Patent Grant
12099688
Recent development in the display technologies has brought diversification in display devices, and consumers now have a plenty of options in choosing display devices. For example, for web-browsing, email and light office work, consumers typically select a 24- or 27-inches full high definition (FHD, 1920×1080 pixels) widescreen (e.g., 16:9 aspect ratio) monitor. For photography, content creation or scientific/engineering tasks, consumers opt to select a larger (e.g., 32- or 43-inches) monitors having a higher screen resolution (e.g., 4K or ultra-high definition (UHD), 3840×2160 pixels) or a 34- or 49-inches ultra-widescreen monitor having a 21:9 aspect ratio. Also, it became common to use two or more monitors horizontally or vertically side by side to have more information displayed simultaneously.
Such increase in screen real estate has allowed users to place more than two application windows simultaneously on a screen or screens. To help arrange the application windows, various attempts have been made. For example, some operating systems offer various screen snapping functions to have a particular application window placed at a particular portion of a screen. Also, monitor manufacturers and third-party software developers have offered various screen segmenting solutions to divide a screen into two or more segments, of which each can be used as a separate monitor screen. The existing solutions, however, are limited to placing an application window selected by a user to a specific area or segment (e.g., left or right half, top or bottom half, etc.) of a screen. Hence, for each application window, the user is required to specify which portion of a screen the application window should be placed. In the case that there are more than two monitors, the user further needs to specify which monitor should be used in addition to identifying which portion or segment of the screen should be used. As such, there still remain significant areas for new and improved implementations for more streamlined application on-screen windows arrangement.
In an implementation, a system for generating a plurality of windows arrangements for one or more displays, includes a processor and a computer-readable medium including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to control the system to perform receiving a first user input requesting to generate a plurality of first windows arrangements for a first display; in response to receiving the first user input, identifying, based on contextual information with respect to a plurality of applications, a first group of the applications to be included in the first windows arrangements for the first display; generating, based on first display information of the first display and the contextual information with respect to the plurality of applications, the plurality of first windows arrangements, each first windows arrangement providing a different on-screen arrangement of a plurality of windows associated with two or more applications of the first group and defining a size and position of each of the plurality of windows on the first display; and displaying a first selectable list of the plurality of first windows arrangements for the first display.
In another implementation, a method of operating a system for generating a plurality of windows arrangements for one or more displays, includes receiving a first user input requesting to generate a plurality of first windows arrangements for a first display; in response to receiving the first user input, identifying, based on contextual information with respect to a plurality of applications, a first group of the applications to be included in the first windows arrangements for the first display; generating, based on first display information of the first display and the contextual information with respect to the plurality of applications, the plurality of first windows arrangements, each first windows arrangement providing a different on-screen arrangement of a plurality of windows associated with two or more applications of the first group and defining a size and position of each of the plurality of windows on the first display; and displaying a first selectable list of the plurality of first windows arrangements for the first display.
In another implementation, a system for generating a plurality of windows arrangements for one or more displays, includes a processor and a computer-readable medium including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to control the system to perform receiving a first user input requesting to generate a plurality of windows arrangements in connection with a first window; generating the plurality of windows arrangements, each windows arrangement providing a different on-screen arrangement of a plurality of windows and defining a size and position of each of the plurality of windows on the display; receiving a second user input selecting a first windows arrangement of the plurality of windows arrangements, the first windows arrangement dividing the display into a plurality of segments and defining a size and position of each of the plurality of segments; receiving a third user input selecting a first segment of the plurality of segments divided according to the selected first window arrangement; and in response to receiving the third user input, displaying the first window at the first segment of the display.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.
The drawing figures depict one or more implementations in accord with the present teachings, by way of example only, not by way of limitation. In the figures, like reference numerals refer to the same or similar elements. Furthermore, it should be understood that the drawings are not necessarily to scale.
In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth by way of examples in order to provide a thorough understanding of the relevant teachings. However, it should be apparent that the present teachings may be practiced without such details. In other instances, well known methods, procedures, components, and/or circuitry have been described at a relatively high-level, without detail, in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring aspects of the present teachings.
