CA1155982A - Digital data display system - Google Patents
Digital data display systemInfo
- Publication number
- CA1155982A CA1155982A CA000356679A CA356679A CA1155982A CA 1155982 A CA1155982 A CA 1155982A CA 000356679 A CA000356679 A CA 000356679A CA 356679 A CA356679 A CA 356679A CA 1155982 A CA1155982 A CA 1155982A
- Authority
- CA
- Canada
- Prior art keywords
- character
- picture
- pattern
- display
- character cell
- Prior art date
- Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
- Expired
Links
Classifications
-
- 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
- G09G5/22—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators characterised by the display of characters or indicia using display control signals derived from coded signals representing the characters or indicia, e.g. with a character-code memory
- G09G5/222—Control of the character-code memory
- G09G5/225—Control of the character-code memory comprising a loadable character generator
Abstract
DIGITAL DATA DISPLAY SYSTEM
ABSTRACT
A digital data display system in which the display device includes a plurality of random access stores into which character cell definitions are loaded from a remote central processing unit. A character cell may be a 9 x 16 picture element matrix and each is defined in the c.p.u.
according to the requirements of a display request received from a users application program. The system control services include a graphics manager and graphics routines which construct a character buffer and character cell definition table according to the picture to be displayed.
A character cell definition that is required more than once in a picture is only included once in the definition table, the character buffer having the required number of pointers to the one definition. When the character buffer and charac-ter definition table have been constructed they are trans-mitted to the display device using a data communication system. The system can be used for colour or monochrome displays.
ABSTRACT
A digital data display system in which the display device includes a plurality of random access stores into which character cell definitions are loaded from a remote central processing unit. A character cell may be a 9 x 16 picture element matrix and each is defined in the c.p.u.
according to the requirements of a display request received from a users application program. The system control services include a graphics manager and graphics routines which construct a character buffer and character cell definition table according to the picture to be displayed.
A character cell definition that is required more than once in a picture is only included once in the definition table, the character buffer having the required number of pointers to the one definition. When the character buffer and charac-ter definition table have been constructed they are trans-mitted to the display device using a data communication system. The system can be used for colour or monochrome displays.
Description
3 ~ ~
This invention relates to digital data display systems and particularly to such systems that are capable of dis-playing both alphanumeric and graphical data.
The widespread use of interactive display terminals connected to digital data processing units has led to a - c'emand for information to be displayed not only in the form of alphanumeric characters but in the form of graphical pictures, such as graphs, bar and pie charts which illus-trate relationships between values in a way that is easy to understand.
A review of some of the prior art techniques used to display graphical pictures is found in the Communication of the ACM, February 1974 (~ol. 17, NoO 12) pp 7077, a paper entitled "A Cell Organized Raster Display for Line Drawings"
by B.W~ Jordan and R~C. Barrett. This paper discussed the differences between random scan or directed beam d-splays ; and raster scan displays and then describes an implementa-tion of a raster scan display using a screen that is notion-ally divided into a numbPr of cells each cell having a matrix of bit positions~ As described in the paper, the display system has four basic sections, a ~.isplay screen, a display output ~uffer, a character generator and a refresh memory. The character generator which is said to be the 'heart of the graphics terminal' is a special purpose pro-cessor dedicated to the preparation of graphical figuresO
The use of such a special purpose processor is obviously an expensive item in a graphic terminal.
U~K. Patent Specification 1,330,748 (Applied Digital ; 30 Data Systems Inc~) and U.S. Patent 3,891,982 (Adage Inc~) both describe apparatus for forming a display of graphical and alphanumeric data. The U.K. Patent Specification UK97~034 ,' '~
1 describes a system in which a]phanumeric and graphical data are treated separately until they are applied to a s~reen through a video signal generator. In the U.S. Patent, the apparatus described operates to repetitively generate a video signal for driving a raster scan display ~rom data encoded in data words representing image components. The ras-ter scan is considered as being divisible into a rec-tilinear array of ro~s and columns of cells, each image component, as encoded, lying within a sin~le cell. More than one image component can be provided in each cell. The apparatus includes a serial refresh memory for holding, in cell order, data words defining an image to be displayed.
The contents of the memory are selectively advanced to read out all data words relating to a given cell and as those data words are successively read out they are decoded to generate signals defining corresponding image elements. An accumu~
lation register accumulates the picture elements defined by a succession of data words relating to a given cell and means are provided for storing and serially reading out the accumulated data as a video signal to the raster scan display.
U.S. Patent 3,293,614 and 3,351,929 both assigned to Hazeltine Research Inc. relate to digital data systems, the first (614) describes a system in which the screen is divided into a ~lurality of illuminable dot elements, or picture elements (pels) and the associated storage means has a separate storage element for each pel. This entails using a very large storage device. The second patent ~929) describes an attempt to reduce the amount of storage required by storing character information according to address infor-mation included with each character word. The addresses are divided into a coarse address and a fine addres,s. The coarse UK9-78-03~ -2-1 address determines within which character sized segment of the display the character is to begin and the fine address locates the character within -the segment. The combination of the coarse and the fine address allows the character to be located at any point on the display.
In all the systems described above there is a problem encountered whenever a picture is required to be either modified or completely changed and it is an object of the present invention to provide a digital data display system which obviates the disadvantage of these systems.
According to the present invention there is provided a digital data display system for presenting a graphical picture on an output device in which the area or screen from which the picture .is to be viewed is notionally divided into a plurality of character cells each of which comprises a predetermined number of picture elements (pels), the system comprising means for creating, in response to input information, a first level description of all.the elements of a picture to ~e presented; means for storing a screen definition table having an entry for each character cell of the display area; means for calculating for each element of the picture the pattern of pels in associated character cells required to display the elements, storing the cal--culated pattern in a table in a character cell store and associating the respective entry in the screen definition table with the required pattern in the character cell store;
means to determine when a particular character pel pattern ::
has already been calculated as required for a picture and to associate the respective screen definition table entries with only one copy of the particular character cell pel pattern, ~nd means for transferring the screen definition table to a screen definition buffer store and the:.character 3 ~
1 cell pattern table to a character cell buffer store in the display device whereby -the contents oE the screen definition bu~fer store and character cell buffer store control the construction of a picture presented ~y the display device.
In order that the invention may be fully understood, a preerred embodiment thereof will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:-Figure 1 shows in schematic form, the main componentsfor implementing a digital data display system.
~ Figure 2 shows in schematic form a display unit with a random access store.
Figure 3 shows in schematic form the system control services which control the operation of the digital data display system.
Figure 4 illustrates the layout of a picture displayed on a display unit.
Figures 5 to 14 (of which Fig. 12 is shown on the same sheet as Fig. 7) illustrate by way of example the opexation of a component o~ the system control services.
Figur~s 15 and 16 are flow diagrams illustrating the operations of the system.
Referring now to Figure 1 there is shown a central processing unit 1 which may ~or example be an IBM System 370/1~8 machine (IBM is a Registered Trade Mark). The central processing unit 1 performs the main processing tasks re~uired to control the display unit and also includes means for processing the display information in accordance with the invention. The central processing unit may have a direct connection to a display controller 2 and/or may be connected remotely to such a display controller 3 through a channel control unit 4 which is connected remotely to a network controller 5 which in turn may be connected to UK9-78-034 _4_ , ~ 3i~
1 several display controllers 3. (Only one shown.) Each of the display controllers controls a plurality of display devices 6. The display devices usually comprise a visual display unit, such as a cathode ray tube and a separate keyboard, by which a user enters commands into the system.
In order to implement the present invention the display devices 6 each include a random access store as will be described be]ow.
In prior art display terminals such as the IB~ 3270 ; 10 series there is a buffer store in the display unit which contains one entry for each character position on the screen.
A character position may either contain a character (which may not actually be displayable i.e. it may be ~lank or null), or a field attribute ~which displays as a blank, but contains attribute information about how the characters in the follow-ing field are to appear, e.g. highlighted, invisible, etc.).
In the former case the entry in the character buffer contains an iDdex which is used by the hardware character generator to access the definition of the pel pattern for that char-ac~er. The definitions themselves are held in read only storage~ so they may not be altered.
Figure ~ shows in schematic form a display head incor-porating the principles of the present inventionr Instead of just a single set o read only storage character defini-tions the head contains two sets of character definitions held in read only stores 7 and 8 and up to six sets of character definitions contained in random access stores 9, 10 and 11 (each of which in the drawing represents two random access stores)~ The definition contained in these stores 9;
10, and 11 can be changed by input information from the central processing unit 4 (Figure l).
1 In this specification these character definitions which can be stored in the random access stores 9, 10 and 11 are referred to as programmable symbols.
