CA1236603A - Data display systems - Google Patents
Data display systemsInfo
- Publication number
- CA1236603A CA1236603A CA000480976A CA480976A CA1236603A CA 1236603 A CA1236603 A CA 1236603A CA 000480976 A CA000480976 A CA 000480976A CA 480976 A CA480976 A CA 480976A CA 1236603 A CA1236603 A CA 1236603A
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- Canada
- Prior art keywords
- viewport
- display
- area
- matrix
- viewport area
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- G—PHYSICS
- G09—EDUCATION; CRYPTOGRAPHY; DISPLAY; ADVERTISING; SEALS
- G09G—ARRANGEMENTS OR CIRCUITS FOR CONTROL OF INDICATING DEVICES USING STATIC MEANS TO PRESENT VARIABLE INFORMATION
- G09G5/00—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators
- G09G5/14—Display of multiple viewports
Abstract
ABSTRACT
A method and apparatus for automatically changing the display in overlapping rectangular viewport areas of a display screen of a digital display apparatus and in which each viewport area is assigned a different priority level. The method includes the steps of a) storing in a random access store indications of the position and size of each viewport area, together with an indication of the priority level of the viewport area, b) constructing a first matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of viewport areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each viewport area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each viewport area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the viewports falling within the boundary formed by the coordinates defining the element, c) receiving an indica-tion that the display of a particular viewport is to be changed, d) constructing a second matrix for the viewport area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not a portion of the particular viewport, that is to be changed, falls within its boundary and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, e) receiving indications of the coordinate values of the display to be displayed in the viewport area, f) using the condensed matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the viewport area, and g) storing the indications of the coordinate values in the random access store. The apparatus includes a communications processor and a procedure processor arranged to be controlled to perform the method.
A method and apparatus for automatically changing the display in overlapping rectangular viewport areas of a display screen of a digital display apparatus and in which each viewport area is assigned a different priority level. The method includes the steps of a) storing in a random access store indications of the position and size of each viewport area, together with an indication of the priority level of the viewport area, b) constructing a first matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of viewport areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each viewport area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each viewport area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the viewports falling within the boundary formed by the coordinates defining the element, c) receiving an indica-tion that the display of a particular viewport is to be changed, d) constructing a second matrix for the viewport area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not a portion of the particular viewport, that is to be changed, falls within its boundary and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, e) receiving indications of the coordinate values of the display to be displayed in the viewport area, f) using the condensed matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the viewport area, and g) storing the indications of the coordinate values in the random access store. The apparatus includes a communications processor and a procedure processor arranged to be controlled to perform the method.
Description
%3~3 DATE DISPI~Y SYSll~qS
mix invention relates to data display systems and in particular to such systems that can display data relating to more than one task at a time, and are connected to or include a data processing device which can be used for the concurrent processing of different tasks.
iewporting is the generic name given to the technique of defining a particular screen area as the view port to which an application task writes and displays data - graphic and alphanumeric. when a user is using a display terminal to interact with more than one application task, or program, then different areas of the screen will be allocated to different applications, this is called multiple view porting. This concept is explained in "Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics"
by Foley and Van Dam, published by Addison Wesley 1982.
A further development has been the so-called "messy desk" concept in which multiple view ports overlap and the user regards the view port which overlays all the others as that which has the highest priority and the one that is currently being used.
View porting designs for current raster displays use the concept that only the view port that has the highest priority, i.e., on top of, or overlaying all others, can have its display modified. This, in effect, corresponds to a single application situation and requires the complete redrawing of a view port whenever it is promoted to the highest priority after it has been overlaid.
An example of such a technique is described in U.S. Patent No. 4,642,790, issued February 10, 1987. In what patent is described a multiviewport system in which the writing of application data into overlapping vipers is controlled by a screen manager. The screen manager maintains a series of priority flags for each pixel bit in the screen buffer) relating to the layers of the view ports, and a view port order list. Only the current, that is highest priority view port is written .
UK9-84-01~
into by an application. m ore is no provision for having more than one application writing into a lower priority view port overlapped by the current view port other than serially, that is writing to one view port is completed before processing the next one.
An advance on the above technique is described in Canadian Patent Application No. 469,784, filed December 11, 1984, in which is described a technique for writing into the visible space of overlaid view ports while the user is currently interacting with a higher priority view port.
An extra bit plane is used as a mask buffer and when an application task has new data to display in an associated view port the mask is set to inhibit writing into areas of the display screen that are covered by higher priority view ports.
m e disadvantage of using the extra hit plane as a mask buffer is the requirement for the extra circuitry in the display apparatus.
The clipping of lines against a simple rectangular boundary is well understood, (see Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, quoted above). However, the clipping becomes more complex in the case Lo which a number of upright rectangular graphics pictures which overlap each other are to be displayed on the screen. The overlapping may be quite arbitrary and any one region may have more than one (disjoint) region of visibility. There may also be embedded obscured regions and also the clipping boundaries may not be simple rectangles.
...
The problem to be solved is to provide a display apparatus that when it is operating with multiple view ports it has the capability to determine the parts of a graphic line primitive to be displayed on the screen for lower priority, overlapped vie ports One solution to the problem is to provide a control system for a display apparatus that controls the processors to divide the visible part of each picture into rectangles, each one of which it completely visible. In order to draw one picture, its display list must be ~36~
l processed once for each such rectangle, clipping to the rectangle's boundary. The solution has the following disadvantages:-a. single, apparently continuous, line might cross a boundary between adjacent rectangles, and therefore be drawn in stages (with many other primitives being drawn in between). Care must be exercised to ensure that the operator does not notice any discontinuity at this boundary. In particular:
1) There may be a slight kink in the line, if the full line's parameters have not been used for the Bresenham algorithm coefficients. To overcome this problem, the true endpoints of the line need to be remembered even after the line has been clipped, this causes further processing and lengthens the drawing period.
mix invention relates to data display systems and in particular to such systems that can display data relating to more than one task at a time, and are connected to or include a data processing device which can be used for the concurrent processing of different tasks.
iewporting is the generic name given to the technique of defining a particular screen area as the view port to which an application task writes and displays data - graphic and alphanumeric. when a user is using a display terminal to interact with more than one application task, or program, then different areas of the screen will be allocated to different applications, this is called multiple view porting. This concept is explained in "Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics"
by Foley and Van Dam, published by Addison Wesley 1982.
A further development has been the so-called "messy desk" concept in which multiple view ports overlap and the user regards the view port which overlays all the others as that which has the highest priority and the one that is currently being used.
View porting designs for current raster displays use the concept that only the view port that has the highest priority, i.e., on top of, or overlaying all others, can have its display modified. This, in effect, corresponds to a single application situation and requires the complete redrawing of a view port whenever it is promoted to the highest priority after it has been overlaid.
An example of such a technique is described in U.S. Patent No. 4,642,790, issued February 10, 1987. In what patent is described a multiviewport system in which the writing of application data into overlapping vipers is controlled by a screen manager. The screen manager maintains a series of priority flags for each pixel bit in the screen buffer) relating to the layers of the view ports, and a view port order list. Only the current, that is highest priority view port is written .
UK9-84-01~
into by an application. m ore is no provision for having more than one application writing into a lower priority view port overlapped by the current view port other than serially, that is writing to one view port is completed before processing the next one.
An advance on the above technique is described in Canadian Patent Application No. 469,784, filed December 11, 1984, in which is described a technique for writing into the visible space of overlaid view ports while the user is currently interacting with a higher priority view port.
An extra bit plane is used as a mask buffer and when an application task has new data to display in an associated view port the mask is set to inhibit writing into areas of the display screen that are covered by higher priority view ports.
m e disadvantage of using the extra hit plane as a mask buffer is the requirement for the extra circuitry in the display apparatus.
The clipping of lines against a simple rectangular boundary is well understood, (see Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, quoted above). However, the clipping becomes more complex in the case Lo which a number of upright rectangular graphics pictures which overlap each other are to be displayed on the screen. The overlapping may be quite arbitrary and any one region may have more than one (disjoint) region of visibility. There may also be embedded obscured regions and also the clipping boundaries may not be simple rectangles.
...
The problem to be solved is to provide a display apparatus that when it is operating with multiple view ports it has the capability to determine the parts of a graphic line primitive to be displayed on the screen for lower priority, overlapped vie ports One solution to the problem is to provide a control system for a display apparatus that controls the processors to divide the visible part of each picture into rectangles, each one of which it completely visible. In order to draw one picture, its display list must be ~36~
l processed once for each such rectangle, clipping to the rectangle's boundary. The solution has the following disadvantages:-a. single, apparently continuous, line might cross a boundary between adjacent rectangles, and therefore be drawn in stages (with many other primitives being drawn in between). Care must be exercised to ensure that the operator does not notice any discontinuity at this boundary. In particular:
1) There may be a slight kink in the line, if the full line's parameters have not been used for the Bresenham algorithm coefficients. To overcome this problem, the true endpoints of the line need to be remembered even after the line has been clipped, this causes further processing and lengthens the drawing period.
