Patent Application
20100033498
This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2008-203290 filed on Aug. 6, 2008; the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus, and in particular to an electronic apparatus having a display device, and configured to display a screen including text or an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic apparatuses configured to display screens such as personal computers, mobile phones, portable game machines and so on have become information/amusement tools indispensable to daily lives. It is important for these electronic apparatuses to provide easy-to-operate user interfaces as well as to display various images and text, as disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Publication of Unexamined Applications (Kokai), No. 2006-350490, and No. 2005-321896.
JP 2006-350490 discloses a graphical user interface (GUI) screen having a layered structure formed by a plurality of layers. As a degree of transparency may be set for each of the layers, the GUI screen may form an image that would be drawn on an overhead transparency and projected by an overhead projector (OHP). According to JP 2006-350490, each of processes of various events following operations may be separately associated with each of the layers, so that the layers are highly independent and that functions relating to the GUI may be easily added or deleted.
JP 2005-321896 discloses a method, in a case where a plurality of icons corresponding to different functions each are displayed in a same menu screen, for highlighting and drawing attention to one of the icons corresponding to one of the functions being selected rather than the other icons. The selected icon may be highlighted by changing its color, size, brightness and so on. JP 2005-321896 describes that a user may intuitively understand which menu item is being selected and displayed.
As being a common information tool, each of various electronic apparatuses has to display a screen for providing an easy-to-operate user interface, and has to save power for the display operation as well particularly in a mobile circumstance. Although the GUI of JP 2006-350490 is intended to be easy-to-operate, power saving has to be considered in addition.
The method disclosed in JP 2005-321896 is intended to make the display of the noticed area of the screen easy-to-see by distinguishing it from the unnoticed area, from a standpoint of the easy-to-operate user interface as well as JP 2006-350490. Thus, power saving has to be considered in addition.
Accordingly, an advantage of the present invention is to set noticed and unnoticed areas on a screen displayed by an electronic apparatus and to make the unnoticed area less bright, so that the noticed area may be made easier-to-see than usual.
To achieve the above advantage, one aspect of the present invention is to provide an electronic apparatus having a display device, an operation section, an area setting section and a brightness adjuster. The display device is configured to display an image and text. The operation section configured to be used for input operation. The area setting section is configured to set a noticed area on a screen displayed on the display device on the basis of an input operation done on the operation section. The brightness adjuster is configured to make an unnoticed area of the screen less bright than the noticed area.
A first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to
The first section 11 has a display device 14 formed by, e.g., an organic electro-luminescence device. The display device 14 may display text and an image. The mobile communication device 1 may perform an application accompanied by a display of a screen (e.g., sending and receiving an email, web browsing, making and using a directory, etc.) by using the display device 14. The first section 11 has an earpiece 15. The second section 12 has a microphone 16. As having the earpiece 15 and the microphone 16, the mobile communication device 1 may be used for voice communication.
The second section 12 has an operation section 17 (shown as surrounded by a dashed frame) constituted by a plurality of operation keys. The operation section 17 may include an operation key that is not shown and arranged on a back or side face of the first section 11 or the second section 12. Upon one of the operation keys of the operation section 17 being operated, the mobile communication device 1 may be operated so as to start or stop working, or may be provided with text or an operation command. Each of the display device 14, the earpiece 15, the microphone 16 and the operation section 17 may work as a user interface of the mobile communication device 1.
The controller 22 is constituted by a single chip of a processing device such as a microprocessor, or by a combination of a plurality of such chips. The RAM 23 is a memory on and from which the controller 22 may write or read a required program or data as necessary for performing a function. The ROM 24 is a memory on which programs or data are written beforehand.
Each of the transmitter/receiver 20, the audio interface 21, the RAM 23 and the ROM 24 is connected to the controller 22 through, e.g., a common bus so as to be monitored and controlled by the controller 22. The operation section 17 described with reference to
The controller interface 31 may relay data to be written to or read out from one of the set registers of the set register group 32 in accordance with an instruction of the controller 22. The controller interface 31 may relay data to be written to the frame memory 33 through the memory controller 34 in accordance with an instruction of the controller 22.