This description is directed to generating one or more on-screen arrangements for a plurality of applications. Based on various information, such as display configuration information, application contextual information, etc., a system may identify applications that are likely to be used by a user and hence should be displayed on one or more screens, how windows of the selected applications should be sized and positioned on the screen or screens, etc. The system may then generate one or more on-screen arrangements of the selected applications, which are presented to the user as windows arrangement suggestions. In response to receiving a user input to select one of the presented windows arrangement suggestions, the system causes the selected application windows to be sized and positioned on the screen or screens. The applications may be in different operational and display status. For example, among a number of applications, an application may be running and its window may be open on a screen of a display. Another application may be running but its window may be minimized or fully or partially blocked by another application window and hence may not be shown at all or fully shown on the screen. Another application may not be running and hence may not be shown on the screen. Regardless of the operational and display status of each application, the system may determine which application should be displayed and how the application windows should be presented via the screen or screens. Based on such determinations, the system may generate one or more on-screen windows arrangements, from which the user can select. Upon receiving a user input selecting one of the on-screen windows arrangements, the system automatically resizes and positions the applications according to the arrangement defined in the selected on-screen windows arrangement.
Accordingly, it may not be necessary for a user to determine which applications should be displayed on a screen and ensure that all the necessary applications are running. Also, the user is not required to manually set how one or more screens should be divided and which portion of the screen or screens each application should be positioned. The disclosure, therefore, provides technical solutions to the technical problems with the conventional approaches that a user has to determine and manually set how a screen or screens should be divided and which portions of the screen or screens each application windows should be placed.
With this overview, attention is now turned to the figures to describe various implementations of the presenting teachings.
The local device 110 is representative of any physical or virtual computing system, device, or collection thereof, such as a smart phone, laptop computer, desktop computer, hybrid computer, tablet computer, gaming machine, smart television, entertainment device, Internet appliance, virtual machine, wearable computer, as well as any variation or combination thereof. The local device 110 may operate remotely from the server 120, and hence may communicate with each other by way of data and information exchanged over a suitable communication link or links. The local device 110 may implement all or portions of the functions to carry out the visual search query generation scheme. The local device 110 may be in communication with the database 130, AI engine 140 and DL engine 150 via the server 120.
The local device 110 may include one or more internal displays 112A and/or be connected to one or more external displays 112B and 112C (only two shown). The one or more internal and/or external displays are collectively referred to as a display 112. The local device 110 may further include or be connected to one or more user interface devices, such as, a mouse, keyboard, speaker, microphone, etc. (not shown). The local device 110 may host a local service 114 configured to generate one or more on-screen windows arrangements. The local service 114 is representative of any software application, module, component, or collection thereof, capable of identifying relevant information and generating one or more on-screen windows arrangements.
In an implementation, the local service 114 may be implemented as part of an operating system (OS), such as Microsoft™ Windows™, Apple™ iOS™, Linux™ Google™ Chrome OS™, etc. Alternatively, the local service 114 may be implemented as a locally installed and executed application, streamed application, mobile application, or any combination or variation thereof, which may be configured to carry out operations or functions related to generating one or more on-screen windows arrangements. The local service 114 may be implemented as a standalone application or may be distributed across multiple applications.
The server 120 is representative of any physical or virtual computing system, device, or collection thereof, such as, a web server, rack server, blade server, virtual machine server, or tower server, as well as any other type of computing system, which may be, in some scenarios, implemented in a data center, a virtual data center, or some other suitable facility. The server 120 may operate an on-screen windows arrangement service 122, which may implement all or portions of the functions to carry out the on-screen windows arrangement generation. The service 122 may host, be integrated with, or be in communication with various data sources and processing resources such as, database 130, AI engine 140, DL engine 150, etc. The service 122 may be any software application, module, component, or collection thereof capable of providing on-screen windows arrangement services to the local service 114. In some cases, the service 122 is a standalone application carrying out various operations related to various on-screen windows arrangement services.