2) If the line is not solid (i.e. it is dashed, dotted, etc.) some way must be found of getting the correct starting point in the line-type definition at the start of each stage.
b. The display list has to be processed from a high level once for each rectangle. In partaker, transformations are performed once for each rectangle, rather than once for the whole picture, as in the method of the current invention described below, so the performance is likely to be inferior.
c. Unless the drawing engine is extremely fast, the operator will notice the picture being split lip into these rectangles. The human factors of this are probably inferior to those of the method described, where there is no such split.
The solution of the problem described in the present application includes the provision of a method of operating a data I` display device and the provision of a data display system configured to operate the method.
I"
]. According to one aspect of the invention there its provided a method for automatically changing the display in overlapping rectangular view port areas of a display screen of a digital display apparatus without direct operator control and in which each viewpoint area is without direct operator control and in which each view port area is assigned a different priority level, comprising the steps of:
a) storing in a random access store indications of the position and size of each view port area, together with an indication of the priority level of the view port area, b) constructing a master matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of view port areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each view port area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each view port area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the view ports covered by the element, c) receiving an indication that the display of a particular view port is to be changed, d) constructing a condensed matrix for the view port area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular viweport that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, e) receiving indications of the coordinate values of the display to be displayed in the view port area, f) using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the view port area, and g) storing the indications of the coordinate values in the random access store.
According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided a data display apparatus comprising a procedure processor, a storage unit and a display buffer operating under the control of a control system to display on a display screen multiple overlaid vieWportsS each assigned to a different application task, characterized in that the operating system includes:
~l23~ 3 l communication means, adapted to control the apparatus to receive data display information signals from an application processor, and processor means, adapted to control the procedure processor to store in a random access store indications of the position and size of each view port area, together with an indication of the priority level of the view port area, and to generate signals indicating the result of constructing a first matrix of (2n+1) 2 elements, where n is equal to the number of view port areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each view port area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each view port area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the view ports covered by the element; to construct a second matrix for the view port area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular view port that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, and using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the view port I area and to generate and store signals indicative of the determination.
In order that the invention may be fully understood preferred embodiments thereof will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawing in which:
Figure 1 is a block schematic diagram of a preferred embodiment of display apparatus suitable for carrying out the invention.
Figure 2 illustrates the layout of a display screen having multi-overlaid view port areas.
Figures 3 to 9 illustrate steps in the preferred embodiment of the method for implementing line clipping aspect of the invention.
~Z3~ 3 l Figures 10, I and 12 illustrate steps in the preferred embodiment of the method for implementing the area clipping aspect of the invention.
Referring now more particularly to Figure 1 there is shown a block schematic of a display apparatus comprising a communications processor 1 connected to an input/output port 2 through which the apparatus transmits and receives information signals to and from a remote data processing machine. The apparatus includes three other lo processors, a procedure processor 3, a drawing processor 4 and an auxiliary processor 5. A storage unit 6 contains both random access and read only memory portions and a display buffer 7 is connected to an output port 8 which directly communicates control signals to a display screen (a raster driven cathode ray tube).
The communications processor 1 performs the functions necessary to transmit and receive data from the remote data processing machine. Data received is routed to the appropriate storage location in the storage unit 6.
The procedure processor 3 performs the functions of a) controlling the sequencing of the data display apparatus, b) controlling the input devices, such as keyboard, optical mouse, tablet etch, through input ports 10, c) modifications of the standard picture segments stored in the storage unit required by a particular display picture, d) controlling of the invocation of the other processors, e) controlling the transmission of data through the communications processor to the remote processor, and, of particular interest to the preferred embodiment of the present invention, f) controlling the apparatus to perform the function of clipping line segments to the visible portions of overlaid ; view ports.
The drawing processor 4 performs the function of transforming the information signals passed to it from the procedure processor 3 indicating line coordinate end and start points into on/off pixel ~;~36~
1 information signals and transferring these signals to the display buffer 7 where they are used to control the display device.
The auxiliary processor 5 controls the functions associated with any auxiliary device attached to the display apparatus. For example a locally attached personal computer could be attached through port 9 to the auxiliary processor.
The control of the processors to perform their particular functions is in the form of microcode stored in the processors own local storage unit or in the main storage unit 6. Modifications to the operation of the processors are made by the use of further code held in the random access portion of the storage unit 6. The tasks that are assigned to a particular processor are a matter of design choice and it is envisaged that the functions of two or more of the processors may be combined into a single processing unit. It could be that the clipping and view porting tasks are performed by the drawing processor rather than the procedure processor.
The embodiment of the invention will now be described in general terms with reference to Figure 2 in which there is shown in schematic form a layout of a screen with three concurrent overlapping view port areas, and the boundaries of a first matrix (later identified as a condensed visibility matrix CAM) the coordinates of which are constructed by the procedure processor and coordinate indicative signals stored on an appropriate storage location.
In this example the display apparatus is considered to be communicating with three applications, each of which is allocated a view port area on the display screen. View port 1 has the highest priority and overlays view port 2 which in turn overlays view port 3.
The coordinate values of the first matrix are determined from the x and y components of the coordinates of the boundaries of the three vipers and the boundaries of the screen area in which the view ports are displayed.
I`
~2;31~ 3t3 1 Thus the first matrix coordinates in this example are derived as follows:
Verticals, xlyl/xly8 from display area boundary, x2yl/x2y8 from view port 3 left vertical boundary, x3yl/x3y8 from view port 2 left vertical boundary, x4yl/x4y8 from view port 3 right vertical boundary, x5yl/x5y8 from view port 1 left vertical boundary, x6yl/x6y8 from view port 1 right vertical boundary x7yl/x7y8 from view port 2 right vertical boundary, x8yl/x8y8 from display area boundary 9 Horizontals, xlyl/x8yl from display area boundary, xly2/x8y2 from view port 2 bottom boundary, xly3/x8y3 from view port 1 bottom boundary, xly4/x8y4 from view port 3 bottom boundary, xly5/x8y5 from view port 1 top boundary, xly6/x8y6 from view port 2 top boundary, xly7/x8y7 from view port 3 top boundary, xly8/x8y8 from display area boundary, The matrix shows which picture is visible at each point of the screen, but it does not have to be as large as the number of points (or character cells, if the pictures are constrained to character cell boundaries) on the screen; it is only large enough to indicate the topology of the screen layout. The first matrix therefore need to include only (2n~1) 2 elements, where n is the number of view port areas.
Each element of the matrix is stored together with a pointer to the view port area covering the element having the highest priority. For example, if the screen is laid out as in Figure 2 then the pointers in the first matrix will be as follows, where 0 is used to indicate unoccupied screen regions:-so o o o o o o o O O O O O O O
The x/y values of each of the row/column boundaries are also stored.
The first matrix is built by scanning the lists of view port rectangles and sorting the coordinates, taking into account view port priority.
When a given picture is being processed, it has been found advantageous to have as small a matrix as possible. It is assumed that the primitives i.e. lines arcs etc., have already been clipped to the view port area and that they never extend outside the area to which they are allocated on the screen, therefore it is not necessary to be concerned with regions outside the view port area.
Rows and/or columns the function of which is to reflect boundaries outside the view port area may therefore be eliminated. Thus the tnatrix required during the processing of a picture to be displayed in view port 2 is:-; 2 2 3 2 icky 3 l It is now possible to created larger areas in the matrix by combining adjacent columns and rows that are identical. Thus column 1 and column 2 may be combined and row 2 and row 3 combined to give:-I I I
I I I
where 2 has now been replaced by l, and any obscuring regions are lo identified by O (only view port 1 obscures in this case, but, even if there is more than one obscuring view port, it serves no purpose to identify them individually). As with the first matrix the x/y coordinates of each column/row boundary can be stored, or pointers to the boundaries of the enlarged elements can be stored in x and y lists doing away with the need to maintain in store the actual reduced matrixes for all of the view ports. This second or reduced version of the matrix is used for clipping the primitives to the visible regions of the view port area.
In the following, the term, "region" will be used to refer to an area of the picture represented by a single element in the second matrix.
Line clipping is carried out by the following procedure:-First the region or regions containing the start and end points of each primitive have to be identified. In a polyline the start point region is stored as the end point region of the previous line. If the start and end points are in the same region, the line can immediately be identified either as being required in its entirety, or as being completely rejected. If this is not the case then;
1. If the starting and ending regions are either in the same row, or in the same column, of the second matrix, the regions through which the line passes can immediately be identified. An output line is ~236~ 3 l generated for each group of consecutive "I" elements. This is straightforward for horizontal and vertical lines, otherwise, if there is a mix of visible and obscured regions the points at which lines intersect boundaries have to be calculated.
2. Otherwise proceed as follows;
a) Using either the starting and ending regions, or the starting and ending x and y values, the quadrant in which the line lo is traveling is identified.
b) Calculate on which side of the appropriate corner of the current region the line will pass, and hence which region it actually next enters. Note it could actually move into the next diagonal region, if it passes exactly through the corner.
c) Continue the process until the line reaches the ending region, generating output lines for each uninterrupted portion of the line. In order to minimize the number of "corner" calculations each new region is checked, as it is entered, to determine whether that region is in the same row or column as the ending region.
Note that before drawing the picture, the first matrix is inspected to determine whether the picture to be drawn is completely visible. If it is then drawing should proceed normally without entering into the above procedure. If none of the picture is visible i.e. the view port area is completely overlaid then there is no further action taken.