The character buffer 12 is supplemented by an extended attribute buffer 13, which contains, again on a character basis (except for the positions at which field attributes occur), additional information about the highlighting for that character position. If the display head uses a colour tube, this information will include the colour of the char-acter and also the number of the character set from which the character definition is to be taken.
of course while the present description of the preferredembodiment refers to a display-head including a cathode ray tube, other embodiments using printers and other output displa~ devices may be envisaged.
The display head may have provision for displaying character cells in a single colour or a plurality of colours, using for example combinations of red, green and blue. With a single colour display the character definition buffers 9, 10 and 11 storin~ the programmable symbols contain one bit for each pel in a character cell (i.e. a single defini-tion for a 9 x 16 character cell may be held in 18 bytes of storage). The pattern defined by the 18 bytes will be dis-played in a single colour (of necessity in a monochrome display, though not necessarily the same colour in a colour display), in each display posi-tion where it is referenced by the character buf~er 12. The actual colour where a single colour character display is used is determined by the colour bits in the apparopriate position in the extended attribute buffer 13.
If there is to be more than one colour within a single screen cell position then triple character cells are used.
UK9-7~-03~ -6-1 There are then three bits for each screen pel, one for each of the primary colour guns, red, green and blue.
When only the red bit is on for a particular pel, that pel will be displayed in red; if red and green bits are on the pel will be yellow and so on. As the colour definition is now within the character definition rather than in the extended attribute buffer 13, a triple referenced in more than one screen position by the character buffer 12 will ' always appear with the same combination of colours.
Methods of using programmable symbols may be divided into two main categories: firstly they may be used to define different character fonts (e.g., italic or Greek) and secondly they allow graphic objects to be drawn, to pel accuracy. These methods may be combined in the same picture display. The preferred embodiment described in this speci-fication will be concerned with the drawing and displaying of graphic objects.
Using programmable symbols enables pel accurate gra-phics to be displayed on a refresh screen, or printed by a printer without requiring the quantity of storage which would otherwise be necessary in the display unit to hold a complete pel buffer. This is because for all but the most complex pictures, there are a substantial number of screen character cell positions which are either empty, or contain exactly the sam pel pattern as other cell positionsl so that the defirlition need be held only once.
The use of programmable symbols i5 well suited to applications which are concerned with graphical presenta-tions of data; making use of such features as area shading - and the use of colour. Also for those applications in which the interaction is through the use of associated alphanumeric or function keys on a keyboard.
i , 3 ~
1 In general terms the system that comprises the pre-ferred embodiments of the present invention operates as followso A user of the digital data display system ~FIG. 1) communicates interactively with a particular application program through a display unit 6. The application program will normally be stored in a back~up store connected with the central processing unit lo When a user has identified the application programs required the system control ser-vices of the digital data display system will load theapplication program into the central processing unit's 1 working store and perform all the control and supervising services needed to run the application.
The application program will, typically, have been written so that at some point it will require the system control services to display data at the display unit 6. The data may have been supplied to the application program by the user directly from the keyboard contained in display unit 6 or it may have been obtained from a file in a data ``
base to which the central processing unit 1 has access. The application program will request that the system cc,ntrol services display the data in a particular form, say for example a bar chart. Having received the request and the data from the application program the system control ser-vices then perform the necessary functions to display the data as required at the particular display ur-it 6 which the user is usingD
The system control services which control the operation of the digital data display system are shown schematically in Figure 3. The central processing unit 1, which as mentioned above may be an IBM system 370/168, has an operat-ing system 14 which may be IBM Virtual Machine 3 ~
1 Facility/370 (VM/370) described generally in the Introduc-tion to IBM Virtual Machine Facility/370 GC20-1800-9 published by International Business Machines Corporation.
VM/370 manages the resources of an IBM System/370 in such a way that multiple users have a functional simulation of a computing system (a virtual machine) at their disposal.
That is, the virtual machine runs as if it were a real machine simulating both hardware and software resources of the system. These simulating resources can be either shared with other virtual machines or alternatively allGcated to each machine for a specified time. Virtual machines can run the same or different operating systems simultaneously, ; thus a user can create and adapt a virtual machine to meet the users needs. A description of the component parts and how VM/370 operates is found in the above referenced manual.
A user at a remote terminal 6 (Figure 1) communicates with the central processing unit through the network con-troller 3 using the services of a communications access control system 15 (Figure 3~. The communication access control system 15 operates under the control of the operat-ing system and organises the transmission and reception o~
information (commands and data) to and from the remote net-work controllers.
An example of a communication access control system is the Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM) des-cribed in ACF~VTAM General Information Manual ~GC38-0254~
published by International Business Machines Corporation.
A third part of the system control services is the interactive or data communication system 16. The on-line real-time data base/data communication differs from batch processing systems in the amount and types of concurrent activities that are likely to occur within the processing system at a given time. Whereas a batch processing system UK~78034 9 , ~ 15~J~2 1 schedules each application independently and provides data support unique to each application, a Ds/Dc system controls many transactions arriving on a random non~scheduled basis and provides an in-tegrated data base supporting each application. To do this a DB/DC system requires the inter-active or DC system 16 in addition to the basic operating system. An example of such a system is the Customer Information Control System (CICS) described in Customer Information Control System (CICS) General Information Manual (GH20-1028-4) published by International ~usiness Machines Corporation.
The system control services which have been described above as blocks 14, 15 and 16 of Figure 3 perform the basic control of a large scale data processing system enabling a user at a remote terminal to run specific application programs which are also stored in a storage device to which the processing u~it has access~ These are indicated at 17 in Figure 3. Application programs can be directed to many di~ferent and diverse requirements from wee~ly or monthly accounting and payroll routines to planning analysis and tracking o~ space satellite systems. Such applications can be run on the same digital data processing system simultan-eously with users at adjacent terminals 6 (Figure l) using the system for very dif~erent applications. One thing that most applications require or result in is the presentation of data to the user often during the running of the application.
The present invention is directed to~ards facilitating the presentation of data at the display units either visual display units or printers represented as the units 6 of Figure 1~ To this end the central processing unit has two further parts to the system control serivces. These are shown as a graphics manager 18 and graphics routines lg in UK97~034 10 3 ~
1 Figure 3. The operations of the graphics manager and the graphics routines and how they interact with the character definition buffers 7-11 of Figure 2 will be described in more detail below.
When an application program reaches a point in its processing that requires data to be displayed at a display unit call statements may be issued by the application which involve the graphics manager 18 and the graphics routines 19 of the system control services. With the call state~lerlts the application program passes the address of the data to be displayed, together with information concerning the form that the display is to take, whether a~ a bar chart, pie chart, venn diagram etc., together ~ith tk;e axes where appropriate and the area o~ the particular display device where the data is -to appear, e.g., a graph may appear in only the top half of the display with an alphabetic charac-ter explanation in the bottom half.
The graphics routines 19 and graphics manager 18 perform the following functions which are initially descibed in general terms.
The graphics routines 19 accept information passed by the application program in the call statements and then decides how the picture is to b~ drawn. If the picture is not to be a full screen or page this information is passed to the manager. If the axes of the graph are to be drawn then the coordinates relating to two lines are passed to the manager. The data to be displayed is then fetched from the storage address given in the call statements ar:d the appro-priate processing carried outD For example the graphics routines 19 include several sub-routines for manipulating and processing data so that the appropriate picture can be drawn. Such routines are:
1 a. Line Graph Routine Line curves COIlSiSt of a set of data points joined by lines. Special ~marker' symbols are calculated -to be drawn at each of the data points~ The routine includes an option of presenting only the symbols to give a scatter plot, or to omit the symbols leaving only the lines to indicate the curve.
b. Surface Curve Routine Surface curves are very similar to line curves; they differ only in two respects. No symbols are plotted at the data points and the area between the curve and the indepen-dent variable axis, or some datum line parallel to it is shaded.
c. Histograms The data for line graphs is such that the dependent variable is a measure of a particular quantity across a defined range of values of the independent variable. Data for histograms differs in that the de~pendent variable is the measure of a pax~icular quantity over a range of values of the independent variable. The histogram may be plotted as a ~20 number of barsO Each bar has the width given by the range and ends at the corresponding data value. The bar starts at the axis or a datum reference line.
d. Bar Charts Bar Charts are appropriate for data where the indepen-dent variable is not continuous or has no physical meaning.
The bars are spaced equally along an independent axis. A
composite bar chart appears as though it was constructed from a single component bar chart (assumed for simplicity to have vertical bars) by dividing each bar horizontally, effec-tively giving a set of smaller bars on top of one another.The lengths of each of the smaller bars in a layer corres~
pond to the contribution of a particular component to the total.