The features and functionality provided by the local service 114 and service 122 can be co-located or even integrated as a single application. In addition to the above-mentioned features and functionality available across application and service platforms, aspects of the described on-screen windows arrangement generation may be carried out across multiple devices on a same or different computing devices. For example, some functionality for the visual search query generation may be provided by the local service 114 on the local device 10 and the local service 114 may communicate by way of data and information exchanged between with the server 120 or other devices. As another example, the local device 110 may operate as a so-called “thin client” in a virtual computing environment and receive video data that is to be displayed via the display 112. In this virtual computing scenario, the server 120 may carry out the entire operations of generating one or more on-screen windows arrangements.
For more accurate and relevant on-screen windows arrangement generation, various information from various sources may be searched and considered, such as the database 130, AI engine 140, DL engine 150, etc. For example, the system 100 may search the data collection related to the local service 114 and/or service 122, which may be stored in the local device 110, server 120 and/or database 130. The system 100 may also search other data sources, such as web sites/web pages, contacts/directory, maps, user/member accounts, etc.
The system 100 may use the AI engine 140 and/or DL engine 150, etc. to provide more accurate and relevant on-screen windows arrangement generation. The AI and DL engines 140 and 150 may be implemented based on a machine-learning (ML), which generally involves various algorithms that can automatically learn over time. The foundation of these algorithms is generally built on mathematics and statistics that can be employed to predict events, classify entities, diagnose problems, and model function approximations. As an example, a system can be trained in order to identify patterns in user activity, determine associations between various datapoints and make decisions based on the patterns and associations. Such determination may be made following the accumulation, review, and/or analysis of data from a large number of users over time, that may be configured to provide the ML algorithm (MLA) with an initial or ongoing training set.
In different implementations, a training system may be used that includes an initial ML model (which may be referred to as an “ML model trainer”) configured to generate a subsequent trained ML model from training data obtained from a training data repository. The generation of this ML model may be referred to as “training” or “learning.” The training system may include and/or have access to substantial computation resources for training, such as a cloud, including many computer server systems adapted for machine learning training. In some implementations, the ML model trainer is configured to automatically generate multiple different ML models from the same or similar training data for comparison. For example, different underlying ML algorithms may be trained, such as, but not limited to, decision trees, random decision forests, neural networks, deep learning (for example, convolutional neural networks), support vector machines, regression (for example, support vector regression, Bayesian linear regression, or Gaussian process regression). As another example, size or complexity of a model may be varied between different ML models, such as a maximum depth for decision trees, or a number and/or size of hidden layers in a convolutional neural network.
Moreover, different training approaches may be used for training different ML models, such as, but not limited to, selection of training, validation, and test sets of training data, ordering and/or weighting of training data items, or numbers of training iterations. One or more of the resulting multiple trained ML models may be selected based on factors such as, but not limited to, accuracy, computational efficiency, and/or power efficiency. In some implementations, a single trained ML model may be produced. The training data may be continually updated, and one or more of the models used by the system can be revised or regenerated to reflect the updates to the training data. Over time, the training system (whether stored remotely, locally, or both) can be configured to receive and accumulate more and more training data items, thereby increasing the amount and variety of training data available for ML model training, resulting in increased accuracy, effectiveness, and robustness of trained ML models.
For example, the DL engine 150 may be provided with display information (e.g., a number of displays, display arrangement, display configuration (e.g., display orientation and size), etc.), contextual information of applications (e.g., display and operational statuses of the applications, event information, association between an event and applications, etc.), user selection history. From the various information, the DL engine 150 may have learned one or more on-screen windows arrangements that are optimized and/or likely to be used by the user for a given circumstance or an event that has occurred or is about to occur. Such information may then be shared with the AI engine 140 such that the system 100 can more accurately and efficiently generate on-screen windows arrangements.
The system 100 may receive a user input requesting to generate a plurality of suggestions for displaying a plurality of application windows on the screen 200. In response to receiving such user input, the system 100 may identify, based on contextual information of a plurality of applications available in the system 100, a group of the applications to be included in the suggestions. The system 100 may then generate, based on a display configuration and the contextual information, a plurality of on-screen windows arrangements. Each on-screen windows arrangement may provide a different on-screen arrangement of a plurality of windows of the applications of the identified group. Each on-screen windows arrangement may also define a size and position of each window. The plurality of on-screen windows arrangement may then be presented as a selectable list, which may be displayed via the screen 200. When the user selects one of the suggestions, the application windows represented in the selected on-screen windows arrangement may be displayed according to the sizes and positions defined by the selected on-screen windows arrangement. The selection of the applications is not limited to those applications of which windows are open on the screen 200 or those applications of which windows are minimized and not shown on the screen 200. Those applications that are not currently running and hence their windows are not displayed on the screen 200 may also be selected if necessary.