There now follows a more detailed description of an embodiment of the invention in which the sequence of control of the display apparatus is described in terms of a high level program language.
The translation of the program language into the actual physical control of the apparatus may either be by the I` conventional, compiler to machine code to circuit control route, or it may be designed into a l programmable logic array, (PLY) using the compiler to circuit design tool route now common in the art. The actual method of implementing the control function in the apparatus is a design choice and depends upon factors not strictly relevant to the function itself. For example in display apparatus designed to be used for more than one type of application it may be convenient to have the control functions held in the form of software, i.e.
easily changeable. Where "software" is defined as the changeable control of the hardware. Or in a display apparatus which is lo dedicated to a particular task it would probably be more efficient to have the control function embodied in a permanent circuit such as a PLY or an EEPROM.
Control functions used to clip primitives to a generalized non rectangular (and possibly fragmented) view port have to handle the following "primitives":-1. Image rows 2. Normal Lines
b. The display list has to be processed from a high level once for each rectangle. In partaker, transformations are performed once for each rectangle, rather than once for the whole picture, as in the method of the current invention described below, so the performance is likely to be inferior.
c. Unless the drawing engine is extremely fast, the operator will notice the picture being split lip into these rectangles. The human factors of this are probably inferior to those of the method described, where there is no such split.
The solution of the problem described in the present application includes the provision of a method of operating a data I` display device and the provision of a data display system configured to operate the method.
I"
]. According to one aspect of the invention there its provided a method for automatically changing the display in overlapping rectangular view port areas of a display screen of a digital display apparatus without direct operator control and in which each viewpoint area is without direct operator control and in which each view port area is assigned a different priority level, comprising the steps of:
a) storing in a random access store indications of the position and size of each view port area, together with an indication of the priority level of the view port area, b) constructing a master matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of view port areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each view port area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each view port area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the view ports covered by the element, c) receiving an indication that the display of a particular view port is to be changed, d) constructing a condensed matrix for the view port area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular viweport that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, e) receiving indications of the coordinate values of the display to be displayed in the view port area, f) using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the view port area, and g) storing the indications of the coordinate values in the random access store.
According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided a data display apparatus comprising a procedure processor, a storage unit and a display buffer operating under the control of a control system to display on a display screen multiple overlaid vieWportsS each assigned to a different application task, characterized in that the operating system includes:
~l23~ 3 l communication means, adapted to control the apparatus to receive data display information signals from an application processor, and processor means, adapted to control the procedure processor to store in a random access store indications of the position and size of each view port area, together with an indication of the priority level of the view port area, and to generate signals indicating the result of constructing a first matrix of (2n+1) 2 elements, where n is equal to the number of view port areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each view port area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each view port area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the view ports covered by the element; to construct a second matrix for the view port area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular view port that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, and using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the view port I area and to generate and store signals indicative of the determination.
In order that the invention may be fully understood preferred embodiments thereof will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawing in which:
Figure 1 is a block schematic diagram of a preferred embodiment of display apparatus suitable for carrying out the invention.
Figure 2 illustrates the layout of a display screen having multi-overlaid view port areas.
Figures 3 to 9 illustrate steps in the preferred embodiment of the method for implementing line clipping aspect of the invention.
~Z3~ 3 l Figures 10, I and 12 illustrate steps in the preferred embodiment of the method for implementing the area clipping aspect of the invention.
Referring now more particularly to Figure 1 there is shown a block schematic of a display apparatus comprising a communications processor 1 connected to an input/output port 2 through which the apparatus transmits and receives information signals to and from a remote data processing machine. The apparatus includes three other lo processors, a procedure processor 3, a drawing processor 4 and an auxiliary processor 5. A storage unit 6 contains both random access and read only memory portions and a display buffer 7 is connected to an output port 8 which directly communicates control signals to a display screen (a raster driven cathode ray tube).
The communications processor 1 performs the functions necessary to transmit and receive data from the remote data processing machine. Data received is routed to the appropriate storage location in the storage unit 6.
The procedure processor 3 performs the functions of a) controlling the sequencing of the data display apparatus, b) controlling the input devices, such as keyboard, optical mouse, tablet etch, through input ports 10, c) modifications of the standard picture segments stored in the storage unit required by a particular display picture, d) controlling of the invocation of the other processors, e) controlling the transmission of data through the communications processor to the remote processor, and, of particular interest to the preferred embodiment of the present invention, f) controlling the apparatus to perform the function of clipping line segments to the visible portions of overlaid ; view ports.
The drawing processor 4 performs the function of transforming the information signals passed to it from the procedure processor 3 indicating line coordinate end and start points into on/off pixel ~;~36~
1 information signals and transferring these signals to the display buffer 7 where they are used to control the display device.
The auxiliary processor 5 controls the functions associated with any auxiliary device attached to the display apparatus. For example a locally attached personal computer could be attached through port 9 to the auxiliary processor.
The control of the processors to perform their particular functions is in the form of microcode stored in the processors own local storage unit or in the main storage unit 6. Modifications to the operation of the processors are made by the use of further code held in the random access portion of the storage unit 6. The tasks that are assigned to a particular processor are a matter of design choice and it is envisaged that the functions of two or more of the processors may be combined into a single processing unit. It could be that the clipping and view porting tasks are performed by the drawing processor rather than the procedure processor.
The embodiment of the invention will now be described in general terms with reference to Figure 2 in which there is shown in schematic form a layout of a screen with three concurrent overlapping view port areas, and the boundaries of a first matrix (later identified as a condensed visibility matrix CAM) the coordinates of which are constructed by the procedure processor and coordinate indicative signals stored on an appropriate storage location.
In this example the display apparatus is considered to be communicating with three applications, each of which is allocated a view port area on the display screen. View port 1 has the highest priority and overlays view port 2 which in turn overlays view port 3.
The coordinate values of the first matrix are determined from the x and y components of the coordinates of the boundaries of the three vipers and the boundaries of the screen area in which the view ports are displayed.
I`
~2;31~ 3t3 1 Thus the first matrix coordinates in this example are derived as follows:
Verticals, xlyl/xly8 from display area boundary, x2yl/x2y8 from view port 3 left vertical boundary, x3yl/x3y8 from view port 2 left vertical boundary, x4yl/x4y8 from view port 3 right vertical boundary, x5yl/x5y8 from view port 1 left vertical boundary, x6yl/x6y8 from view port 1 right vertical boundary x7yl/x7y8 from view port 2 right vertical boundary, x8yl/x8y8 from display area boundary 9 Horizontals, xlyl/x8yl from display area boundary, xly2/x8y2 from view port 2 bottom boundary, xly3/x8y3 from view port 1 bottom boundary, xly4/x8y4 from view port 3 bottom boundary, xly5/x8y5 from view port 1 top boundary, xly6/x8y6 from view port 2 top boundary, xly7/x8y7 from view port 3 top boundary, xly8/x8y8 from display area boundary, The matrix shows which picture is visible at each point of the screen, but it does not have to be as large as the number of points (or character cells, if the pictures are constrained to character cell boundaries) on the screen; it is only large enough to indicate the topology of the screen layout. The first matrix therefore need to include only (2n~1) 2 elements, where n is the number of view port areas.
Each element of the matrix is stored together with a pointer to the view port area covering the element having the highest priority. For example, if the screen is laid out as in Figure 2 then the pointers in the first matrix will be as follows, where 0 is used to indicate unoccupied screen regions:-so o o o o o o o O O O O O O O
The x/y values of each of the row/column boundaries are also stored.
The first matrix is built by scanning the lists of view port rectangles and sorting the coordinates, taking into account view port priority.
When a given picture is being processed, it has been found advantageous to have as small a matrix as possible. It is assumed that the primitives i.e. lines arcs etc., have already been clipped to the view port area and that they never extend outside the area to which they are allocated on the screen, therefore it is not necessary to be concerned with regions outside the view port area.
Rows and/or columns the function of which is to reflect boundaries outside the view port area may therefore be eliminated. Thus the tnatrix required during the processing of a picture to be displayed in view port 2 is:-; 2 2 3 2 icky 3 l It is now possible to created larger areas in the matrix by combining adjacent columns and rows that are identical. Thus column 1 and column 2 may be combined and row 2 and row 3 combined to give:-I I I
I I I
where 2 has now been replaced by l, and any obscuring regions are lo identified by O (only view port 1 obscures in this case, but, even if there is more than one obscuring view port, it serves no purpose to identify them individually). As with the first matrix the x/y coordinates of each column/row boundary can be stored, or pointers to the boundaries of the enlarged elements can be stored in x and y lists doing away with the need to maintain in store the actual reduced matrixes for all of the view ports. This second or reduced version of the matrix is used for clipping the primitives to the visible regions of the view port area.
In the following, the term, "region" will be used to refer to an area of the picture represented by a single element in the second matrix.
Line clipping is carried out by the following procedure:-First the region or regions containing the start and end points of each primitive have to be identified. In a polyline the start point region is stored as the end point region of the previous line. If the start and end points are in the same region, the line can immediately be identified either as being required in its entirety, or as being completely rejected. If this is not the case then;
1. If the starting and ending regions are either in the same row, or in the same column, of the second matrix, the regions through which the line passes can immediately be identified. An output line is ~236~ 3 l generated for each group of consecutive "I" elements. This is straightforward for horizontal and vertical lines, otherwise, if there is a mix of visible and obscured regions the points at which lines intersect boundaries have to be calculated.