UK~,'8034 12 ~13~`~3 l e. Pie Charts A pie chart is used to illustrate the way in which a variable is partitioned into several classes according to some attribute.
This is represented graphically by dividing a circle into sectors, one for each class, with the angle of each sector being proportional to the contribution to the total from each class.
The data provided to draw a p.e chart is a set of values, one -for each sector of the pieO These values may be expressed as percentages of the total, or as absolute values.
The plot produced will consist of a sector for each valid value given. Eor each such value, V, the angle in degrees ! A, of the sector will be given by:
A - 360*V/l00 for percentage values, or A = 36C*V/TOTAL
if the values are absolute, and where TOTAL is the s~m of all the valid ~alues.
If the values are given as percentages and the total of the valid values is less than l00 then an incomplete circle will be drawn. The sector cc,rresponding to the missing percentage will not be drawn.
The sectors are drawn in a clockwise direction. The first sector is drawn from the 12 o'clock position.
A set of labels is also given, one for each sector of the pie~ If provided, these are drawn opposite the sector to which they apply~ If labels overlap because the angles for successive labels are small, the labels are moved up or down. Each label may optionally be preceded by a numeric value which is either the percentage that the corresponding value is of the total, or the absolute value~ depending on 1 the chart type. The labels are joined to the sectors by lines. The line runs radially outward from the sector until it intersects the largest circle that can be drawn within the plot. From that point it runs out horizontally to the label.
~ mul~iple pie chart consists of 2 or more pies (one for each component) with their centres arranged along a horizon-tal or vertical line.
The overall layout for a picture is shown in Figure 4.
The picture area 20 may be a full screen or page, but would usually be less - either half or quarter screen size. The area 21 is the kernal of the picture, the position and size of which may be varied by the information passed by the application prog~am. The area 22 is the picture margin and the title of the picture appears between the brackets 23.
The line 24 is the Y axis and the line 25 the X axis, with the Y axis title appearing between the brackets 26 and the X
axis title between the brackets 27.
Chart construction is considered to take place in two steps:
1. Drawing the axes.
This invention relates to digital data display systems and particularly to such systems that are capable of dis-playing both alphanumeric and graphical data.
The widespread use of interactive display terminals connected to digital data processing units has led to a - c'emand for information to be displayed not only in the form of alphanumeric characters but in the form of graphical pictures, such as graphs, bar and pie charts which illus-trate relationships between values in a way that is easy to understand.
A review of some of the prior art techniques used to display graphical pictures is found in the Communication of the ACM, February 1974 (~ol. 17, NoO 12) pp 7077, a paper entitled "A Cell Organized Raster Display for Line Drawings"
by B.W~ Jordan and R~C. Barrett. This paper discussed the differences between random scan or directed beam d-splays ; and raster scan displays and then describes an implementa-tion of a raster scan display using a screen that is notion-ally divided into a numbPr of cells each cell having a matrix of bit positions~ As described in the paper, the display system has four basic sections, a ~.isplay screen, a display output ~uffer, a character generator and a refresh memory. The character generator which is said to be the 'heart of the graphics terminal' is a special purpose pro-cessor dedicated to the preparation of graphical figuresO
The use of such a special purpose processor is obviously an expensive item in a graphic terminal.
U~K. Patent Specification 1,330,748 (Applied Digital ; 30 Data Systems Inc~) and U.S. Patent 3,891,982 (Adage Inc~) both describe apparatus for forming a display of graphical and alphanumeric data. The U.K. Patent Specification UK97~034 ,' '~
1 describes a system in which a]phanumeric and graphical data are treated separately until they are applied to a s~reen through a video signal generator. In the U.S. Patent, the apparatus described operates to repetitively generate a video signal for driving a raster scan display ~rom data encoded in data words representing image components. The ras-ter scan is considered as being divisible into a rec-tilinear array of ro~s and columns of cells, each image component, as encoded, lying within a sin~le cell. More than one image component can be provided in each cell. The apparatus includes a serial refresh memory for holding, in cell order, data words defining an image to be displayed.
The contents of the memory are selectively advanced to read out all data words relating to a given cell and as those data words are successively read out they are decoded to generate signals defining corresponding image elements. An accumu~
lation register accumulates the picture elements defined by a succession of data words relating to a given cell and means are provided for storing and serially reading out the accumulated data as a video signal to the raster scan display.
U.S. Patent 3,293,614 and 3,351,929 both assigned to Hazeltine Research Inc. relate to digital data systems, the first (614) describes a system in which the screen is divided into a ~lurality of illuminable dot elements, or picture elements (pels) and the associated storage means has a separate storage element for each pel. This entails using a very large storage device. The second patent ~929) describes an attempt to reduce the amount of storage required by storing character information according to address infor-mation included with each character word. The addresses are divided into a coarse address and a fine addres,s. The coarse UK9-78-03~ -2-1 address determines within which character sized segment of the display the character is to begin and the fine address locates the character within -the segment. The combination of the coarse and the fine address allows the character to be located at any point on the display.
In all the systems described above there is a problem encountered whenever a picture is required to be either modified or completely changed and it is an object of the present invention to provide a digital data display system which obviates the disadvantage of these systems.
According to the present invention there is provided a digital data display system for presenting a graphical picture on an output device in which the area or screen from which the picture .is to be viewed is notionally divided into a plurality of character cells each of which comprises a predetermined number of picture elements (pels), the system comprising means for creating, in response to input information, a first level description of all.the elements of a picture to ~e presented; means for storing a screen definition table having an entry for each character cell of the display area; means for calculating for each element of the picture the pattern of pels in associated character cells required to display the elements, storing the cal--culated pattern in a table in a character cell store and associating the respective entry in the screen definition table with the required pattern in the character cell store;
means to determine when a particular character pel pattern ::
has already been calculated as required for a picture and to associate the respective screen definition table entries with only one copy of the particular character cell pel pattern, ~nd means for transferring the screen definition table to a screen definition buffer store and the:.character 3 ~
1 cell pattern table to a character cell buffer store in the display device whereby -the contents oE the screen definition bu~fer store and character cell buffer store control the construction of a picture presented ~y the display device.
In order that the invention may be fully understood, a preerred embodiment thereof will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:-Figure 1 shows in schematic form, the main componentsfor implementing a digital data display system.
~ Figure 2 shows in schematic form a display unit with a random access store.
Figure 3 shows in schematic form the system control services which control the operation of the digital data display system.
Figure 4 illustrates the layout of a picture displayed on a display unit.
Figures 5 to 14 (of which Fig. 12 is shown on the same sheet as Fig. 7) illustrate by way of example the opexation of a component o~ the system control services.
Figur~s 15 and 16 are flow diagrams illustrating the operations of the system.
Referring now to Figure 1 there is shown a central processing unit 1 which may ~or example be an IBM System 370/1~8 machine (IBM is a Registered Trade Mark). The central processing unit 1 performs the main processing tasks re~uired to control the display unit and also includes means for processing the display information in accordance with the invention. The central processing unit may have a direct connection to a display controller 2 and/or may be connected remotely to such a display controller 3 through a channel control unit 4 which is connected remotely to a network controller 5 which in turn may be connected to UK9-78-034 _4_ , ~ 3i~
1 several display controllers 3. (Only one shown.) Each of the display controllers controls a plurality of display devices 6. The display devices usually comprise a visual display unit, such as a cathode ray tube and a separate keyboard, by which a user enters commands into the system.
In order to implement the present invention the display devices 6 each include a random access store as will be described be]ow.
In prior art display terminals such as the IB~ 3270 ; 10 series there is a buffer store in the display unit which contains one entry for each character position on the screen.
A character position may either contain a character (which may not actually be displayable i.e. it may be ~lank or null), or a field attribute ~which displays as a blank, but contains attribute information about how the characters in the follow-ing field are to appear, e.g. highlighted, invisible, etc.).
In the former case the entry in the character buffer contains an iDdex which is used by the hardware character generator to access the definition of the pel pattern for that char-ac~er. The definitions themselves are held in read only storage~ so they may not be altered.
Figure ~ shows in schematic form a display head incor-porating the principles of the present inventionr Instead of just a single set o read only storage character defini-tions the head contains two sets of character definitions held in read only stores 7 and 8 and up to six sets of character definitions contained in random access stores 9, 10 and 11 (each of which in the drawing represents two random access stores)~ The definition contained in these stores 9;
10, and 11 can be changed by input information from the central processing unit 4 (Figure l).
1 In this specification these character definitions which can be stored in the random access stores 9, 10 and 11 are referred to as programmable symbols.