In an implementation, the contextual information may include information related to applications that are currently running; windows that are currently open on a screen; a Z-order of the open windows overlapping each other on the current screen; most recently used applications, files, websites, etc.; most frequently used applications; applications that were recently grouped together to form one or more on-screen windows arrangements; applications that were frequently grouped together to form one or more on-screen windows arrangements; applications that have not been grouped together or rarely grouped together in the previously generated on-screen windows arrangements; applications that have similar titles and/or are associated with similar keywords, a user's implicit or explicit feedback on grouping, sizing and positioning applications; websites or files that the user has recently or frequently opened; developer or administrator-provided information specifying or suggesting a plurality of applications to be grouped together, a size and position of each application in the group, etc.; and/or the like.
The contextual information may further include event information, such as, schedule information, time and location information, etc. For example, a user's scheduling or email application may have data related to an event, such as an upcoming videoconference, for which the user is indicated as one of the participants. Such information may be used by the system 100 to determine that such event is likely to require a videoconferencing application or collaboration application. The system 100 may also determine that the event is likely to require a presentation application if the user is indicated as a presenter in the event information. The system 100 may have detected that, during the office hours, the user has been frequently working on a particular file or accessing a particular website, which may indicate that, during the scheduled videoconference, the user is likely to open an application for the particular file or a web browser to access the particular website. The system 100 may then determine that the user is likely to run the application and/or web browser. After identifying which applications are likely to be needed for the upcoming event, the system 100 may generate and display a plurality of on-screen windows arrangements in response to detecting that the event is about to start. The source of the contextual information may not be limited to a device that the user is current using; the contextual information may come from the same user's other devices or one or more other users' devices.
In an implementation, the display information may include a number of display devices (e.g., a single display, two displays, etc.), an arrangement of the display devices (e.g., two displays arranged horizontally size-by-side, three displays vertically stacked, four displays in two rows and two columns, etc.), an orientation of each display (e.g., a landscape (horizontal) orientation, portrait (vertical) orientation, diagonal orientation, etc.), a size of each display (e.g., 24 inches, 27 inches, 32 inches, 49 inches, etc.), a display resolution/aspect ratio of each display (e.g., a High Definition (HD) resolution of 1360 (width)×768 (height) pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio; a Full High Definition (FHD) resolution of 1920 (width)×1080 (height) pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio; a Quad HD (QHD) resolution of 2560 (width)×1440 (height) pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio; etc.), and/or the like.
In an implementation, the system 100 may receive a user input requesting to generate a plurality of suggestions for displaying a plurality of windows on the screen 200. In response to the user input, the system 100 may generate a plurality of on-screen windows arrangements. Alternatively, the system 100 may proactively generate the on-screen windows arrangements. For example, the system 100 may offer an option to automatically generate a plurality of on-screen windows arrangements when a trigger condition is met, which may be activated in response to an input from the user. When such option is activated, the system 100 may periodically check whether the trigger condition is met. For example, the user's schedule information may indicate that there is a scheduled video conference involving the user. The system 100 may then check whether the option has been activated. Upon determining that the user has activated the option and the video conference is scheduled to start in a predetermined period (e.g., 10 or 15 minutes), the system 100 may generate a notification including the on-screen windows arrangements for the scheduled video conference. Such notification may be displayed via the screen 200 or sent to the user via an email, message, etc.