2. Otherwise proceed as follows;
a) Using either the starting and ending regions, or the starting and ending x and y values, the quadrant in which the line lo is traveling is identified.
b) Calculate on which side of the appropriate corner of the current region the line will pass, and hence which region it actually next enters. Note it could actually move into the next diagonal region, if it passes exactly through the corner.
c) Continue the process until the line reaches the ending region, generating output lines for each uninterrupted portion of the line. In order to minimize the number of "corner" calculations each new region is checked, as it is entered, to determine whether that region is in the same row or column as the ending region.
Note that before drawing the picture, the first matrix is inspected to determine whether the picture to be drawn is completely visible. If it is then drawing should proceed normally without entering into the above procedure. If none of the picture is visible i.e. the view port area is completely overlaid then there is no further action taken.
There now follows a more detailed description of an embodiment of the invention in which the sequence of control of the display apparatus is described in terms of a high level program language.
The translation of the program language into the actual physical control of the apparatus may either be by the I` conventional, compiler to machine code to circuit control route, or it may be designed into a l programmable logic array, (PLY) using the compiler to circuit design tool route now common in the art. The actual method of implementing the control function in the apparatus is a design choice and depends upon factors not strictly relevant to the function itself. For example in display apparatus designed to be used for more than one type of application it may be convenient to have the control functions held in the form of software, i.e.
easily changeable. Where "software" is defined as the changeable control of the hardware. Or in a display apparatus which is lo dedicated to a particular task it would probably be more efficient to have the control function embodied in a permanent circuit such as a PLY or an EEPROM.
Control functions used to clip primitives to a generalized non rectangular (and possibly fragmented) view port have to handle the following "primitives":-1. Image rows 2. Normal Lines
3. Lines encountered in an area boundary definition. Rectangles twig. characters or "screen clear" orders) NEWPORT DEFINITION - CONDENSED VISIBILITY MATRICES
The configuration of logical terminal view ports on the real screen at any given time is defined by a condensed visibility matrix (CAM). If 8 view ports are supported the CAM consists of a 17 x 17 matrix of one byte entries and two 18 element vectors of 2-byte (fixed 16) entries. To save space in the examples that follow, however, the matrix will be simplified and shown as 8x8. A
typical CAM might be as shown in Figure 3. The two vectors (30, 31) serve to define rectangular cells on the screen, the corresponding entry in the matrix showing for each cell the identification (ID) of the logical terminal (LO) uppermost (visible) in that cell.
UK9-8~-018 12 , .
~23~33 l Thus in this example LT5 occupies the rectangles 67 < = x < 103 , < = y < 11 67 < = x < 103 , 11 < = y < 1~7 67 < = x < 103 , 36~ < = y < 467 67 < = x < 103 , 467 < = y < 488 67 < = x < 103 , 488 < = y < 512 while LT4 occupies 40 < = x < 67 , 147< = y< 232 40 < = x 67 , 232< = y< 360 67 < = x < 103 , 147< = y< 232 67 < = x < 103 , 232< = y< 360 517 < = x < 616 , 232< = y< 360 Note: on entry of 0 (not shown. in Figure 3) indicates that a part of the screen is not occupied by any LT.
REDUCED VISIBILITY MATRICES
The CAM defines the layout of Let's over the entire screen and in general will contain more information than is needed when clipping primitives on behalf of a given LT. Once a "current LO"
has been selected the matrix may be refined to a more useful format. Conceptually the process is as follows:-1. Replace entries for the LO of interest by l's and replace all other entries by 0's. For LTl in this example the matrix is then as shown in figure 4. For LT7 the matrix is as shown in Figure 5.
2. The next stage is to eliminate any row or column identical to its neighbor (along with the corresponding vector elements). The matrix so produced is termed a Reduced Visibility Matrix (RUM).
The RUM for LTl is shown in Figure 6 and for LT7 is shown in Figure 7.
Lo 3 l IMPLEMENTATION - REDUCED COORDINATES
A possible implementation would follow the path just discussed and maintain the appropriate RUM for each LO to be derived in the manner described above each time the CAM is changed.
Not only is this wasteful of space (each RUM could conceivably be as large as the CAM) but the reduction process is clumsy to implement in a one dimensional address space. A preferable lo approach is to maintain for each LO a pair of lists (of length at most 18) containing the offsets into the x and y Condensed Visibility Vectors (CVVs) of the entries in the x and y Reduced Visibility Vectors (Revs). These lists are padded to the right with zero.
To return to the example above LT1 would give rise to an x list as shown in Figure 8. LT7 list would be as shown in Figure 9.
It is helpful to think of three coordinate spaces. In order of increasing granularity these are as follows:-Real pots - for example the point (622,191) Condensed coordinates Coordinates of the relevant CAM cell -in our example above we see that the point (622,191) lies in the cell (7,3) Reduced coordinates - Coordinates of the RUM cell for the particular LO - in this case (2,1) for LTl (6,2) for LT7 ~L2;~6~
l It can be seen that an Lots x and y lists permit translation between all three sets of coordinate systems. In particular the following functions:
no : pot coordinate pair - > reduced coordinate pair rub : reduced x coordinate - Opel x coordinate of right boundary lb : reduced x coordinate - Opel x coordinate of left boundary ; tub : reduced y coordinate Opel y coordinate of upper boundary lo by : reduced y coordinate - Opel y coordinate of lower boundary vise reduced coordinate pair -> TRUE if current LO visible at point FALSE otherwise GENER~TIWG THE X AND Y LISTS
_ The control function to build x and y lists is described below. Use is made of a comparator row and an array of entries corresponding to a CAM row.
The y list values are generated sequentially and may simply be appended to the current y list.
The x list entries can appear in any order. The function insert maintains the x list entries in increasing order only adding a value to the list if it does not already occur.
Initialize x list first entry to 1 + CAM width Initialize comparator row to roes do for each CAM row Reset row-different flag do for each entry in CAM row if CAM entry = LO id then Write 1 to comparator row slot else Write 2 to comparator row slot if comparator entry changed then Set row-different flag if coup. entry 'or> its leftmost neighbor then Insert column number into x list end if row-different flag set then Append row number to y list end IMAGE ROW CONTROL FUNCTION
The image row is specified by a pot coordinate starting point (OPEL, OPEL) and a length in pots (LUNG). The function may be expressed as follows:-l (XR,YR) := rc(XPEL, OPEL) X := OPEL
VISIT := vis(XR,YR) LANG := 0 do while LUNG or I
if rb(XR) - X >= LUNG then do if VISIT then write LENG2+LENG bits of image (from current position) lo return end LANG := LANG + rb(XR) - X number of bits to be drawn/
skipped LUNG := LUNG - rb(XR) = X number of bits left X := rb(XR) new boundary OR := OR 1 if VISIT or >vis(XR,YR) then do if vis(XR,YR) then move to (Ib(XR),YPEL) else wrote LANG bits of image LANG := 0 reset number to be drawn VISIT := vis(XR,YR) end end NORMAL LINES CONTROL FUNCTION
-The line is specified by pot coordinate starting and stopping points (XSTART,YSTART) and (XSTOP,YSTOP).
The function takes slightly differing forms for the four quadrants in which the line can travel. We consider here only the first quadrant, that is only the case when STOP > START and STOP > START.
660~
l DELTA := STOP - START
DELTA := STOP - START
(XPEL,YPEL):= (START. START) (XR,YR):= rc(XSTART,YSTART) VISIT := vis(XR,YR) move to (START, START) do while(XR,YR)< or> rc(XSTOP,YSTOP) ERROR := DELTAY*(rb(XR)-XSTART) - DELTAX*(tb(YR)-YSTART) lo select when ERROR < 0 sideways move do OR := OR 1 if VISIT = vis(XR,YR) then iterate OPEL := lb(XR) OPEL := tb(YR) + ERROR/DELTAX
end when ERROR I Inwards move do YE := YE + 1 if VISIT = vis(XR,YR) then iterate OPEL := rb(XR) - ERROR/DELTAY
OPEL := Burr) end Otherwise diagonal move do OR := OR + 1 YE := YE + 1 if VISIT = vis(XR,YR) then iterate OPEL := lb(XR) OPEL := Burr) end end if vise (XR,YR) then move to (XPEL,YPEL) else draw a line to (XPEL,YPEL) .--:,~
1 VISIT := vis(XR,YR) end if vis(XR,YR) then draw a line to (XSTOP,YSTOP) else move to (XSTOP,YSTOP) The remaining three quadrants are treated in a similar manner.
UREA CONTROL FUNCTION
The method for clipping an area primitive belonging to a picture that may be overlapped, so that only those parts of the primitive (if any) which should be visible, are in fact drawn, will now be described in general followed by the specific embodiment.
It is assumed that the area is defined by means of a number of boundary lines, though a similar technique could be used if the boundaries were defined as arcs, etc.