The character buffer 12 is supplemented by an extended attribute buffer 13, which contains, again on a character basis (except for the positions at which field attributes occur), additional information about the highlighting for that character position. If the display head uses a colour tube, this information will include the colour of the char-acter and also the number of the character set from which the character definition is to be taken.
of course while the present description of the preferredembodiment refers to a display-head including a cathode ray tube, other embodiments using printers and other output displa~ devices may be envisaged.
The display head may have provision for displaying character cells in a single colour or a plurality of colours, using for example combinations of red, green and blue. With a single colour display the character definition buffers 9, 10 and 11 storin~ the programmable symbols contain one bit for each pel in a character cell (i.e. a single defini-tion for a 9 x 16 character cell may be held in 18 bytes of storage). The pattern defined by the 18 bytes will be dis-played in a single colour (of necessity in a monochrome display, though not necessarily the same colour in a colour display), in each display posi-tion where it is referenced by the character buf~er 12. The actual colour where a single colour character display is used is determined by the colour bits in the apparopriate position in the extended attribute buffer 13.
If there is to be more than one colour within a single screen cell position then triple character cells are used.
UK9-7~-03~ -6-1 There are then three bits for each screen pel, one for each of the primary colour guns, red, green and blue.
When only the red bit is on for a particular pel, that pel will be displayed in red; if red and green bits are on the pel will be yellow and so on. As the colour definition is now within the character definition rather than in the extended attribute buffer 13, a triple referenced in more than one screen position by the character buffer 12 will ' always appear with the same combination of colours.
Methods of using programmable symbols may be divided into two main categories: firstly they may be used to define different character fonts (e.g., italic or Greek) and secondly they allow graphic objects to be drawn, to pel accuracy. These methods may be combined in the same picture display. The preferred embodiment described in this speci-fication will be concerned with the drawing and displaying of graphic objects.
Using programmable symbols enables pel accurate gra-phics to be displayed on a refresh screen, or printed by a printer without requiring the quantity of storage which would otherwise be necessary in the display unit to hold a complete pel buffer. This is because for all but the most complex pictures, there are a substantial number of screen character cell positions which are either empty, or contain exactly the sam pel pattern as other cell positionsl so that the defirlition need be held only once.
The use of programmable symbols i5 well suited to applications which are concerned with graphical presenta-tions of data; making use of such features as area shading - and the use of colour. Also for those applications in which the interaction is through the use of associated alphanumeric or function keys on a keyboard.
i , 3 ~
1 In general terms the system that comprises the pre-ferred embodiments of the present invention operates as followso A user of the digital data display system ~FIG. 1) communicates interactively with a particular application program through a display unit 6. The application program will normally be stored in a back~up store connected with the central processing unit lo When a user has identified the application programs required the system control ser-vices of the digital data display system will load theapplication program into the central processing unit's 1 working store and perform all the control and supervising services needed to run the application.
The application program will, typically, have been written so that at some point it will require the system control services to display data at the display unit 6. The data may have been supplied to the application program by the user directly from the keyboard contained in display unit 6 or it may have been obtained from a file in a data ``
base to which the central processing unit 1 has access. The application program will request that the system cc,ntrol services display the data in a particular form, say for example a bar chart. Having received the request and the data from the application program the system control ser-vices then perform the necessary functions to display the data as required at the particular display ur-it 6 which the user is usingD
The system control services which control the operation of the digital data display system are shown schematically in Figure 3. The central processing unit 1, which as mentioned above may be an IBM system 370/168, has an operat-ing system 14 which may be IBM Virtual Machine 3 ~
1 Facility/370 (VM/370) described generally in the Introduc-tion to IBM Virtual Machine Facility/370 GC20-1800-9 published by International Business Machines Corporation.
VM/370 manages the resources of an IBM System/370 in such a way that multiple users have a functional simulation of a computing system (a virtual machine) at their disposal.
That is, the virtual machine runs as if it were a real machine simulating both hardware and software resources of the system. These simulating resources can be either shared with other virtual machines or alternatively allGcated to each machine for a specified time. Virtual machines can run the same or different operating systems simultaneously, ; thus a user can create and adapt a virtual machine to meet the users needs. A description of the component parts and how VM/370 operates is found in the above referenced manual.
A user at a remote terminal 6 (Figure 1) communicates with the central processing unit through the network con-troller 3 using the services of a communications access control system 15 (Figure 3~. The communication access control system 15 operates under the control of the operat-ing system and organises the transmission and reception o~
information (commands and data) to and from the remote net-work controllers.
An example of a communication access control system is the Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM) des-cribed in ACF~VTAM General Information Manual ~GC38-0254~
published by International Business Machines Corporation.
A third part of the system control services is the interactive or data communication system 16. The on-line real-time data base/data communication differs from batch processing systems in the amount and types of concurrent activities that are likely to occur within the processing system at a given time. Whereas a batch processing system UK~78034 9 , ~ 15~J~2 1 schedules each application independently and provides data support unique to each application, a Ds/Dc system controls many transactions arriving on a random non~scheduled basis and provides an in-tegrated data base supporting each application. To do this a DB/DC system requires the inter-active or DC system 16 in addition to the basic operating system. An example of such a system is the Customer Information Control System (CICS) described in Customer Information Control System (CICS) General Information Manual (GH20-1028-4) published by International ~usiness Machines Corporation.
The system control services which have been described above as blocks 14, 15 and 16 of Figure 3 perform the basic control of a large scale data processing system enabling a user at a remote terminal to run specific application programs which are also stored in a storage device to which the processing u~it has access~ These are indicated at 17 in Figure 3. Application programs can be directed to many di~ferent and diverse requirements from wee~ly or monthly accounting and payroll routines to planning analysis and tracking o~ space satellite systems. Such applications can be run on the same digital data processing system simultan-eously with users at adjacent terminals 6 (Figure l) using the system for very dif~erent applications. One thing that most applications require or result in is the presentation of data to the user often during the running of the application.
The present invention is directed to~ards facilitating the presentation of data at the display units either visual display units or printers represented as the units 6 of Figure 1~ To this end the central processing unit has two further parts to the system control serivces. These are shown as a graphics manager 18 and graphics routines lg in UK97~034 10 3 ~
1 Figure 3. The operations of the graphics manager and the graphics routines and how they interact with the character definition buffers 7-11 of Figure 2 will be described in more detail below.
When an application program reaches a point in its processing that requires data to be displayed at a display unit call statements may be issued by the application which involve the graphics manager 18 and the graphics routines 19 of the system control services. With the call state~lerlts the application program passes the address of the data to be displayed, together with information concerning the form that the display is to take, whether a~ a bar chart, pie chart, venn diagram etc., together ~ith tk;e axes where appropriate and the area o~ the particular display device where the data is -to appear, e.g., a graph may appear in only the top half of the display with an alphabetic charac-ter explanation in the bottom half.
The graphics routines 19 and graphics manager 18 perform the following functions which are initially descibed in general terms.
The graphics routines 19 accept information passed by the application program in the call statements and then decides how the picture is to b~ drawn. If the picture is not to be a full screen or page this information is passed to the manager. If the axes of the graph are to be drawn then the coordinates relating to two lines are passed to the manager. The data to be displayed is then fetched from the storage address given in the call statements ar:d the appro-priate processing carried outD For example the graphics routines 19 include several sub-routines for manipulating and processing data so that the appropriate picture can be drawn. Such routines are:
1 a. Line Graph Routine Line curves COIlSiSt of a set of data points joined by lines. Special ~marker' symbols are calculated -to be drawn at each of the data points~ The routine includes an option of presenting only the symbols to give a scatter plot, or to omit the symbols leaving only the lines to indicate the curve.
b. Surface Curve Routine Surface curves are very similar to line curves; they differ only in two respects. No symbols are plotted at the data points and the area between the curve and the indepen-dent variable axis, or some datum line parallel to it is shaded.
c. Histograms The data for line graphs is such that the dependent variable is a measure of a particular quantity across a defined range of values of the independent variable. Data for histograms differs in that the de~pendent variable is the measure of a pax~icular quantity over a range of values of the independent variable. The histogram may be plotted as a ~20 number of barsO Each bar has the width given by the range and ends at the corresponding data value. The bar starts at the axis or a datum reference line.
d. Bar Charts Bar Charts are appropriate for data where the indepen-dent variable is not continuous or has no physical meaning.
The bars are spaced equally along an independent axis. A
composite bar chart appears as though it was constructed from a single component bar chart (assumed for simplicity to have vertical bars) by dividing each bar horizontally, effec-tively giving a set of smaller bars on top of one another.The lengths of each of the smaller bars in a layer corres~
pond to the contribution of a particular component to the total.
UK~,'8034 12 ~13~`~3 l e. Pie Charts A pie chart is used to illustrate the way in which a variable is partitioned into several classes according to some attribute.