The generated on-screen windows arrangements may be displayed as a list of selectable on-screen windows arrangements. For example, as shown in
In order to generate the arrangements 230, the system 100 may identify, from a plurality of applications available on the system 100, a group of the applications that are likely to be used by the user and hence need to be included in at least one of the arrangements 230. For example, with reference to the screen 200 shown in
The system 100 may also take the display information into account in generating the arrangements 230. For example, the system 100 detects that the screen 200 is in a landscape orientation. For screens in a landscape orientation, it is not desirable to vertically divide a screen because such vertical division would result in generating one or more windows that are horizontally too wide (e.g., 1920 pixels) and vertically too narrow (e.g., 540 pixels or less). Hence, in response to detecting that the screen 200 is in a landscape orientation, the system 100 prioritizes arranging the windows horizontally side-by-side over vertically stacking the windows. The system 100 may also determine, based on the display configuration, whether three applications can be horizontally arranged side-by-side. determine.
Based on the context information, the system 100 may detect that the window 210A of the first application APP 1 (e.g., word processing application) has a foreground focus on the screen 200, and the second window 210B of the second application APP 2 (e.g., presentation application) is in the Z-order behind the first window 210A. The system 100 may then generate one or more arrangements 230 to display the first and second windows 210A and 210B. For example, referring to
Based on the contextual information, the system 100 may further detect that the third window 210 for the third application APP 3 (e.g., conferencing application) is running and is not minimized on the screen 200. The system 100 may then generate the arrange 230C, which horizontally divides the screen 200 into two equally sized segments: a left segment for the first window 210A and a right segment for windows 210C.
The contextual information may further indicate that there are no windows open other than the first, second and third windows 210A, 210B and 210C. Based on such contextual information, the system 100 may generate one or more arrangements to simultaneously display the first, second and third windows 210A, 210B and 210C that are currently open on the screen 200. For example, the system 100 may generate the fourth and fifth arrangements 230D and 230E, in which the first, second and third windows 210A, 210B and 210C are horizontally arranged side-by-side. In the fourth arrangement 230D, the screen 200 may be divided into three segments: a middle segment occupying 50% of the screen 200; and left and right segments arranged on the left and right sides of the middle segment, respectively, and each occupying 25% of the screen 200. The larger middle segment may be regarded as a primary segment and hence may be assigned to the first window 210A. The smaller left and right segments are regarded as secondary segments and hence may be assigned to the second and third windows 210B and 210C, respectively. In the fifth arrangement 230E, the screen 200 is horizontally divided into three equally sized segments: left, middle and right segments. Due to its relative position, the middle segment may be regarded as a primary segment and hence may be assigned to the first window 210A. The left and right segments may be regarded as secondary segments and may be assigned to the second and third windows 210B and 210C, respectively.
Based on the contextual information, the system 100 may detect that other applications are running and minimized and hence are not displayed via the screen 200. The contextual information may further indicate that, among those applications, a fourth application APP 4 (e.g., a note-taking application) has been mostly recently minimized. Based on such contextual information, the system 100 may generate one or more arrangements displaying the fourth application along with one or more applications from the first, second and third applications 210A, 210B and 210C. For example, as shown in
The arrangements 230 may be presented as a selectable list, such as, the menu box 220 which may be displayed on the screen 200. The user may then select one of the arrangements 230 in the menu box 220. In response to receiving the user's selection, the system 100 may resize each of the applications and place the applications as defined in the selected arrangement. For example, when the third arrangement 230C is selected by the user, the system 100 may resize the first and third windows 210A and 210B to occupy 50% of the screen 200 (e.g., 960×1040 pixels) and horizontally arrange the first and third windows 210A and 210B side-by-side, as shown in
The context information may include event information. For example, a scheduling application operating in the system 100 may include event information indicating that an upcoming online conference. Such even information may also be available from an email application, chat application, note-taking application, etc. Upon detecting that such event is scheduled to start within a predetermined time period (e.g., 15 minutes), the system 100 may automatically initiate operations for generating on-screen windows arrangements based on the display information and contextual information. Additional contextual information (e.g., event information) may cause the system 100 to generate a set of on-screen windows arrangements that is different from the arrangements 230 shown in
Upon detecting that an event (e.g., online conference) is scheduled to start within a predetermined time period (e.g., 15 minutes), the system 100 may identify a group of applications to be included in at least one of the arrangements 250. For example, the system 100 may determine whether there are applications required for or relevant to the upcoming online conference. The system 100 may also determine which applications are currently running, which applications have been most frequently used by the user, etc. The system 100 may also determine whether there are any restrictions or prioritization caused or imposed by the display information, application developers, IT administrators, etc. For example, an IT administrator or security personal may have restricted access to or sharing of certain data. Upon detecting such restrictions, the system 100 may exclude applications related to the restricted data from being considered as part of on-screen windows arrangement suggestions. Based on such display and contextual information, the system 100 may generate a number of the arrangements 250, which may be more relevant to or optimized for the event.
