FIG. 4, the number of dots to be displayed is calculated by calculating (A2-A1) / (A6-A1) * DT. Further, in the example of FIG. 6, the number of dots to be displayed is calculated by calculating (A9-A8) / (A10-A8) * DT.

When the number of dots to be displayed, that is, the length of the position indicating bar B is calculated in this manner, the position indicating bar B and the item name NM are displayed in step F110. That is, as shown in FIG. 5A, the item name NM "Japan [Japan]"
The position indicating bar B is displayed according to the current display position of the text data DT. Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 7, the position presentation bar B is displayed in accordance with the item name NM "Asa [morning]" and the current display position of the text data DT. Due to the setting size of the display area, if the item name NM is long, it may not be possible to display the entire character string used as the item name. In such a case, the item name can be displayed from the beginning. Only the number of characters that need to be displayed should be displayed.

From such a display state, the user performs a scroll operation in order to further read the text data. When the scroll operation is performed, the CPU 3 advances the processing from step F111 to F112, Scroll display of the body data DT displayed according to the operation is executed.

Here, the display of the item name NM and the position presentation bar B for the current item is continued until the first line of the displayed body data DT becomes the data of the item name of the next item. continue. However, since the display length (the number of lit dots) of the position presentation bar B changes according to the scrolling, the processing of steps F114 to F116 is performed.

First, after scrolling, the address of the data corresponding to the last row at that point is acquired (F11
5) Then, using the address as the value of Ade in the above equation, the length of the position indicating bar B is calculated again (F115). Then, the display state of the position indicating bar B is updated according to the calculated number of display dots (F116). For example, when the display target advances to the portion of DS4 in FIG. 4 by scrolling, the address A5 becomes the address of the data corresponding to the last row, and the position is calculated by calculating (A5-A1) / (A6-A1) × DT. The length of the presentation bar B is calculated, and the display of the position presentation bar B is updated. That is, FIG.
The display state is as shown in (b).

Further, when the display object is scrolled to the portion of DS5 in FIG. 4, the address A6 becomes the address of the data corresponding to the last line, and (A6-A1) / (A6-A1) × DT The length of the position presentation bar B is calculated by calculation, and the display of the position presentation bar B is updated. That is, in this case, as shown in FIG. 5C, all the dots in the frame of the position indicating bar B are turned on.

In this example, since the item name NM and the position indicating bar B are displayed in addition to the text data DT as described above,
The user can check the text amount, current position, and item name of the item currently being viewed. The amount of text in an item is not displayed directly, but the percentage of increase in the filled portion in the position presentation bar B during scrolling varies depending on the length of the item. Can understand the approximate amount of text. With such a display, the user does not have to scroll back one by one when forgetting the item name in an item of a long sentence, and can confirm the current position in the item and the amount of the entire sentence. , The usability is significantly improved.

Although one example of the embodiment has been described above, various modifications can be considered as the present invention. In particular, as a mode for displaying the current position, it does not have to be a bar shape like the position presentation bar B, and a method of changing the filled portion in the circumferential direction in a circular image is also conceivable.

In addition to the display in which the head of the item is filled up to the current display position as in the above example, when the entire frame of the bar is the entire sentence of the item, the currently displayed portion is displayed. (The part from the first line to the last line on the display)
It is also possible to display such that only the dots corresponding to are illuminated.

[0042]

As described above, the data display output device of the present invention can display and output, as the sub-display content, the display that can indicate the position within the item of the currently displayed data. By providing the display control means, the user can know the position within the item regarding the contents currently displayed. Further, by providing the display control means capable of displaying and outputting the item name of the currently displayed data as the sub display content, the item name can be always confirmed. From these facts, there is an effect that it is possible to provide the user with an appropriate guide regarding the displayed data and significantly improve the usability.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an electronic book player according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of a position presentation bar displayed in the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of processing for displaying an item name and a position presentation bar according to the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of display data according to the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a display state according to the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of display data according to the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of a display state according to the embodiment.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram of a conventional display state.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 disk 2 disk driver 3 CPU 4 display 5 ROM 6 RAM B position presentation bar NM item name

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A display means and a variety of data formed on an item-by-item basis are supplied to the display means with a predetermined data amount for data of an item to be displayed and output, and are displayed and output as main display contents. A data display characterized by comprising display control means capable of displaying and outputting, as a sub-display content, a display capable of showing the position within the item for the currently displayed data. Output device. 2. A display means and, with respect to various data formed in units of items, a predetermined data amount of data of an item to be displayed and output is supplied to the display means and displayed and output as main display contents. A data display output device, comprising: display control means capable of displaying and outputting an item name of currently displayed data as a sub-display content.