JPS62239274A - Multiwindow displaying system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To simplify re-arrangement of a window by executing the designation of an overlapping relation in a form to select one of overlapping rules prepared beforehand. CONSTITUTION:In order to define the base of respective windows, it is required to shift a cursor to the desired position on a picture, and press a coordinate position selecting key 112 down by using a cursor shifting key 111. Next, displacements dx and dy of the base between two windows overlapped like windows 240 and 230 is defined by using a figure key 115 and a minus key 116. A constant value to designate the overlapping relation of respective windows is inputted by using the figure key 115. The overlapping relation can be designated by the constant value to be inputted.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a multi-window display system, and particularly to a method for rearranging some or all of a plurality of windows displayed on a display screen according to predetermined rules. Concerning suitable display methods.

[Prior art]

The multi-window display method, in which multiple partial areas are set on the display screen of a data processing system and multiple pieces of partial information can be displayed simultaneously, has become one of the main functions in the field of recent workstations and personal computers. ing. In such a multi-window system, when changing the window display position, conventionally, for example, the Information Processing Society of Japan Section 29 National Convention Proceedings No. 159
As reported on pages 9 to 1600 under the title ``Multi-Window Control Software,'' the operator specifies the display position after rearrangement for each window to be operated.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

According to the conventional method, when trying to reorganize the majority of multiple windows, input work is difficult;
There is a problem in that the relocation operation takes a long time.

The present invention aims to simplify window rearrangement in such a multi-window system.

[Means for solving problems]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention includes one display device;
-1- An input device for manually inputting control information regarding windows to be displayed on the display device; and a management table for storing the positional relationship of windows to be displayed on the display device; In a display system in which a plurality of windows are displayed on a device, a step of inputting information for specifying a group of windows to be rearranged or a group of windows not to be rearranged among a plurality of windows on a display screen. and.

It consists of a step of specifying the superimposition relationship in the rewritten ti'J window group, and a step of updating the management table based on the input result, and selecting one of the superimposition rules prepared in advance to specify the superimposition relationship. It is characterized by being carried out in the form of

[Effect]

The above superimposition rules include multiple ways of giving priority to the windows constituting the rearranged window group, such as in order of area size, vertical length order, or horizontal size order. The operator specifies one of them using a predetermined code, for example, a number. At this time, by specifying the coordinate data that serves as the reference position of the rearranged window group and the shift amount of the overlapping windows, the rearranged windows can be rearranged and displayed according to a predetermined rule with a few input operations. . In this case, if you promise that the window that is removed from the relocation target will be given a higher priority than the relocation window, you can display these windows overlapping the remaining windows in their original positional relationship.

[Embodiments of the invention]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is an external view of a multi-window display device as an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in the figure, the multi-window display device includes a control device 90, a keyboard 110, and a window display screen 100.
, a cursor movement key 111, a coordinate position selection key 112 on the display screen, a window group selection key 113 for rearrangement operations, a group of character keys 114., and numeric keys 115.0 to 9. and a minus key 116 are provided. An operator of a multi-window device who performs batch rearrangement of windows uses the keyboard 110 to rearrange the primary and secondary windows.
Information regarding the points is manually input to the control device 90. One is information regarding the designation of the window group to be rearranged, and the other is information regarding the designation of the position and overlapping relationship at which the window group is to be rearranged.

First, a procedure for inputting information related to specifying a group of windows to be rearranged will be described. First, the operator defines one window group that is empty or consists of one or more windows. As shown in Fig. 2, in a screen where windows 1, 210, 220, 230, 240 are displayed in the order of 5 display order, in descending order of display order, if you want to specify window 210 as one element of the window group, the operation After aligning the cursor with the window 210 using the cursor movement key 111, the user presses the coordinate position selection key i12. As a result, the window 210 corresponding to the cursor position is recognized as one element of the window group.

The operator repeats the above operation for each window that is desired to be designated as an element of the window group.

Next, to specify the windows to be relocated,
The window group selection key 113 is pressed once or twice in succession. When the window group selection key 113 is pressed once, the group consisting of one or more windows specified by the above operation is targeted for rearrangement.
If the button is pressed twice in succession, one or more empty windows or one or more windows that are not included in the window group among the windows displayed on one screen will be subject to rearrangement. Now, in FIG. 2, suppose that after specifying window 210 as an element, the window group selection key 113 is pressed twice in succession, windows other than 210,
In other words, the group consisting of windows 220, 230, and 240 is subject to rearrangement.

Next, a procedure for inputting information defining the positions and overlapping relationships of the windows to be rearranged will be described.

FIG. 3 shows a group of 13 points (x
The display screen after being rearranged using the base point (o + y o ) is shown. Here, the base point is the coordinates of the upper left corner of the window with the lowest display order among the multiple windows included in the group of windows to be rearranged. The origin of the coordinates is the upper left corner of the display screen, and the X coordinate increases to the right and the y coordinate increases downward. Now, in order to define the base point of each window, it is sufficient to move the cursor to a desired position on both sides using the cursor movement key 111 and press the cape position selection key 112. Next, the displacement dx of the base point between two overlapping windows, such as windows 240 and 230 in FIG.

6 to define dy using the numeric keys 115 and minus key 116. A constant value for specifying the overlapping relationship of each window is input using the numerical keys 1]5. The superimposition relationship can be specified as follows by input constant values.