For example, based on the contextual and event information, the system 100 may determine that the third application APP 3 (e.g., conference application) is required to host or participate the online conference. When the user is the presenter for the online conference, the system 100 may determine that the second application APP 2 (e.g., presentation application) is required for the online conference. The system 100 may determine that the fourth application APP 4 (e.g., note-taking application) is the user's default note-taking application. The system 100 may determine that the sixth application APP 6 (e.g., web browser) is not necessary for the online conference. Based on such determinations, the system 100 may generate the first, second and third arrangements 250A, 250B and 250C, each of which includes at least any two of the second, third and fourth applications APP 2, APP 3 and APP 4. When the user is the presenter, the system 100 may generate the first and second arrangements 250A and 250B, which include a larger left segment assigned to the second window 210B for the second application APP 2 (e.g., presentation application). When the user is a participant of the online conference, the system 100 may generate the third arrangement 250C, which divides the screen 200 into two equally sized halves for the third application APP 3 (e.g., conferencing application) and fourth application APP 4 (e.g., note-taking application), respectively.
The system 100 may take other contextual information into consideration. For example, similar to the operations for generation arrangements 230 shown in
The contextual information may indicate which applications have been mostly frequently used by the user but are not currently running. For example, based on the contextual information, the system 100 may determine that the sixth application APP 6 (e.g., web browsing application) has been most frequently used by the user but is not currently running. The contextual information may also indicate that the sixth application APP 6 has been frequently selected together with the fourth application APP 4, and a particular website has been most frequently visited by the user when the sixth application APP 6 was selected together with the fourth application APP 4. On this basis, the system 100 may generate the sixth arrangement 250F, in which the frequently visited website is displayed via the window for the sixth application APP 6 (e.g., web browsing application).
Additional display or contextual information may be available to and hence taken into consideration by the system 100. For example, the display information may include screen orientation information. The contextual information may include the operating system or developer-imposed restrictions. For example, the second application APP 2 may be associated with the developer's restriction that the second application APP 2 must occupy at least 60% of the screen 200 during a presentation. The contextual information may indicate that the user has frequently positioned the first application APP 1 at a middle segment when the screen 200 is horizontally divided into three segments. Based on such additional display or contextual information, a size and position of each application may be determined.
The on-screen windows arrangement generation may be activated in various ways. For example, as shown in
Upon completing the on-screen window arrangement generation, the system 100 may display the menu box 220, which may be positioned proximate to the cursor 304, as shown in
In an implementation, the system 100 may be configured to allow the user to interact with a particular window for initiating the on-screen windows arrangement generation, selecting one of the generated on-screen windows arrangements, and selecting at which segment of the selected arrangement the particular window should be placed. For example,
The user may then select at which one of the left and right segments 632 and 634 the window 610A should be placed by interacting with the arrangement 630A. For example, when the user wants to place the window 610A on the right segment 634, the user may move the cursor 604 to hover over the right segment 634, which may cause the right segment 634 to be highlighted. The user may then activate the right segment 634 by, for example, a right click, to indicate that the user wants the window 610A to be placed at the right segment 634. In response to receiving such user input, the system 100 may resize the window 610 and place the window 610 to occupy the right half of the screen 600, as shown in
The computer system 800 may further include a read only memory (ROM) 808 or other static storage device coupled to the bus 802 for storing static information and instructions for the processor 804. A storage device 810, such as a flash or other non-volatile memory may be coupled to the bus 802 for storing information and instructions.