This is represented graphically by dividing a circle into sectors, one for each class, with the angle of each sector being proportional to the contribution to the total from each class.
The data provided to draw a p.e chart is a set of values, one -for each sector of the pieO These values may be expressed as percentages of the total, or as absolute values.
The plot produced will consist of a sector for each valid value given. Eor each such value, V, the angle in degrees ! A, of the sector will be given by:
A - 360*V/l00 for percentage values, or A = 36C*V/TOTAL
if the values are absolute, and where TOTAL is the s~m of all the valid ~alues.
If the values are given as percentages and the total of the valid values is less than l00 then an incomplete circle will be drawn. The sector cc,rresponding to the missing percentage will not be drawn.
The sectors are drawn in a clockwise direction. The first sector is drawn from the 12 o'clock position.
A set of labels is also given, one for each sector of the pie~ If provided, these are drawn opposite the sector to which they apply~ If labels overlap because the angles for successive labels are small, the labels are moved up or down. Each label may optionally be preceded by a numeric value which is either the percentage that the corresponding value is of the total, or the absolute value~ depending on 1 the chart type. The labels are joined to the sectors by lines. The line runs radially outward from the sector until it intersects the largest circle that can be drawn within the plot. From that point it runs out horizontally to the label.
~ mul~iple pie chart consists of 2 or more pies (one for each component) with their centres arranged along a horizon-tal or vertical line.
The overall layout for a picture is shown in Figure 4.
The picture area 20 may be a full screen or page, but would usually be less - either half or quarter screen size. The area 21 is the kernal of the picture, the position and size of which may be varied by the information passed by the application prog~am. The area 22 is the picture margin and the title of the picture appears between the brackets 23.
The line 24 is the Y axis and the line 25 the X axis, with the Y axis title appearing between the brackets 26 and the X
axis title between the brackets 27.
Chart construction is considered to take place in two steps:
1. Drawing the axes.
2. Plotting the data on the axes.
Corresponding to this, the plotting process may ~e viewed in one of two processin~ states.
1. "Unscaled" - before axes have been drawn (called state one~.
2. "Scaled" - after axes have been drawn (called state two).
~outines which affect how the axes are to be drawn and the general appearance of the chart are called only ~hen the plotting process is in the "unscaled" state. This applies to the data which define the heading, axis titles, range, inter-cept, axis labelling, number of components and options. Also 1 in this category is the specification of the datum reference lines. These routines merely set parameters for the axis-drawing process~
The plotting process changes from the "unscaled" state to a "scaled" state when any of the plotting routines are involed in the unscaled state~ At this time, if axes are required, selected unscaled axes are autoscaled and the selected axes are then drawn together with the associated titles~ The chart heading is also drawn at this time. I-f a duplicate of either axis is sE;ecified, it is also drawn~ If the plotting routine is for a Venn diagram, only the chart heading and primary X axis title will accompany the diagram.
For Pie Charts, the chart heading is drawn and the rest of the chart is drawn as described for the pie chart function.
Once in the "scaled" state, any number of calls to the plot-ting routines can be made to construct the data part of the chart.
In the case of pie charts and Venn diagrams, the scaled state is further designated piescaled or vennscaled respec-tively. When piescaled, only pie charts may be constructedand when vennscaled only Venn diagrams may be constructedO
Each call may create one or ~)re components (graph lines, histograms or sets of bar chart bars). Wi-th the exception of autoscaling, shading and relative data, there is no difference between two consecutive calls to one of these routines each constructing a single component, and one call containing both components in the correct order. Since a component is not "remembered" by the graphics routines, the first component on each call is treated as the first com-ponent of the chart in regard to shading between componentsand relative data. However, the index to current shading is `J ~ ~
1 used as is, and incremented for each component.
When a chart is drawn (with the exceptions of pie charts and Venn diagrams) a set of axes are constructed.
Alternatively, the application may explicitly specify how the axes are to be constructed.
Axes are always Cartesian, but the application can vc~ry the appearance and scaling of the axes irl a number of ways.
Secondary axes may be defined as well as primary axes.
With few exceptions, the secondary axes are treated like the primary axes. Alternatively, a duplicate of either axis may be defined instead of a secondary axis. Duplicate axes allow replication of the primary axis at a different posi~
tion on the chart.
When the axes have been calculated for a particular picture then the data is fetched from the relevant address in storage and plotted on to the axes using the routines mentioned above.
As the graphics routines 19 process and construct a picture line by line so the coordinates of each line which results from the proce~sing are passed to the graphics manager 18.
The graphics manager 18 has three main phases of opera-tion for each picture. In the first phase it accepts the coordinates of each line passed to it from the routines and builds a character definition set for the line. In the second phase the total picture character definition set is constructed. The third phase is to construct and optimise a data stream which phase is concluded by sending the data stream via the system control services to the display unit.
Figures 5 to 14 illustrate by way of example the opera-tion of the graphics manager 18. In this example it is assumed t~lat the application program requires the system 1 control services to display at a display unit a graph as shown in Figure 5. The graph of Figure 5 is shown on a 20 x 20 grid and for ease of explanation it is assumed that each square on the grid represents one character cell on the screen of a cathode ray tube. Each cell is an array of 9 x 16 picture elements (pels) as illustrated in Figure 6.
The graph of Figure 5 has a Y axis 30 with four measure-ment marks 31 to 34. These marks may have labels such as quantity number associated with them, but they have been omitted from the example. There is an X axis 35 and six horizontal data indicating lines 36 to 41, together with six vertical lines 42 to 47. The areas between lines 36 and 39, 37 and 40, 38 and 41 are blocked in with either shading or a diferent colour to the data lines.
The graphics routines 19 first pass to the graphics , manager 18 the general information as to where on the screen the graph is to be drawn. In this example this is assumed to be the top left of the screen. The manayer then knows that it has to construct a data stream that will load the portion o the character buffer store in -the display head corresponding to the top left of the screen with references to character cell definitions also contain~d in the data stream. The character cell definitions will then be loaded into the character definition store in the display unit ~Figure 2).
In order to do this the manager has two stores shown in Figure 13 into which it builds respectively the element character buffer part of the data stream and the character definitions.
3Q The steps of building the elements for the graph in Figure 5 are illustrated in Figures 7 to 11. The graphics routines first pass the coordinates of the X and Y axis ,~
1 together with the marker points 31 to 34. In examining the Y axis the manager 18 determines that it is necessary to construct character definitions shown as A and B in Figure 12. The definitons A and B are stored in the character definition store and pointers to them are entered in the character buffer array as shown in the left hand vertical column of Figure 7.
the character definiton A of Figure 12 is shown in an expanded form in Figure 6. Each character cell is an array of 144 pels (9 x 16) which can be divided into eighteen eight bit bytes of storage. If the cell is to display a vertical line two pels w.ide on its left hand side then bytes 1 to 4 will be all l's and bytes 5 to 18 will be all O's.
If the cell is as shown at B (Fiyure 12) then the bytes 6, 8 and 10 will have l's in their positions 7 and 8. Figure 6 i.s shown having a line two pels wide by way of example on]y, in practice most lines will only be one pel in width.
The X axis will require a cell pattern as is shown at D (Figure 12~ however at the origin of the graph the cell which had an A pattern when the Y axis was plotted will be changed to the C pattern of Figure 12 and the contents of the character buffer array are as shown in Figure 7 when both axes are plotted. Each letter represents a point~r to the address of the associated cell pattern in the character definition store.
The next lines passed to t.he manager by the graphics routines are the lines 36, 37 and 38. The line 36 requires a horizontal line passing approximately one third of the way from the bottom cf the cell. This is shown as pattern E
in Figure 12. The line 37 can be drawn using the previously constructed pattern D and the line 38 will require a pattern as shown at F in Figure 12. Figure 8 shows the ~3'~
l character buffex array with these lines plotted.
The next lines passed are the vertical lines 43 to 47 and these can be represented by using the pattern A to-gether with the pa-ttern C for the lines 42, 44 and 46. The lines 43, 45 and 47 require a pattern which is the inverse of A shown as pattern I in Figure 12. Where the lines meet the horizontal lines 36, 37 and 38 a new pattern will be required. These are shown as G, H, K and L. The manager will then change the pointers to E in Figure 8 to G and H .
shown in Figure 9 and the pointers shown as F in Figure 8 to K and L in Figure 9. Where the lines 43, 45 and 47 meet the X axis the pattern shown as J will be required and the references in the character buffer array for these cells will be changed to point to the pattern J. The pointers in the character buffer array when these lines have been plotted are shown in Figure 9.