The display controller 30 has a scan controller 35 and a pixel processor 36. The scan controller 35 may scan the pixels forming a screen displayed on the display device 14 on the basis of the set values of the parameters for display synchronization (the numbers of pixels in horizontal and vertical directions, and the blanking width) stored in the set register group 32. The scan controller 35 may instruct the memory controller 34 to read the display content data from the frame memory 33 for each of the pixels.
The pixel controller 36 may perform an arithmetic process described later on the data read from the frame memory 33 in synchronization with the scan operation of the scan controller 35. The controller 22 may inform the pixel processor 36, through the controller interface 31, of a position of a cursor displayed on the screen.
The display controller 30 has a display signal output section 37 and a synchronization signal output section 38. The display signal output section 37 may convert the screen data arithmetically processed by the pixel processor 36 into a display signal, and may provide the display device 14 with the display signal. The synchronization signal output section 38 may generate a synchronization signal on the basis of the scan operation of the scan controller 35, and may provide the display device 14 with the synchronization signal. The display device 14 may consequently display the screen content stored in the frame memory 33 as the data.
The first layer generator 41 may receive the information of the cursor position from the controller 22 through the controller interface 31, so as to set a noticed area including the cursor position. The above noticed area is, e.g., a character pointed by the cursor, a series of characters including both sides of the cursor, or a whole line where the cursor is positioned.
The first layer generator 41 may inform the second layer generator 42 of the above noticed area. The second layer generator 42 may receive the scan signal from the scan controller 35. The second layer generator 42 may produce an opaque portion of screen data of a second layer in correspondence with a super-area including the noticed area. The second layer generator 42 may produce a transparent portion of the screen data of the second layer in correspondence with the outside of the super-area including the noticed area. The screen data of the second layer in which the opaque and transparent portions are combined may be produced in accordance with the screen size of the display device 14.
The layer combiner 44 may overlap and combine the screen data of the first layer and the screen data of the second layer in such a way that the screen of the second layer is positioned in front on the display device 14. Such combination of the layers is described in, e.g., JP 2006-350490.
The layered structure and combination of the screens describe above will be explained with reference to
In this case, the noticed area of the screen of the first layer may be defined to be an area indicating the ninth character “n” of the fifth line, or a series of characters including both sides of the cursor such as “long”, or the whole fifth line. Whichever of the above the noticed area is, the super-area including the noticed area may be defined to be the whole fifth line (shown in
Then, the screen of the second layer positioned at the top of
The screen of the second layer is positioned in front of and overlaps the screen of the first layer so that a combined screen shown at the bottom in
Although not having been referred to above with reference to
Brightness of the first layer may be changed in the process for combining the layered screens described above, and such a case will be described with reference to
Then, on the combined screen at the bottom in
The super-area including the noticed area where the cursor is positioned may consequently be highlighted so as to make the screen easy-to-see. If being formed by including a self-luminescent element such as an organic electro-luminescence device, the display device 14 may effectively save power by showing the outside of the super-area including the noticed area to be relatively less bright.
The first embodiment may be modified in such a way that the display of the opaque portion of the second layer may coincide with a magnified display of the noticed area of the first layer (i.e., so called a magnifying glass).
The screen of the second layer is formed by the opaque portion magnifying a series of characters “a long” including both sides of the character “n” of the fifth line of the first layer (magnifying glass), and the transparent portion (no text is indicated) that is the outside of the opaque portion. The magnifying glass is supposed to be positioned at the top of the screen.
Then, on the combined screen shown at the bottom in
The first embodiment may also be modified in such a way that the screen of the first layer is not a screen for displaying text as shown in
The first embodiment may still be modified in such a way that the noticed area may be displayed in a phased manner. On the screen for displaying text, e.g., a character pointed by the cursor, other characters of the line where the cursor is positioned, and lines other than the line where the cursor is positioned may be displayed with ordinary brightness, slightly lower brightness and lowest brightness, respectively. These areas may be distinguished from one another by changing color. In order to implement such a modification, the second layer generator 42 shown in
According to the first embodiment of the present invention described above, the screen to be displayed may be layer-structured so as to be divided into the noticed area and the unnoticed area, and the unnoticed area may be displayed with relatively lower brightness. The noticed area may be easy-to-see and the power may be effectively saved at the same time, thereby.