The computer system 800 may be coupled via the bus 802 to a display 812, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), for displaying information. One or more user input devices, such as the example user input device 814 may be coupled to the bus 802, and may be configured for receiving various user inputs, such as user command selections and communicating these to the processor 804, or to the main memory 806. The user input device 814 may include physical structure, or virtual implementation, or both, providing user input modes or options, for controlling, for example, a cursor, visible to a user through display 812 or through other techniques, and such modes or operations may include, for example virtual mouse, trackball, or cursor direction keys.
The computer system 800 may include respective resources of the processor 804 executing, in an overlapping or interleaved manner, respective program instructions. Instructions may be read into the main memory 806 from another machine-readable medium, such as the storage device 810. In some examples, hard-wired circuitry may be used in place of or in combination with software instructions. The term “machine-readable medium” as used herein refers to any medium that participates in providing data that causes a machine to operate in a specific fashion. Such a medium may take forms, including but not limited to, non-volatile media, volatile media, and transmission media. Non-volatile media may include, for example, optical or magnetic disks, such as storage device 810. Transmission media may include optical paths, or electrical or acoustic signal propagation paths, and may include acoustic or light waves, such as those generated during radio-wave and infra-red data communications, that are capable of carrying instructions detectable by a physical mechanism for input to a machine.
The computer system 800 may also include a communication interface 818 coupled to the bus 802, for two-way data communication coupling to a network link 820 connected to a local network 822. The network link 820 may provide data communication through one or more networks to other data devices. For example, the network link 820 may provide a connection through the local network 822 to a host computer 824 or to data equipment operated by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) 826 to access through the Internet 828 a server 830, for example, to obtain code for an application program.
In the following, further features, characteristics and advantages of the invention will be described by means of items:
While various embodiments have been described, the description is intended to be exemplary, rather than limiting, and it is understood that many more embodiments and implementations are possible that are within the scope of the embodiments. Although many possible combinations of features are shown in the accompanying figures and discussed in this detailed description, many other combinations of the disclosed features are possible. Any feature of any embodiment may be used in combination with or substituted for any other feature or element in any other embodiment unless specifically restricted. Therefore, it will be understood that any of the features shown and/or discussed in the present disclosure may be implemented together in any suitable combination. Accordingly, the embodiments are not to be restricted except in light of the attached claims and their equivalents. Also, various modifications and changes may be made within the scope of the attached claims.
While the foregoing has described what are considered to be the best mode and/or other examples, it is understood that various modifications may be made therein and that the subject matter disclosed herein may be implemented in various forms and examples, and that the teachings may be applied in numerous applications, only some of which have been described herein. It is intended by the following claims to claim any and all applications, modifications and variations that fall within the true scope of the present teachings.
Unless otherwise stated, all measurements, values, ratings, positions, magnitudes, sizes, and other specifications that are set forth in this specification, including in the claims that follow, are approximate, not exact. They are intended to have a reasonable range that is consistent with the functions to which they relate and with what is customary in the art to which they pertain.
The scope of protection is limited solely by the claims that now follow. That scope is intended and should be interpreted to be as broad as is consistent with the ordinary meaning of the language that is used in the claims when interpreted in light of this specification and the prosecution history that follows and to encompass all structural and functional equivalents. Notwithstanding, none of the claims are intended to embrace subject matter that fails to satisfy the requirement of Sections 101, 102, or 103 of the Patent Act, nor should they be interpreted in such a way. Any unintended embracement of such subject matter is hereby disclaimed.
Except as stated immediately above, nothing that has been stated or illustrated is intended or should be interpreted to cause a dedication of any component, step, feature, object, benefit, advantage, or equivalent to the public, regardless of whether it is or is not recited in the claims.
It will be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions with respect to their corresponding respective areas of inquiry and study except where specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein. Relational terms such as first and second and the like may be used solely to distinguish one entity or action from another without necessarily requiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between such entities or actions. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. An element proceeded by “a” or “an” does not, without further constraints, preclude the existence of additional identical elements in the process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.
The Abstract of the Disclosure is provided to allow the reader to quickly ascertain the nature of the technical disclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. In addition, in the foregoing Detailed Description, it may be seen that various features are grouped together in various examples for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claims require more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive subject matter lies in less than all features of a single disclosed example. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into the Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separately claimed subject matter.
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