The next lines passed are the horizontal lines 39, 40 and 41, each of which will require modification to entries already in the character buffer array. The line 39 will require patterns shown as M and N (Figure 12) to replace the A and:I entries shown at 50 in Figure lO. M and N patterns are also required for the line 4~ shown at 51 but it is found that the pattern F already de~ined can be used to complete this line~ The drawing of the line 41 requires that patterns O and P be developed and pointers to these patterns entered in the array at 52 replacing pointers to patterns K and L.
The final step is the filling in of the areas bounded by the lines 36 to 39, 37 to 40 and 38 to 41. This step re-quires the use of the patterns Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y
and Z (Figure 12) and results in the character buffer array having pointers as shown in Figure ll.
UK978034 l9 ~ -D. 5~
1 It can be seen that if the shading of the areas is in the same colour as the data lines 36 to 47 then the defini-tions U and W are the same and only one will be required.
This is also true of S and T, and Y and Z.
The reference information held in the buffer array can also include in the extended attribute position informatior concerned with the colour.
The extended attribute buffer 13 (Figure 2) is an ex-tension of the character buffer 12 and has a single byte (8 bits) storage position for each of the screen character positions. The eight bits contain the following information~
Bits 1 and 2 concern highlighting. That is when the display unit i5 monochrome a character may be shown with one of the following properties:
(a) Normal (b) Blinking (c) Reverse video (d) Underscored
Corresponding to this, the plotting process may ~e viewed in one of two processin~ states.
1. "Unscaled" - before axes have been drawn (called state one~.
2. "Scaled" - after axes have been drawn (called state two).
~outines which affect how the axes are to be drawn and the general appearance of the chart are called only ~hen the plotting process is in the "unscaled" state. This applies to the data which define the heading, axis titles, range, inter-cept, axis labelling, number of components and options. Also 1 in this category is the specification of the datum reference lines. These routines merely set parameters for the axis-drawing process~
The plotting process changes from the "unscaled" state to a "scaled" state when any of the plotting routines are involed in the unscaled state~ At this time, if axes are required, selected unscaled axes are autoscaled and the selected axes are then drawn together with the associated titles~ The chart heading is also drawn at this time. I-f a duplicate of either axis is sE;ecified, it is also drawn~ If the plotting routine is for a Venn diagram, only the chart heading and primary X axis title will accompany the diagram.
For Pie Charts, the chart heading is drawn and the rest of the chart is drawn as described for the pie chart function.
Once in the "scaled" state, any number of calls to the plot-ting routines can be made to construct the data part of the chart.
In the case of pie charts and Venn diagrams, the scaled state is further designated piescaled or vennscaled respec-tively. When piescaled, only pie charts may be constructedand when vennscaled only Venn diagrams may be constructedO
Each call may create one or ~)re components (graph lines, histograms or sets of bar chart bars). Wi-th the exception of autoscaling, shading and relative data, there is no difference between two consecutive calls to one of these routines each constructing a single component, and one call containing both components in the correct order. Since a component is not "remembered" by the graphics routines, the first component on each call is treated as the first com-ponent of the chart in regard to shading between componentsand relative data. However, the index to current shading is `J ~ ~
1 used as is, and incremented for each component.
When a chart is drawn (with the exceptions of pie charts and Venn diagrams) a set of axes are constructed.
Alternatively, the application may explicitly specify how the axes are to be constructed.
Axes are always Cartesian, but the application can vc~ry the appearance and scaling of the axes irl a number of ways.
Secondary axes may be defined as well as primary axes.
With few exceptions, the secondary axes are treated like the primary axes. Alternatively, a duplicate of either axis may be defined instead of a secondary axis. Duplicate axes allow replication of the primary axis at a different posi~
tion on the chart.
When the axes have been calculated for a particular picture then the data is fetched from the relevant address in storage and plotted on to the axes using the routines mentioned above.
As the graphics routines 19 process and construct a picture line by line so the coordinates of each line which results from the proce~sing are passed to the graphics manager 18.
The graphics manager 18 has three main phases of opera-tion for each picture. In the first phase it accepts the coordinates of each line passed to it from the routines and builds a character definition set for the line. In the second phase the total picture character definition set is constructed. The third phase is to construct and optimise a data stream which phase is concluded by sending the data stream via the system control services to the display unit.
Figures 5 to 14 illustrate by way of example the opera-tion of the graphics manager 18. In this example it is assumed t~lat the application program requires the system 1 control services to display at a display unit a graph as shown in Figure 5. The graph of Figure 5 is shown on a 20 x 20 grid and for ease of explanation it is assumed that each square on the grid represents one character cell on the screen of a cathode ray tube. Each cell is an array of 9 x 16 picture elements (pels) as illustrated in Figure 6.
The graph of Figure 5 has a Y axis 30 with four measure-ment marks 31 to 34. These marks may have labels such as quantity number associated with them, but they have been omitted from the example. There is an X axis 35 and six horizontal data indicating lines 36 to 41, together with six vertical lines 42 to 47. The areas between lines 36 and 39, 37 and 40, 38 and 41 are blocked in with either shading or a diferent colour to the data lines.
The graphics routines 19 first pass to the graphics , manager 18 the general information as to where on the screen the graph is to be drawn. In this example this is assumed to be the top left of the screen. The manayer then knows that it has to construct a data stream that will load the portion o the character buffer store in -the display head corresponding to the top left of the screen with references to character cell definitions also contain~d in the data stream. The character cell definitions will then be loaded into the character definition store in the display unit ~Figure 2).
In order to do this the manager has two stores shown in Figure 13 into which it builds respectively the element character buffer part of the data stream and the character definitions.
3Q The steps of building the elements for the graph in Figure 5 are illustrated in Figures 7 to 11. The graphics routines first pass the coordinates of the X and Y axis ,~
1 together with the marker points 31 to 34. In examining the Y axis the manager 18 determines that it is necessary to construct character definitions shown as A and B in Figure 12. The definitons A and B are stored in the character definition store and pointers to them are entered in the character buffer array as shown in the left hand vertical column of Figure 7.
the character definiton A of Figure 12 is shown in an expanded form in Figure 6. Each character cell is an array of 144 pels (9 x 16) which can be divided into eighteen eight bit bytes of storage. If the cell is to display a vertical line two pels w.ide on its left hand side then bytes 1 to 4 will be all l's and bytes 5 to 18 will be all O's.
If the cell is as shown at B (Fiyure 12) then the bytes 6, 8 and 10 will have l's in their positions 7 and 8. Figure 6 i.s shown having a line two pels wide by way of example on]y, in practice most lines will only be one pel in width.
The X axis will require a cell pattern as is shown at D (Figure 12~ however at the origin of the graph the cell which had an A pattern when the Y axis was plotted will be changed to the C pattern of Figure 12 and the contents of the character buffer array are as shown in Figure 7 when both axes are plotted. Each letter represents a point~r to the address of the associated cell pattern in the character definition store.
The next lines passed to t.he manager by the graphics routines are the lines 36, 37 and 38. The line 36 requires a horizontal line passing approximately one third of the way from the bottom cf the cell. This is shown as pattern E
in Figure 12. The line 37 can be drawn using the previously constructed pattern D and the line 38 will require a pattern as shown at F in Figure 12. Figure 8 shows the ~3'~
l character buffex array with these lines plotted.
The next lines passed are the vertical lines 43 to 47 and these can be represented by using the pattern A to-gether with the pa-ttern C for the lines 42, 44 and 46. The lines 43, 45 and 47 require a pattern which is the inverse of A shown as pattern I in Figure 12. Where the lines meet the horizontal lines 36, 37 and 38 a new pattern will be required. These are shown as G, H, K and L. The manager will then change the pointers to E in Figure 8 to G and H .
shown in Figure 9 and the pointers shown as F in Figure 8 to K and L in Figure 9. Where the lines 43, 45 and 47 meet the X axis the pattern shown as J will be required and the references in the character buffer array for these cells will be changed to point to the pattern J. The pointers in the character buffer array when these lines have been plotted are shown in Figure 9.
The next lines passed are the horizontal lines 39, 40 and 41, each of which will require modification to entries already in the character buffer array. The line 39 will require patterns shown as M and N (Figure 12) to replace the A and:I entries shown at 50 in Figure lO. M and N patterns are also required for the line 4~ shown at 51 but it is found that the pattern F already de~ined can be used to complete this line~ The drawing of the line 41 requires that patterns O and P be developed and pointers to these patterns entered in the array at 52 replacing pointers to patterns K and L.
The final step is the filling in of the areas bounded by the lines 36 to 39, 37 to 40 and 38 to 41. This step re-quires the use of the patterns Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y
and Z (Figure 12) and results in the character buffer array having pointers as shown in Figure ll.