It is assumed that areas are being drawn by a technique in which the boundary lines are drawn, in exclusive-OR mode, in a spare bit plane. (Certain other rules are necessary, which will not be described in detail here; for example, any one boundary line may only cause one display point to be written per raster line, and the top but not the bottom, display point of each boundary line is written.) When the area boundary definition is complete, the interior is constructed in the visible bit plane lines, by scanning each raster line within the spare bit plane) in turn, from left to right; each "on" pot found flips the state between interior and exterior. The boundary lines in the spare bit plane can then be discarded.
The problem with area primitives therefore is to modify the outline of the boundary, as drawn in the spare bit plane, so that when the scan is performed to construct the interior, only those parts of the area interior which should be visible with the current screen layout, will in fact be drawn. (It is assumed that it is inconvenient, for various reasons, for this latter process to restrict itself to the visible regions.) ~36~3 l Consider Figure 10, which shows a single obscuring region ABED. Two boundary lines, GO and KJ, intersect this region, at M
and N respectively. In fact, these lines could be part of either of the two areas shown in Figure 11, but, in general, at the time GO and KJ aye received, it will not be known which. In case (a), the figure GHIJNCBM is eventually to be drawn, and in case (B), the figure GMADNJ.
Now the boundaries ML, LO and KIN must never be drawn, since lo the area state must never change either to or from "interior"
inside the obscuring rectangle ABED.
The remainder of the area boundaries will be drawn, but this will be insufficient to produce the required effect around ABED.
In case (a), we clearly need the additional boundary MBCN, and in case (b), an additional MEN Since, with the area drawing algorithm being used, horizontal boundary lines have no effect, this means that we need additional lines By and NC in case (a), and AM and DUN in case (b).
The following scheme will achieve the required effect:-1. Whenever a boundary line intersects the side boundary of an obscuring region, the portion of the line outside the obscuring region is drawn, and an additional boundary line is drawn from the point of intersection to the top corner of the obscuring region, e.g. Aye for line GO. (The choice of the top corner is arbitrary;
rule 2 would have to be modified if the bottom corner were chosen instead.) 2. One bit is defined for each vertical side of each obscuring region. These bits are cleared whenever an area boundary definition is started. Whenever a boundary line passes across the projection downwards of a vertical side of an obscuring region to the bottom of the picture the corresponding bit is flipped.
~æ~66~
l Thus in Figure 11, the line HI will cause the bit associated with A to be flipped, and also the bit associated with DC to be flipped. (But, since it is only lines crossing the projection beneath the cell, i.e. crossing BY or CQ (in Figure 10), which have this effect, GO and KJ do not effect these bits.) When the area boundary definition is complete, any of these projections which have had an odd number of boundary lines lo crossing them will have their bits set. For each such case, an additional boundary line is then drawn along the corresponding vertical side. Since all boundary lines are drawn in exclusive-OR mode, this will have the effect of reversing the bits along that vertical side.
In the example given, AM and DUN will have been drawn in both cases (a) and (b). However, in case (a), the boundary line HI will have caused both bits to have been set, so at the termination of the boundary definition, A and DC will be drawn. In case (a), therefore, the net effect will be the desired one of MY and NC
being set.
Thus, while an area boundary is being defined a check must be made, whenever a vertical region boundary is crossed, whether there are any obscuring regions above, either to the left or to the right If so, their bit(s) must be flipped.
Clearly this can never occur with obscuring regions which are on the lowest row of the matrix. 0 If there is a number of adjacent obscuring regions along a row of the reduced layout matrix, the technique described will still work.
Note that it may be a simpler implementation to keep one bit for each vertical boundary between matrix regions, and to flip these bits each time a boundary line crosses that boundary. when the boundary definition is complete, each vertical side of each obscuring region is examined: the bits corresponding to the boundaries vertically below it ~L23~ 3 l are exclusive-ORed together, to determine whether or not an additional line should be written along that vertical side.
(Regions in the bottom row need not be processed; similarly, bits need not be kept for boundaries between regions in the top row of the matrix.) A detailed implementation of the area clipping embodiment follows.
LINES IN AREA DEFINITION CONTROL FUNCTION
This function assumes that area fill is implemented by drawing the boundary lines in Exclusive OR mode into an area fill region the same size as the screen, scanning the region from left to right at End Area time. Additional vertical lines must also be written to ensure that the filled area starts, where required, at the left hand side of a view port segment and stops at the right hand side.
The following function causes these lines to be drawn, making use of the fact that all lines directed to the area fill region are drawn in Exclusive-OR mode.
Let the dimensions of the RUM be men (men< 16). This matrix clearly contains men internal vertical boundaries between regions. Define an array of "Area fill bits" in one-to-one correspondence with these boundaries. For convenience these bits may be grouped as the m-l leftmost bits of n 16-bit words in such a way that each word corresponds to a horizontal boundary. The leftmost bits are assigned to boundaries in the leftmost column (column 0), the next bits to column 1 and so on.
Each such 16-bit word may be associated with the RUM row in which its boundaries lie. Associate a mask with each column of the RUM in the following manner:-I
l Column 0 (left) '11111111]1111111'b Column 1 '0111111111111111'b Column 2 '0011111111111111'b Column 3 '0001111111111111'b . . .
Set all the area fill bits to zero when a Begin Area is encountered.
lo Process lines as described in the previous section but also 1. Every time a vertical boundary between a visible and an invisible region is encountered draw an additional line vertically upwards until the top of the current RUM row is reached.
2. Every time any horizontal boundary is crossed (irrespective of visibility) Exclusive-OR the Mask associated with the current RUM column with the set of area processing bits associated with the RUM row above the horizontal boundary.
At End Area time draw all vertical boundaries whose area processing bits are set, and which lie between visible and invisible regions.
RECTANGLE SUBDIVISION CONTROL FUNCTION
Figure 12 shows a series of view port areas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the order of their generation. The areas 40 are obscuring regions.
This function takes a rectangle specified by the pot coordinates (TLX,TLY~ of its top left and (BRX,BRY) of its bottom right corners and splits it into a set of rectangles exactly covering the unobscured portions of the interior of the rectangle.
It is used for clipping rectangular image characters and for handling requests to clear the entire view port.
~9-84-018 23 by ,.. .. .
~3~3 1 The rectangles are generated by scanning from left to right along each RUM row. visible rectangle is found and then pieced together with any neighbors on its row. No attempt is made to piece together the rectangle with visible neighbors in adjacent RUM rows. All rectangles produced are therefore one RUM row deep, although they may span several RUM columns.
The algorithm takes the form of a co-routine with its own static data. Successive calls to the routine return successive rectangles until the input rectangle has been completely covered.
Note: Both the input and the OUtpllt rectangles are defined as including all their boundaries.
Variables (static) :
(Xl,Yl) pot coordinates of top left of rectangle being considered (ZOO) pot coordinates of bottom right of rectangle being considered (XR,YR) reduced coordinates of rectangle being considered XRLEFT reduced x coordinate. of leftmost rum column in large rectangle X2LEFT pot x coordinate of leftmost rum boundary in large rectangle Initialization:
if first call then do initialize static variables (Xl,Yl) := (TLX,TLY) pot coordinates of top left (XR,YR) := rc(Xl,Yl) reduced coordinates XRLEFT := OR row wrap field X2LEFT := rb(XR) row wrap field Lo 3 l X2 := Al - 1 set to fictitious rectangle to left of first Ye := Burr) y value correct OR := OR - 1 set to fictitious rectangle left of first end Scan (every row if necessary) looking for a visible rectangle:
lo do until vis(XR,YR) find next visible region : if X2 > = BRA then if at right end of row do if Ye <= BY then Rotarian more rectangles') else do wrap to next row (Xl,Yl) := (TLX,Y2+1) YE := YE - 1 X2 := X2LEFT
Ye := Burr) OR := XRLEFT
end end else ; do move on to next region right OR := OR + 1 Al := X2 + 1 X2 := rb(XR) end end Scan remainder of row to extend this rectangle retreads:
~3~3 l Eloped forever extend rectangle downwards if X2 I= BRA then if at right end of row do give up X2 := BRA
leave SLOOP
end if vis(XR+1,YR) then if neighbor can be added do add it OR := OR 1 lo X2 := rb(XR) end else give up leave ELOPE
end if Ye < BY then Ye := BY
return rectangle (EYE) -> (ZOO) SUMMERY
The application performs the view port clipping as follows.
During use with one or more application tasks, the apparatus of Figure 1, through the procedure processor (3) stores indications or the coordinate addresses of each view port area in the storage unit (6), together with an indication of the priority level of the view port area.
When an application task being processed at a remote data processor or an auxiliary processor has information to display in its related view port area, the processor communicates with the display apparatus through the communications processor 1, and the coordinates of the data display are stored in storage unit 6.
. .
The display data may arrive from the remote processor already clipped to the view port area or in an unclipped stat. If it is us-~;~3~3 clipped then the procedure processor 3 performs first the normal clipping control functions (see Canadian Patent Number 1,219,377, issued March 17, 1987) and then proceeds to perform the method of clipping to the visible part of the view port as described above.
The results of the procedure, signals indicating the clipped primitives to be displayed are then passed to the drawing processor 4 which constructs a raster pattern of signals to be transmitted to the display buffer 7. m e signals stored in the display buffer are then used to update the display on the display screen.