In other words, when the specified value is "0", the second screen which is the previous screen
The overlapping relationship defined in the diagram is saved. If the designated value is "1", the horizontal lengths of the windows are compared, and the larger window is ranked below the smaller window to determine the overlapping relationship. Also, the specified value is "2"
In this case, the vertical lengths of the windows are compared and the larger window is ranked lower than the smaller window to determine the overlapping relationship. At this time, for windows that have not been rearranged, the overlapping relationship between one display position and other windows will be preserved as is, and the lowest among these windows will be replaced by the rearranged highest window. It shall be ranked higher than the window.

Here, a window management record that manages the display position of a window and a window management table that manages the overlapping relationship of each window will be explained. Each window on the display screen has its own unique window order,
These are managed by a window management table. Furthermore, if two windows A and B overlap,
If at least a portion of window A is covered by window B, then window B is one rank higher than window A, and conversely, window A is lower than window B.
Define it as being in a ranking.

As shown in FIG. 4, the window management table is composed of each window management record WR, and each window management record WR includes a window identifier WI and a position coordinate Wx of the upper left corner of the window.

WY, window horizontal length WA, vertical length W
It consists of a field representing B. For example, Figure 5 (
As shown in A), when three windows 510, 520 and 530 are allocated to the display screen 100,
In the window management table W'F, as shown in FIG. 5(B), indexes are assigned according to the overlapping relationship of each window, and window management records are arranged so that the higher the window rank, the smaller the index. and store it.

The internal data processing performed by the control device 90 for batch rearrangement of windows will be described below.

First, a method for identifying a group of windows to be rearranged will be described with reference to FIGS. 6 and 7. The operator selects two windows 620 and 640 from among the windows 610 to 650 currently displayed on the display screen,
Consider the case where other windows are to be relocated. First, the control device defines another window management table WT' in memory that has the same size as the window management table WT that manages the current display screen, and defines another window management table WT' that corresponds to the windows 620 and 640 selected by the operator. The management record is transferred from the window management table WT to the WT
' without changing the index. As a result, the current display screen includes the first window group corresponding to the window management record in the window management table WT,
The second window group corresponds to the window management record in the window management table WT' and the second window group is divided into two window sets. Here, when the operator presses the window group selection key 113 twice in succession, the windows 610, 630, and 650 corresponding to the window management records left in the window management table W7r are recognized as targets for rearrangement. . When a group of windows to be rearranged is determined, the control device 90 shifts each window management record in the window management tables W]' and WT' as shown in FIG. The management records in the window management table WT are written to the lowest position of the other window management table WT' without changing the order, as shown in FIG. At this time, the index of the window management record 610 with the highest rank among the window management records added to the management table w'r' is assumed to be ■.

Next, the overlapping relationship is determined for the window group to be rearranged. For the overlapping relationship, if the specified constant value is "O", the window management record is not updated or replaced, and if the specified value is "1", the window management record is changed so that the values of the WA field of the window management record are in descending order. Arrange the window management records to be relocated in the management table, and if the specified value is "2", arrange the windows to be relocated in the window management table so that the values of the WB field of the window management records are in descending order. Arrange management records. This alignment operation determines the order of each window to be displayed on the screen, that is, the overlapping relationship.

Finally, in the window management table WT', the rxo+
(5-i) Substitute Xl + ryo + (5-□)YJ. Note that i is the window management record 61o whose wx and wy fields are updated.

630.650 is an index value in the management table WT, where (xo + y o > is the base point, and x and y are displacements.

The window management table WT' created in the above manner is as shown in FIG. However, it is assumed that 0 is input as the constant value specifying the overlapping relationship of the windows to be rearranged. FIG. 10 shows the arrangement of windows displayed on the screen based on the window management table WT'.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, an operator of a multi-window display device specifies a group of windows to be rearranged and displayed among windows 1-1 displayed on a display screen through a simple operation, and By defining a rule, the device recognizes the specified group of windows and arranges and rearranges them according to the definition, allowing the operator to organize the windows on the display screen as if organizing documents on a desk. This has the effect of allowing you to operate windows, and also allowing you to easily recognize the location and contents of windows.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a multi-window display device according to the present invention, FIGS. 2 and 3 are screen explanatory diagrams showing the states before and after rearranging one window, and FIG. 4 is an explanation 1 of the window management record. Column, FIG. 5(A). (I3) is an explanatory diagram of the window management table,
Figure 6 is a diagram for explaining the processing of window management records in a batch window relocation operation, Figures 7 and 8 are diagrams for explaining the update progress of the window management table, and Figure 9 is a diagram for explaining the process of updating the window management table. and FIG. 10 are diagrams showing the final state of the window management table and the display screen, respectively. 90...Control device, 100...Display screen, l1.
O...Input device.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A display device, an input device for inputting control information regarding windows displayed on the display device, and a management table that stores the positional relationship of windows to be displayed on the display device. In a display system that is configured to display a plurality of windows on the display device according to the management table, a group of windows that should be rearranged or a group of windows that should not be rearranged among the plurality of windows on the display screen is The method includes a step of inputting information for specifying, a step of specifying an overlapping relationship in the relocation window group, and a step of updating the management table based on the input result, and the overlapping relationship specification is prepared in advance. A multi-window display method is characterized in that the display method is performed in a format in which one of the superimposition rules is selected. 2. The step of specifying the superimposition relationship includes inputting the reference position coordinates of the arranged window group, inter-window shift amount specification data, and superimposition rule code, whereby multiple The multi-window according to item 1, wherein the windows are rearranged in priority order according to the superimposition rule code, and the display is performed so that the remaining windows are superimposed on top of the windows. Display method.