UK978034 l9 ~ -D. 5~
1 It can be seen that if the shading of the areas is in the same colour as the data lines 36 to 47 then the defini-tions U and W are the same and only one will be required.
This is also true of S and T, and Y and Z.
The reference information held in the buffer array can also include in the extended attribute position informatior concerned with the colour.
The extended attribute buffer 13 (Figure 2) is an ex-tension of the character buffer 12 and has a single byte (8 bits) storage position for each of the screen character positions. The eight bits contain the following information~
Bits 1 and 2 concern highlighting. That is when the display unit i5 monochrome a character may be shown with one of the following properties:
(a) Normal (b) Blinking (c) Reverse video (d) Underscored
3, 4 and 5 concern colour. That is each bit relates to one of the primary colours, red, green or blue. If only one is 'on' then only the related particular 'gun' will be 'on' for that character. If all three are 'on' then all the 'guns' will be used for the character.
6, 7 and 8 concern the character definition buffer and refer to the particular character definition buffer contain-ing the character cell definition to be used at that screen character position.
The extended attribute buffer has a reference to the particular character definition buffer and the character buffer refers to a particular definition in the selec~ed character buffer.
When the graphics routines have passed the complete UK97~u34 20 ~3~
1 picture to the graphics manager it then instructs the graphics manager to complete the data stream and send the data stream to the relevant display unit. Figure 13 shows in schematic form the information that the graphics manager then has. A store 60 which is allocated to the character buffer array has entries which correspond to the top left quarter of the screen which contain pointers to character definitions held in a store 61. The graphics manager then constructs in a separate store this data stream which is illustrated in Figure 14. This includes header information 70, the irformation that has to be left in a character bu~fer store 71 and the character de~initions 72.
When the data stream is constructed it is passed via the DC System 16 and communication access control 15 (Figure 3) to channel control unit 4 (Figure 1) and then to the relevant network controller 5, display controller 3 and finally the display unit 6 which is ruIlning the relevant application program. The display unit: stores the informa-tion contained in the data stream in the character buffer l~j e~tended attribute buffer 13 and the character defini-tion buffers 7-11 as determined ~,~ address information accompanying the data.
If the display unit i~ a cathode ray tube which has a continuous raster scan the picture displayed will change as the information in the character buffer and character definition buffers is ~hanged~ and when a completed data stream has been received, then the completed picture will be displayed.
The steps in the process described above are illustra-ted in the flowcharts shown in Figures 15 and 16. Referringto Figure 15 the first step 80 is when the graphics routines receive a call from an application program. The second step UK~78034 21 3~
1 81 is to decide whether or not a full screen display is required. If not then the display area is passed to the manager at the third step 82.
The next step 83 is ko initialise the type of graph routine. The step at bo~ 84 is to fetch the data from the relevant storage address and at 85 to calculate the axes coordinates and pas5 them to the manager. The steps illus-trated as boxes 85~ 87 and 88 are to first construct the graph, then pass the coordinates of all lines to the manager and finally tell the manager to transmit the data stream.
The actions of the manager are summarised in Figure 16.
The four steps are shown as boxes 90, 91, 92 and 93. The first step 90 is to receive the request to construct a picture from the graphics routines. The second step 91 is to accept the picture line by line from the routines and simultaneously perform the third step 92 which is to con-struct the character definitions.
When the total picture has been received the routines send an instruction to transmit then the data stream is constructed and optimised. Finally the data stream is transmitted to the display unit.
It can be seen that using the system described above a picture being displayed at a display unit can he changed or altered in a very short time in response to the inputs supplied by the application program. These inputs may be already stored in the system or may be supplied by the user running the application program.
6, 7 and 8 concern the character definition buffer and refer to the particular character definition buffer contain-ing the character cell definition to be used at that screen character position.
The extended attribute buffer has a reference to the particular character definition buffer and the character buffer refers to a particular definition in the selec~ed character buffer.
When the graphics routines have passed the complete UK97~u34 20 ~3~
1 picture to the graphics manager it then instructs the graphics manager to complete the data stream and send the data stream to the relevant display unit. Figure 13 shows in schematic form the information that the graphics manager then has. A store 60 which is allocated to the character buffer array has entries which correspond to the top left quarter of the screen which contain pointers to character definitions held in a store 61. The graphics manager then constructs in a separate store this data stream which is illustrated in Figure 14. This includes header information 70, the irformation that has to be left in a character bu~fer store 71 and the character de~initions 72.
When the data stream is constructed it is passed via the DC System 16 and communication access control 15 (Figure 3) to channel control unit 4 (Figure 1) and then to the relevant network controller 5, display controller 3 and finally the display unit 6 which is ruIlning the relevant application program. The display unit: stores the informa-tion contained in the data stream in the character buffer l~j e~tended attribute buffer 13 and the character defini-tion buffers 7-11 as determined ~,~ address information accompanying the data.
If the display unit i~ a cathode ray tube which has a continuous raster scan the picture displayed will change as the information in the character buffer and character definition buffers is ~hanged~ and when a completed data stream has been received, then the completed picture will be displayed.
The steps in the process described above are illustra-ted in the flowcharts shown in Figures 15 and 16. Referringto Figure 15 the first step 80 is when the graphics routines receive a call from an application program. The second step UK~78034 21 3~
1 81 is to decide whether or not a full screen display is required. If not then the display area is passed to the manager at the third step 82.
The next step 83 is ko initialise the type of graph routine. The step at bo~ 84 is to fetch the data from the relevant storage address and at 85 to calculate the axes coordinates and pas5 them to the manager. The steps illus-trated as boxes 85~ 87 and 88 are to first construct the graph, then pass the coordinates of all lines to the manager and finally tell the manager to transmit the data stream.
The actions of the manager are summarised in Figure 16.
The four steps are shown as boxes 90, 91, 92 and 93. The first step 90 is to receive the request to construct a picture from the graphics routines. The second step 91 is to accept the picture line by line from the routines and simultaneously perform the third step 92 which is to con-struct the character definitions.
When the total picture has been received the routines send an instruction to transmit then the data stream is constructed and optimised. Finally the data stream is transmitted to the display unit.
It can be seen that using the system described above a picture being displayed at a display unit can he changed or altered in a very short time in response to the inputs supplied by the application program. These inputs may be already stored in the system or may be supplied by the user running the application program.
Claims (3)
1. A digital data display system for presenting a graphical picture on an output device in which the area or screen from which -the picture is to be viewed is notionally divided into a plurality of character cells each of which comprises a predetermined number of picture elements (pels), the system comprising means for creating, in response to input information, a first level description of all the elements of a picture to be presented, means for storing a screen definition table having an entry for each character cell of the display area, means for calculating for each element of the picture the pattern of pels in associated character cells required to display the elements, storing the calculated pattern in a table in a character cell store and associating the respective entry in the screen defini-tion table with the required pattern in the character cell store, means to determine when a particular character pel pattern has already been calculated as required for a picture and to associate the respective screen definition table entries with only one copy of the particular character cell pel pattern and means for transferring the screen definition table to a screen definition buffer store and the character cell pattern table to a character cell buffer store in the display device whereby the contents of the screen definition buffer store and character cell buffer store control the construction of a picture presented by the display device.
2. A digital data display system as claimed in claim 1 in which the display device includes a first plurality of random access storage devices for storing the character cell patterns and a second random access storage device for storing the screen definition table.
3. A digital display system as claimed in claim 2 including a central processing unit having means for creat-ing, in response to input information, a first level descrip-tion of all the elements of a picture to be presented, means for storing a screen definition table having an entry for each character cell of the display area, means for calculat-ing for each element of the picture the pattern of pels in associated character cells required to display the elements, storing the calculated pattern in a table in a character cell store and associating the respective entry in the screen definition table with the required pattern in the character cell store, means to determine when a particular character pel pattern has already been calculated as required for a picture and to associate the respective screen definition table entries with only one copy of the particular character cell pel pattern and in which the display device is at a location remote from the central processing unit and the screen definition table and the character cell pattern table are transferred over a data communication link.