The particular implementation of the control functions described above are not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Other implementations which depend upon particular characteristics of the display apparatus may, given the disclosure of the basic principals of the invention, be developed while still following those principals.
, .
. ,.,, . , , :, .
The configuration of logical terminal view ports on the real screen at any given time is defined by a condensed visibility matrix (CAM). If 8 view ports are supported the CAM consists of a 17 x 17 matrix of one byte entries and two 18 element vectors of 2-byte (fixed 16) entries. To save space in the examples that follow, however, the matrix will be simplified and shown as 8x8. A
typical CAM might be as shown in Figure 3. The two vectors (30, 31) serve to define rectangular cells on the screen, the corresponding entry in the matrix showing for each cell the identification (ID) of the logical terminal (LO) uppermost (visible) in that cell.
UK9-8~-018 12 , .
~23~33 l Thus in this example LT5 occupies the rectangles 67 < = x < 103 , < = y < 11 67 < = x < 103 , 11 < = y < 1~7 67 < = x < 103 , 36~ < = y < 467 67 < = x < 103 , 467 < = y < 488 67 < = x < 103 , 488 < = y < 512 while LT4 occupies 40 < = x < 67 , 147< = y< 232 40 < = x 67 , 232< = y< 360 67 < = x < 103 , 147< = y< 232 67 < = x < 103 , 232< = y< 360 517 < = x < 616 , 232< = y< 360 Note: on entry of 0 (not shown. in Figure 3) indicates that a part of the screen is not occupied by any LT.
REDUCED VISIBILITY MATRICES
The CAM defines the layout of Let's over the entire screen and in general will contain more information than is needed when clipping primitives on behalf of a given LT. Once a "current LO"
has been selected the matrix may be refined to a more useful format. Conceptually the process is as follows:-1. Replace entries for the LO of interest by l's and replace all other entries by 0's. For LTl in this example the matrix is then as shown in figure 4. For LT7 the matrix is as shown in Figure 5.
2. The next stage is to eliminate any row or column identical to its neighbor (along with the corresponding vector elements). The matrix so produced is termed a Reduced Visibility Matrix (RUM).
The RUM for LTl is shown in Figure 6 and for LT7 is shown in Figure 7.
Lo 3 l IMPLEMENTATION - REDUCED COORDINATES
A possible implementation would follow the path just discussed and maintain the appropriate RUM for each LO to be derived in the manner described above each time the CAM is changed.
Not only is this wasteful of space (each RUM could conceivably be as large as the CAM) but the reduction process is clumsy to implement in a one dimensional address space. A preferable lo approach is to maintain for each LO a pair of lists (of length at most 18) containing the offsets into the x and y Condensed Visibility Vectors (CVVs) of the entries in the x and y Reduced Visibility Vectors (Revs). These lists are padded to the right with zero.
To return to the example above LT1 would give rise to an x list as shown in Figure 8. LT7 list would be as shown in Figure 9.
It is helpful to think of three coordinate spaces. In order of increasing granularity these are as follows:-Real pots - for example the point (622,191) Condensed coordinates Coordinates of the relevant CAM cell -in our example above we see that the point (622,191) lies in the cell (7,3) Reduced coordinates - Coordinates of the RUM cell for the particular LO - in this case (2,1) for LTl (6,2) for LT7 ~L2;~6~
l It can be seen that an Lots x and y lists permit translation between all three sets of coordinate systems. In particular the following functions:
no : pot coordinate pair - > reduced coordinate pair rub : reduced x coordinate - Opel x coordinate of right boundary lb : reduced x coordinate - Opel x coordinate of left boundary ; tub : reduced y coordinate Opel y coordinate of upper boundary lo by : reduced y coordinate - Opel y coordinate of lower boundary vise reduced coordinate pair -> TRUE if current LO visible at point FALSE otherwise GENER~TIWG THE X AND Y LISTS
_ The control function to build x and y lists is described below. Use is made of a comparator row and an array of entries corresponding to a CAM row.
The y list values are generated sequentially and may simply be appended to the current y list.
The x list entries can appear in any order. The function insert maintains the x list entries in increasing order only adding a value to the list if it does not already occur.
Initialize x list first entry to 1 + CAM width Initialize comparator row to roes do for each CAM row Reset row-different flag do for each entry in CAM row if CAM entry = LO id then Write 1 to comparator row slot else Write 2 to comparator row slot if comparator entry changed then Set row-different flag if coup. entry 'or> its leftmost neighbor then Insert column number into x list end if row-different flag set then Append row number to y list end IMAGE ROW CONTROL FUNCTION
The image row is specified by a pot coordinate starting point (OPEL, OPEL) and a length in pots (LUNG). The function may be expressed as follows:-l (XR,YR) := rc(XPEL, OPEL) X := OPEL
VISIT := vis(XR,YR) LANG := 0 do while LUNG or I
if rb(XR) - X >= LUNG then do if VISIT then write LENG2+LENG bits of image (from current position) lo return end LANG := LANG + rb(XR) - X number of bits to be drawn/
skipped LUNG := LUNG - rb(XR) = X number of bits left X := rb(XR) new boundary OR := OR 1 if VISIT or >vis(XR,YR) then do if vis(XR,YR) then move to (Ib(XR),YPEL) else wrote LANG bits of image LANG := 0 reset number to be drawn VISIT := vis(XR,YR) end end NORMAL LINES CONTROL FUNCTION
-The line is specified by pot coordinate starting and stopping points (XSTART,YSTART) and (XSTOP,YSTOP).
The function takes slightly differing forms for the four quadrants in which the line can travel. We consider here only the first quadrant, that is only the case when STOP > START and STOP > START.
660~
l DELTA := STOP - START
DELTA := STOP - START
(XPEL,YPEL):= (START. START) (XR,YR):= rc(XSTART,YSTART) VISIT := vis(XR,YR) move to (START, START) do while(XR,YR)< or> rc(XSTOP,YSTOP) ERROR := DELTAY*(rb(XR)-XSTART) - DELTAX*(tb(YR)-YSTART) lo select when ERROR < 0 sideways move do OR := OR 1 if VISIT = vis(XR,YR) then iterate OPEL := lb(XR) OPEL := tb(YR) + ERROR/DELTAX
end when ERROR I Inwards move do YE := YE + 1 if VISIT = vis(XR,YR) then iterate OPEL := rb(XR) - ERROR/DELTAY
OPEL := Burr) end Otherwise diagonal move do OR := OR + 1 YE := YE + 1 if VISIT = vis(XR,YR) then iterate OPEL := lb(XR) OPEL := Burr) end end if vise (XR,YR) then move to (XPEL,YPEL) else draw a line to (XPEL,YPEL) .--:,~
1 VISIT := vis(XR,YR) end if vis(XR,YR) then draw a line to (XSTOP,YSTOP) else move to (XSTOP,YSTOP) The remaining three quadrants are treated in a similar manner.
UREA CONTROL FUNCTION
The method for clipping an area primitive belonging to a picture that may be overlapped, so that only those parts of the primitive (if any) which should be visible, are in fact drawn, will now be described in general followed by the specific embodiment.
It is assumed that the area is defined by means of a number of boundary lines, though a similar technique could be used if the boundaries were defined as arcs, etc.
It is assumed that areas are being drawn by a technique in which the boundary lines are drawn, in exclusive-OR mode, in a spare bit plane. (Certain other rules are necessary, which will not be described in detail here; for example, any one boundary line may only cause one display point to be written per raster line, and the top but not the bottom, display point of each boundary line is written.) When the area boundary definition is complete, the interior is constructed in the visible bit plane lines, by scanning each raster line within the spare bit plane) in turn, from left to right; each "on" pot found flips the state between interior and exterior. The boundary lines in the spare bit plane can then be discarded.
The problem with area primitives therefore is to modify the outline of the boundary, as drawn in the spare bit plane, so that when the scan is performed to construct the interior, only those parts of the area interior which should be visible with the current screen layout, will in fact be drawn. (It is assumed that it is inconvenient, for various reasons, for this latter process to restrict itself to the visible regions.) ~36~3 l Consider Figure 10, which shows a single obscuring region ABED. Two boundary lines, GO and KJ, intersect this region, at M
and N respectively. In fact, these lines could be part of either of the two areas shown in Figure 11, but, in general, at the time GO and KJ aye received, it will not be known which. In case (a), the figure GHIJNCBM is eventually to be drawn, and in case (B), the figure GMADNJ.
Now the boundaries ML, LO and KIN must never be drawn, since lo the area state must never change either to or from "interior"
inside the obscuring rectangle ABED.
The remainder of the area boundaries will be drawn, but this will be insufficient to produce the required effect around ABED.
In case (a), we clearly need the additional boundary MBCN, and in case (b), an additional MEN Since, with the area drawing algorithm being used, horizontal boundary lines have no effect, this means that we need additional lines By and NC in case (a), and AM and DUN in case (b).