A second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to
The controller interface 51 may relay data to be written to or read out from one of the set registers of the set register group 52 in accordance with an instruction of the controller 22. The controller interface 51 may relay data to be written to the frame memory 53 through the memory controller 54 in accordance with an instruction of the controller 22.
The display controller 50 has a scan controller 55 and a pixel processor 56. The scan controller 55 may scan the pixels forming a screen displayed on the display device 14 on the basis of the set values of the parameters for display synchronization (the numbers of pixels in horizontal and vertical directions, and the blanking width) stored in the set register group 52. The scan controller 55 may instruct the memory controller 54 to read the display content data from the frame memory 53 for each of the pixels.
The display controller 50 has a cursor position register 57 and a distance calculator 58. The controller 22 may set a cursor position, which has been provided on the basis of an input operation done on the operation section 17, on the cursor position register 57 through the controller interface 51. The cursor position register 57 may provide the distance calculator 58 with the data representing the cursor position that has been set. The scan controller 55 may provide the distance calculator 58 with data representing a position of a pixel that the scan controller 55 is scanning. These data are expressed by the number of pixels on a 2D (X-Y) coordinate system of the screen.
The AVC 63 may be provided with an output of the subtractor 61 so as to provide the comparator 64 with an absolute value of a difference between the X-coordinates of the cursor and scan positions. The comparator 64 is provided with a reference value that is, e.g., 32. The AVC 65 may be provided with an output of the subtractor 62 so as to provide the comparator 66 with an absolute value of a difference between the Y-coordinates of the cursor and scan positions. The comparator 64 is provided with a reference value that is, e.g., 16.
If the absolute value of the difference between the X-coordinates of the cursor position and the scan position is greater than 32 pixels, the comparator 64 produces a logical output “1”. If not, the comparator 64 produces a logical output “0”. If the absolute value of the difference between the Y-coordinates of the cursor position and the scan position is greater than 16 pixels, the comparator 66 produces a logical output “1”. If not, the comparator 66 produces a logical output “0”.
The comparators 64 and 66 may provide the logical adder 67 with the above outputs. The logical adder 67 produces an output of the distance calculator 58. If the absolute value of the difference between the X-coordinates of the cursor position and the scan position is greater than 32 pixels, or if the absolute value of the difference between the Y-coordinates of the cursor position and the scan position is greater than 16 pixels, the logical adder 67 produces a logical output “1”. If not, the logical adder 67 produces a logical output “0”.
In other words, the distance produced by the distance calculator 58 may be called a scan position relative to the cursor position either in the X- or in the Y-coordinate. The output of the distance calculator 58 may be determined depending on whether the value of the above relative position is greater than 32 or 16 pixels, or neither.
Move back to
That is, according to the second embodiment, the outside of the noticed area including the cursor may be shown to be relatively less bright so that the noticed area may be made easy-to-see and power may be effectively saved in parallel without the layered structure of the screens of the first embodiment.
The second embodiment may be modified in such a way that the distance calculated by the distance calculator 58 is a Euclid distance in the above X-Y coordinate system. If a constant value is given as a threshold, the outside of a circle centered on the cursor and having a radius equal to the threshold may be displayed with lower brightness.
The second embodiment may also be modified in such a way that a locus of a point at a distance corresponding to a threshold from the cursor is defined as a closed plane figure surrounding the cursor. The plane figure is not limited to the rectangle shown in
The second embodiment may still be modified in such a way that the brightness may further decrease if the distance calculated by the distance calculator 58 is greater than an upper threshold that is greater than the threshold. In that case, the brightness may change across three or more ranks so that the screen may enhance a visual effect.
According to the second embodiment of the present invention described above, the noticed area may be made easy-to-see and power may be effectively saved in parallel without the layered structure of the screens.
In the above description of the embodiments, the types (not limited to a mobile communication device), the shapes, the configurations, the connections, the screen displays, the logical processes, the way of defining the super-area including the noticed area and so on are considered as exemplary only, and thus may be variously modified within the scope of the present invention.
The particular hardware or software implementation of the present invention may be varied while still remaining within the scope of the present invention. It is therefore to be understood that within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents, the invention may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described herein.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-203290 | Aug 2008 | JP | national |