Applications Claiming Priority (2)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB7933533A GB2059727B (en) | 1979-09-27 | 1979-09-27 | Digital data display system |
| GB7933533 | 1979-09-27 |
Publications (1)
| Publication Number | Publication Date |
|---|---|
| CA1155982A true CA1155982A (en) | 1983-10-25 |
Family
ID=10508103
Family Applications (1)
| Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA000356679A Expired CA1155982A (en) | 1979-09-27 | 1980-07-22 | Digital data display system |
Country Status (8)
| Country | Link |
|---|---|
| US (1) | US4451825A (en) |
| EP (1) | EP0026266B1 (en) |
| JP (1) | JPS5648679A (en) |
| AU (1) | AU533252B2 (en) |
| CA (1) | CA1155982A (en) |
| DE (1) | DE3071163D1 (en) |
| ES (1) | ES495366A0 (en) |
| GB (1) | GB2059727B (en) |
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| US4504828A (en) * | 1982-08-09 | 1985-03-12 | Pitney Bowes Inc. | External attribute logic for use in a word processing system |
| US4800380A (en) * | 1982-12-21 | 1989-01-24 | Convergent Technologies | Multi-plane page mode video memory controller |
| US4586158A (en) * | 1983-02-22 | 1986-04-29 | International Business Machines Corp. | Screen management system |
| JPS59205667A (en) * | 1983-05-09 | 1984-11-21 | Sharp Corp | Pattern blinking system of graphic display device |
| US4556878A (en) * | 1983-05-11 | 1985-12-03 | International Business Machines Corp. | Display of graphics using a non-all points addressable display |
| JPS59218493A (en) * | 1983-05-25 | 1984-12-08 | シャープ株式会社 | Graphic display information memory system |
| US4651146A (en) * | 1983-10-17 | 1987-03-17 | International Business Machines Corporation | Display of multiple data windows in a multi-tasking system |
| US4653020A (en) * | 1983-10-17 | 1987-03-24 | International Business Machines Corporation | Display of multiple data windows in a multi-tasking system |
| US4622546A (en) * | 1983-12-23 | 1986-11-11 | Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. | Apparatus and method for displaying characters in a bit mapped graphics system |
| GB2155286B (en) * | 1984-02-27 | 1987-04-23 | Philips Electronic Associated | Character memory addressing for data display |
| SE454224B (en) * | 1985-04-10 | 1988-04-11 | Lundstrom Jan Erik | SCREEN UNIT FOR PRESENTATION OF GRAPHIC INFORMATION |
| JPS6280058A (en) * | 1985-10-03 | 1987-04-13 | Canon Inc | Image processor |
| JPS6296757U (en) * | 1985-12-10 | 1987-06-20 | ||
| US4937565A (en) * | 1986-06-24 | 1990-06-26 | Hercules Computer Technology | Character generator-based graphics apparatus |
| US4873652A (en) * | 1987-07-27 | 1989-10-10 | Data General Corporation | Method of graphical manipulation in a potentially windowed display |
| JP2501726B2 (en) * | 1991-10-08 | 1996-05-29 | インターナショナル・ビジネス・マシーンズ・コーポレイション | Computer image generation device and data reduction method |
| US8352400B2 (en) | 1991-12-23 | 2013-01-08 | Hoffberg Steven M | Adaptive pattern recognition based controller apparatus and method and human-factored interface therefore |
| US6400996B1 (en) | 1999-02-01 | 2002-06-04 | Steven M. Hoffberg | Adaptive pattern recognition based control system and method |
| US6850252B1 (en) | 1999-10-05 | 2005-02-01 | Steven M. Hoffberg | Intelligent electronic appliance system and method |
| US10361802B1 (en) | 1999-02-01 | 2019-07-23 | Blanding Hovenweep, Llc | Adaptive pattern recognition based control system and method |
| US5903454A (en) * | 1991-12-23 | 1999-05-11 | Hoffberg; Linda Irene | Human-factored interface corporating adaptive pattern recognition based controller apparatus |
| US6418424B1 (en) | 1991-12-23 | 2002-07-09 | Steven M. Hoffberg | Ergonomic man-machine interface incorporating adaptive pattern recognition based control system |
| US7242988B1 (en) | 1991-12-23 | 2007-07-10 | Linda Irene Hoffberg | Adaptive pattern recognition based controller apparatus and method and human-factored interface therefore |
| US5655028A (en) * | 1991-12-30 | 1997-08-05 | University Of Iowa Research Foundation | Dynamic image analysis system |
| JPH0567756U (en) * | 1992-02-21 | 1993-09-10 | ミサワホーム株式会社 | Stepping prevention tool |
| US5959598A (en) * | 1995-07-20 | 1999-09-28 | The Regents Of The University Of Colorado | Pixel buffer circuits for implementing improved methods of displaying grey-scale or color images |
| US5767828A (en) * | 1995-07-20 | 1998-06-16 | The Regents Of The University Of Colorado | Method and apparatus for displaying grey-scale or color images from binary images |
| US6078303A (en) * | 1996-12-19 | 2000-06-20 | Colorado Microdisplay, Inc. | Display system having electrode modulation to alter a state of an electro-optic layer |
| US5920298A (en) * | 1996-12-19 | 1999-07-06 | Colorado Microdisplay, Inc. | Display system having common electrode modulation |
| US6046716A (en) * | 1996-12-19 | 2000-04-04 | Colorado Microdisplay, Inc. | Display system having electrode modulation to alter a state of an electro-optic layer |
| US8364136B2 (en) | 1999-02-01 | 2013-01-29 | Steven M Hoffberg | Mobile system, a method of operating mobile system and a non-transitory computer readable medium for a programmable control of a mobile system |
| US7966078B2 (en) | 1999-02-01 | 2011-06-21 | Steven Hoffberg | Network media appliance system and method |
| US6806885B1 (en) * | 1999-03-01 | 2004-10-19 | Micron Technology, Inc. | Remote monitor controller |
| US7348983B1 (en) * | 2001-06-22 | 2008-03-25 | Intel Corporation | Method and apparatus for text image stretching |
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| US3400377A (en) * | 1965-10-13 | 1968-09-03 | Ibm | Character display system |
| US3624632A (en) * | 1970-09-09 | 1971-11-30 | Applied Digital Data Syst | Mixed alphameric-graphic display |
| US3750135A (en) * | 1971-10-15 | 1973-07-31 | Lektromedia Ltd | Low resolution graphics for crt displays |
| US3781850A (en) * | 1972-06-21 | 1973-12-25 | Gte Sylvania Inc | Television type display system for displaying information in the form of curves or graphs |
| US3996584A (en) * | 1973-04-16 | 1976-12-07 | Burroughs Corporation | Data handling system having a plurality of interrelated character generators |
| US3891982A (en) * | 1973-05-23 | 1975-06-24 | Adage Inc | Computer display terminal |
| FR2274974A1 (en) * | 1974-06-11 | 1976-01-09 | Ibm | VIDEO SIGNAL GENERATOR FOR DYNAMIC DIGITAL DISPLAY DEVICE |
| JPS559742B2 (en) * | 1974-06-20 | 1980-03-12 | ||
| DE2513059C3 (en) * | 1975-03-25 | 1978-04-20 | Philips Patentverwaltung Gmbh, 2000 Hamburg | Character generator for displaying characters |
| GB1461559A (en) * | 1975-05-06 | 1977-01-13 | Yokogawa Electric Works Ltd | Graphic display device |
| US4070710A (en) * | 1976-01-19 | 1978-01-24 | Nugraphics, Inc. | Raster scan display apparatus for dynamically viewing image elements stored in a random access memory array |
| US4075620A (en) * | 1976-04-29 | 1978-02-21 | Gte Sylvania Incorporated | Video display system |
| US4122533A (en) * | 1977-06-02 | 1978-10-24 | Addressograph-Multigraph Corporation | Multiple language character generating system |
-
1979
- 1979-09-27 GB GB7933533A patent/GB2059727B/en not_active Expired
-
1980
- 1980-07-01 EP EP80103734A patent/EP0026266B1/en not_active Expired
- 1980-07-01 DE DE8080103734T patent/DE3071163D1/en not_active Expired
- 1980-07-22 CA CA000356679A patent/CA1155982A/en not_active Expired
- 1980-08-08 JP JP10842280A patent/JPS5648679A/en active Granted
- 1980-08-26 AU AU61754/80A patent/AU533252B2/en not_active Ceased
- 1980-09-26 ES ES495366A patent/ES495366A0/en active Granted
-
1982
- 1982-12-09 US US06/448,159 patent/US4451825A/en not_active Expired - Lifetime
Also Published As
| Publication number | Publication date |
|---|---|
| JPS5648679A (en) | 1981-05-01 |
| GB2059727A (en) | 1981-04-23 |
| GB2059727B (en) | 1983-03-30 |
| DE3071163D1 (en) | 1985-11-14 |
| AU6175480A (en) | 1981-04-02 |
| AU533252B2 (en) | 1983-11-10 |
| EP0026266A3 (en) | 1982-03-31 |
| EP0026266A2 (en) | 1981-04-08 |
| EP0026266B1 (en) | 1985-10-09 |
| ES8200957A1 (en) | 1981-11-16 |
| ES495366A0 (en) | 1981-11-16 |
| US4451825A (en) | 1984-05-29 |
| JPH0346821B2 (en) | 1991-07-17 |
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