The following scheme will achieve the required effect:-1. Whenever a boundary line intersects the side boundary of an obscuring region, the portion of the line outside the obscuring region is drawn, and an additional boundary line is drawn from the point of intersection to the top corner of the obscuring region, e.g. Aye for line GO. (The choice of the top corner is arbitrary;
rule 2 would have to be modified if the bottom corner were chosen instead.) 2. One bit is defined for each vertical side of each obscuring region. These bits are cleared whenever an area boundary definition is started. Whenever a boundary line passes across the projection downwards of a vertical side of an obscuring region to the bottom of the picture the corresponding bit is flipped.
~æ~66~
l Thus in Figure 11, the line HI will cause the bit associated with A to be flipped, and also the bit associated with DC to be flipped. (But, since it is only lines crossing the projection beneath the cell, i.e. crossing BY or CQ (in Figure 10), which have this effect, GO and KJ do not effect these bits.) When the area boundary definition is complete, any of these projections which have had an odd number of boundary lines lo crossing them will have their bits set. For each such case, an additional boundary line is then drawn along the corresponding vertical side. Since all boundary lines are drawn in exclusive-OR mode, this will have the effect of reversing the bits along that vertical side.
In the example given, AM and DUN will have been drawn in both cases (a) and (b). However, in case (a), the boundary line HI will have caused both bits to have been set, so at the termination of the boundary definition, A and DC will be drawn. In case (a), therefore, the net effect will be the desired one of MY and NC
being set.
Thus, while an area boundary is being defined a check must be made, whenever a vertical region boundary is crossed, whether there are any obscuring regions above, either to the left or to the right If so, their bit(s) must be flipped.
Clearly this can never occur with obscuring regions which are on the lowest row of the matrix. 0 If there is a number of adjacent obscuring regions along a row of the reduced layout matrix, the technique described will still work.
Note that it may be a simpler implementation to keep one bit for each vertical boundary between matrix regions, and to flip these bits each time a boundary line crosses that boundary. when the boundary definition is complete, each vertical side of each obscuring region is examined: the bits corresponding to the boundaries vertically below it ~L23~ 3 l are exclusive-ORed together, to determine whether or not an additional line should be written along that vertical side.
(Regions in the bottom row need not be processed; similarly, bits need not be kept for boundaries between regions in the top row of the matrix.) A detailed implementation of the area clipping embodiment follows.
LINES IN AREA DEFINITION CONTROL FUNCTION
This function assumes that area fill is implemented by drawing the boundary lines in Exclusive OR mode into an area fill region the same size as the screen, scanning the region from left to right at End Area time. Additional vertical lines must also be written to ensure that the filled area starts, where required, at the left hand side of a view port segment and stops at the right hand side.
The following function causes these lines to be drawn, making use of the fact that all lines directed to the area fill region are drawn in Exclusive-OR mode.
Let the dimensions of the RUM be men (men< 16). This matrix clearly contains men internal vertical boundaries between regions. Define an array of "Area fill bits" in one-to-one correspondence with these boundaries. For convenience these bits may be grouped as the m-l leftmost bits of n 16-bit words in such a way that each word corresponds to a horizontal boundary. The leftmost bits are assigned to boundaries in the leftmost column (column 0), the next bits to column 1 and so on.
Each such 16-bit word may be associated with the RUM row in which its boundaries lie. Associate a mask with each column of the RUM in the following manner:-I
l Column 0 (left) '11111111]1111111'b Column 1 '0111111111111111'b Column 2 '0011111111111111'b Column 3 '0001111111111111'b . . .
Set all the area fill bits to zero when a Begin Area is encountered.
lo Process lines as described in the previous section but also 1. Every time a vertical boundary between a visible and an invisible region is encountered draw an additional line vertically upwards until the top of the current RUM row is reached.
2. Every time any horizontal boundary is crossed (irrespective of visibility) Exclusive-OR the Mask associated with the current RUM column with the set of area processing bits associated with the RUM row above the horizontal boundary.
At End Area time draw all vertical boundaries whose area processing bits are set, and which lie between visible and invisible regions.
RECTANGLE SUBDIVISION CONTROL FUNCTION
Figure 12 shows a series of view port areas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the order of their generation. The areas 40 are obscuring regions.
This function takes a rectangle specified by the pot coordinates (TLX,TLY~ of its top left and (BRX,BRY) of its bottom right corners and splits it into a set of rectangles exactly covering the unobscured portions of the interior of the rectangle.
It is used for clipping rectangular image characters and for handling requests to clear the entire view port.
~9-84-018 23 by ,.. .. .
~3~3 1 The rectangles are generated by scanning from left to right along each RUM row. visible rectangle is found and then pieced together with any neighbors on its row. No attempt is made to piece together the rectangle with visible neighbors in adjacent RUM rows. All rectangles produced are therefore one RUM row deep, although they may span several RUM columns.
The algorithm takes the form of a co-routine with its own static data. Successive calls to the routine return successive rectangles until the input rectangle has been completely covered.
Note: Both the input and the OUtpllt rectangles are defined as including all their boundaries.
Variables (static) :
(Xl,Yl) pot coordinates of top left of rectangle being considered (ZOO) pot coordinates of bottom right of rectangle being considered (XR,YR) reduced coordinates of rectangle being considered XRLEFT reduced x coordinate. of leftmost rum column in large rectangle X2LEFT pot x coordinate of leftmost rum boundary in large rectangle Initialization:
if first call then do initialize static variables (Xl,Yl) := (TLX,TLY) pot coordinates of top left (XR,YR) := rc(Xl,Yl) reduced coordinates XRLEFT := OR row wrap field X2LEFT := rb(XR) row wrap field Lo 3 l X2 := Al - 1 set to fictitious rectangle to left of first Ye := Burr) y value correct OR := OR - 1 set to fictitious rectangle left of first end Scan (every row if necessary) looking for a visible rectangle:
lo do until vis(XR,YR) find next visible region : if X2 > = BRA then if at right end of row do if Ye <= BY then Rotarian more rectangles') else do wrap to next row (Xl,Yl) := (TLX,Y2+1) YE := YE - 1 X2 := X2LEFT
Ye := Burr) OR := XRLEFT
end end else ; do move on to next region right OR := OR + 1 Al := X2 + 1 X2 := rb(XR) end end Scan remainder of row to extend this rectangle retreads:
~3~3 l Eloped forever extend rectangle downwards if X2 I= BRA then if at right end of row do give up X2 := BRA
leave SLOOP
end if vis(XR+1,YR) then if neighbor can be added do add it OR := OR 1 lo X2 := rb(XR) end else give up leave ELOPE
end if Ye < BY then Ye := BY
return rectangle (EYE) -> (ZOO) SUMMERY
The application performs the view port clipping as follows.
During use with one or more application tasks, the apparatus of Figure 1, through the procedure processor (3) stores indications or the coordinate addresses of each view port area in the storage unit (6), together with an indication of the priority level of the view port area.
When an application task being processed at a remote data processor or an auxiliary processor has information to display in its related view port area, the processor communicates with the display apparatus through the communications processor 1, and the coordinates of the data display are stored in storage unit 6.
. .
The display data may arrive from the remote processor already clipped to the view port area or in an unclipped stat. If it is us-~;~3~3 clipped then the procedure processor 3 performs first the normal clipping control functions (see Canadian Patent Number 1,219,377, issued March 17, 1987) and then proceeds to perform the method of clipping to the visible part of the view port as described above.
The results of the procedure, signals indicating the clipped primitives to be displayed are then passed to the drawing processor 4 which constructs a raster pattern of signals to be transmitted to the display buffer 7. m e signals stored in the display buffer are then used to update the display on the display screen.
The particular implementation of the control functions described above are not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Other implementations which depend upon particular characteristics of the display apparatus may, given the disclosure of the basic principals of the invention, be developed while still following those principals.
, .
. ,.,, . , , :, .
Claims (3)
1. A method for automatically changing the display in overlapping rectangular viewport areas of a display screen of a digital display apparatus without direct operator control and in which each viewport area is assigned a different priority level, comprising the steps of:
a) storing in a random access store indications of the position and size of each viewport area, together with an indication of the priority level of the viewport area, b) constructing a master matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of viewport areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each viewport area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each viewport area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the viewports covered by the element, c) receiving an indication that the display of a particular viewport is to be changed, d) constructing a condensed matrix for the viewport area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular viewport that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, e) receiving indications of the coordinate values of the display to be displayed in the viewport area, f) using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the viewport area, and g) storing the indications of the coordinate values in the random access store.
a) storing in a random access store indications of the position and size of each viewport area, together with an indication of the priority level of the viewport area, b) constructing a master matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of viewport areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each viewport area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each viewport area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the viewports covered by the element, c) receiving an indication that the display of a particular viewport is to be changed, d) constructing a condensed matrix for the viewport area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular viewport that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, e) receiving indications of the coordinate values of the display to be displayed in the viewport area, f) using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the viewport area, and g) storing the indications of the coordinate values in the random access store.
2. Data display apparatus comprising a procedure processor, a storage unit and a display buffer operating under the control of a control system to display on a display screen multiple overlaid viewports, each assigned to a different application task, characterised in that the operating system includes:
communication means, adapted to control the apparatus to receive data display information signals from an application processor, and processor means, adapted to control the procedure processor to store in a random access store indications of the position and size of each viewport area, together with an indication of the priority level of the viewport area, and to generate signals indicating the result of constructing a first matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of viewport areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each viewport area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each viewport area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the viewports covered by the element; to construct a second matrix for the viewport area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular viewport that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, and using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the viewport area and to generate and store signals indicative of the determination.
communication means, adapted to control the apparatus to receive data display information signals from an application processor, and processor means, adapted to control the procedure processor to store in a random access store indications of the position and size of each viewport area, together with an indication of the priority level of the viewport area, and to generate signals indicating the result of constructing a first matrix of (2n+1)2 elements, where n is equal to the number of viewport areas, by assigning a vertical component to each vertical coordinate of each viewport area and a horizontal component to each horizontal coordinate of each viewport area, and for each element so formed storing an indication of the highest priority level of the viewports covered by the element; to construct a second matrix for the viewport area, the display of which is to be changed, by storing, for each element, an indication whether or not it covers the particular viewport that is to be changed, and associating the corresponding elements of identical rows and columns together, and using the second matrix to determine the coordinates of the received display information that can be displayed in the viewport area and to generate and store signals indicative of the determination.
3. Display apparatus as claimed in claim 2 in which the communication means and the processor means are included in a control store in the form of control signals defining the sequence of operations of the apparatus.
Applications Claiming Priority (2)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB8419440 | 1984-07-31 | ||
| GB08419440A GB2162726A (en) | 1984-07-31 | 1984-07-31 | Display of overlapping viewport areas |
Publications (1)
| Publication Number | Publication Date |
|---|---|
| CA1236603A true CA1236603A (en) | 1988-05-10 |
Family
ID=10564686
Family Applications (1)
| Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA000480976A Expired CA1236603A (en) | 1984-07-31 | 1985-05-07 | Data display systems |
Country Status (6)
| Country | Link |
|---|---|
| US (1) | US4736309A (en) |
| EP (1) | EP0172312B1 (en) |
| JP (1) | JPS6141185A (en) |
| CA (1) | CA1236603A (en) |
| DE (1) | DE3584554D1 (en) |
| GB (1) | GB2162726A (en) |
Cited By (1)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US6432036B1 (en) * | 1999-12-15 | 2002-08-13 | Chi-Kyung Kim | Device for magnetic focus radiation medical treatment |
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| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPS62247474A (en) * | 1986-03-19 | 1987-10-28 | Fujitsu Ltd | Control system for multi-window display |
| JPS62276673A (en) * | 1986-05-26 | 1987-12-01 | Toshiba Corp | Multiwindow display device |
| US5179655A (en) * | 1986-06-05 | 1993-01-12 | Yasuhiro Noguchi | Multiwindow control method and apparatus for work station having multiwindow function |
| GB2191917A (en) * | 1986-06-16 | 1987-12-23 | Ibm | A multiple window display system |
| US5125071A (en) * | 1986-09-10 | 1992-06-23 | Hitachi, Ltd. | Computer command input unit giving priority to frequently selected commands |
| JPH0814785B2 (en) * | 1986-09-24 | 1996-02-14 | 株式会社日立製作所 | Display controller |
| JPS63254513A (en) * | 1987-04-13 | 1988-10-21 | Toshiba Corp | Picture display method |
| EP0298166B1 (en) * | 1987-07-08 | 1992-09-23 | International Business Machines Corporation | Data processing machine for automatically changing data formats |
| US4928247A (en) * | 1987-08-13 | 1990-05-22 | Digital Equipment Corporation | Method and apparatus for the continuous and asynchronous traversal and processing of graphics data structures |
| US5157763A (en) * | 1987-10-15 | 1992-10-20 | International Business Machines Corporation | Visually assisted method for transfer of data within an application or from a source application to a receiving application |
| JPH021308A (en) * | 1987-12-08 | 1990-01-05 | Rise Technol Inc | Gray scale adorn |
| JPH01181163A (en) * | 1988-01-13 | 1989-07-19 | Seiko Instr & Electron Ltd | Graphic display system |
| KR930001926B1 (en) * | 1988-04-13 | 1993-03-20 | 가부시끼가이샤 히다찌세이사꾸쇼 | Display control method and apparatus |
| US5075675A (en) * | 1988-06-30 | 1991-12-24 | International Business Machines Corporation | Method and apparatus for dynamic promotion of background window displays in multi-tasking computer systems |
| US5148516A (en) * | 1988-08-30 | 1992-09-15 | Hewlett-Packard Company | Efficient computer terminal system utilizing a single slave processor |
| US5036315A (en) * | 1988-09-06 | 1991-07-30 | Spectragraphics, Inc. | Simultaneous display of interleaved windowed video information from multiple asynchronous computers on a single video monitor |
| AU617006B2 (en) * | 1988-09-29 | 1991-11-14 | Canon Kabushiki Kaisha | Data processing system and apparatus |
| US5101365A (en) * | 1988-10-31 | 1992-03-31 | Sun Microsystems, Inc. | Apparatus for extending windows using Z buffer memory |
| CA1323450C (en) * | 1989-02-06 | 1993-10-19 | Larry K. Loucks | Depth buffer clipping for window management |
| US5237657A (en) * | 1989-03-17 | 1993-08-17 | Sony Corporation | Apparatus for manipulating a picture represented by a video signal |
| JPH0422485U (en) * | 1990-06-18 | 1992-02-25 | ||
| US5276437A (en) * | 1992-04-22 | 1994-01-04 | International Business Machines Corporation | Multi-media window manager |
| US5265202A (en) * | 1992-08-28 | 1993-11-23 | International Business Machines Corporation | Method and system for accessing visually obscured data in a data processing system |
| GB2273025B (en) * | 1992-11-12 | 1997-03-26 | Rockwell International Corp | Automatic call distributor with a programmable data window display system and method |
| GB2287627B (en) * | 1994-03-01 | 1998-07-15 | Vtech Electronics Ltd | Graphic video display system including graphic layers with sizable,positionable windows and programmable priority |
| US5841420A (en) * | 1995-08-18 | 1998-11-24 | International Business Machines Corporation | Method and system in a data processing system windowing environment for displaying previously obscured information |
| US6084670A (en) * | 1997-03-11 | 2000-07-04 | Nihon Kohden Corporation | Particle analyzer and composite lens formed by integrally joining plural lens elements of different focal points |
| US6622190B1 (en) | 2000-04-27 | 2003-09-16 | Sharp Laboratories Of America | Method for modifying task execution priority in a multitasking, windowed operating environment |
Family Cites Families (10)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US4414628A (en) * | 1981-03-31 | 1983-11-08 | Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated | System for displaying overlapping pages of information |
| US4396989A (en) * | 1981-05-19 | 1983-08-02 | Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated | Method and apparatus for providing a video display of concatenated lines and filled polygons |
| US4481594A (en) * | 1982-01-18 | 1984-11-06 | Honeywell Information Systems Inc. | Method and apparatus for filling polygons displayed by a raster graphic system |
| US4509043A (en) * | 1982-04-12 | 1985-04-02 | Tektronix, Inc. | Method and apparatus for displaying images |
| US4555775B1 (en) * | 1982-10-07 | 1995-12-05 | Bell Telephone Labor Inc | Dynamic generation and overlaying of graphic windows for multiple active program storage areas |
| EP0121015B1 (en) * | 1983-03-31 | 1990-03-07 | International Business Machines Corporation | Presentation space management and viewporting on a multifunction virtual terminal |
| US4554538A (en) * | 1983-05-25 | 1985-11-19 | Westinghouse Electric Corp. | Multi-level raster scan display system |
| US4550315A (en) * | 1983-11-03 | 1985-10-29 | Burroughs Corporation | System for electronically displaying multiple images on a CRT screen such that some images are more prominent than others |
| US4542376A (en) * | 1983-11-03 | 1985-09-17 | Burroughs Corporation | System for electronically displaying portions of several different images on a CRT screen through respective prioritized viewports |
| US4599610A (en) * | 1984-03-21 | 1986-07-08 | Phillips Petroleum Company | Overlaying information on a video display |
-
1984
- 1984-07-31 GB GB08419440A patent/GB2162726A/en not_active Withdrawn
-
1985
- 1985-04-16 JP JP7946785A patent/JPS6141185A/en active Granted
- 1985-04-17 DE DE8585104591T patent/DE3584554D1/en not_active Expired - Fee Related
- 1985-04-17 EP EP85104591A patent/EP0172312B1/en not_active Expired
- 1985-05-07 CA CA000480976A patent/CA1236603A/en not_active Expired
- 1985-07-26 US US06/759,706 patent/US4736309A/en not_active Expired - Lifetime
Cited By (1)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US6432036B1 (en) * | 1999-12-15 | 2002-08-13 | Chi-Kyung Kim | Device for magnetic focus radiation medical treatment |
Also Published As
| Publication number | Publication date |
|---|---|
| GB2162726A (en) | 1986-02-05 |
| DE3584554D1 (en) | 1991-12-05 |
| JPH0421198B2 (en) | 1992-04-08 |
| EP0172312B1 (en) | 1991-10-30 |
| EP0172312A2 (en) | 1986-02-26 |
| JPS6141185A (en) | 1986-02-27 |
| US4736309A (en) | 1988-04-05 |
| EP0172312A3 (en) | 1989-11-29 |
| GB8419440D0 (en) | 1984-09-05 |
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