This disclosure is generally concerned with display systems, and more specifically presentation systems capable displaying, moving, and removing multiple pieces of content and annotations.
A common annotation method for electronic whiteboards is to annotate using a stylus or finger to draw, underline or circle a point which a user wishes to emphasize. These annotations may also be made with respect to pieces of content. Annotations to content allows users to expand upon and give context to the content. Preserving this information as content is changed may be desirable.
For the purpose of illustration, there are shown in the drawings certain embodiments described in the present disclosure. In the drawings, like numerals indicate like elements throughout. It should be understood that the full scope of the inventions disclosed herein are not limited to the precise arrangements, dimensions, and instruments shown. In the drawings:
Reference to the drawings illustrating various views of exemplary embodiments is now made. In the drawings and the description of the drawings herein, certain terminology is used for convenience only and is not to be taken as limiting the embodiments of the present disclosure. Furthermore, in the drawings and the description below, like numerals indicate like elements throughout.
The embodiments described herein may have implication and use in and with respect to various devices, including single- and multi-processor computing systems and vertical devices (e.g., cameras, gaming systems, appliances, etc.) that incorporate single- or multi-processing computing systems. The discussion herein is made with reference to a common computing configuration that may be discussed as an end-user system. This common computing configuration may have a CPU resource including one or more microprocessors. This discussion is only for illustration regarding sample embodiments and is not intended to confine the application of the claimed subject matter to the disclosed hardware. Other systems having other known or common hardware configurations (now or in the future) are fully contemplated and expected. With that caveat, a typical hardware and software operating environment is discussed below. The hardware configuration may be found, for example, in a server, a workstation, a laptop, a tablet, a desktop computer, a digital whiteboard, a television, an entertainment system, a smart phone, a phone, or any other computing device, whether mobile or stationary.
The presentation system 100 may also receive and display annotation groups 112 and 114. Generally, annotations may be expository text, drawings, diagrams, or other markings which may be added by a user on or around other content. In some cases, content may be also be considered annotations. Typically, annotations are received from internal sources, such as the touch sensitive display 102. In some cases, annotations may also be received from external sources, such as another presentation system connected via network 150. Generally, annotations may be input in a variety of ways including through unstructured inputs such as a touch, pen, or mouse drawing input, or structured, such as typed text, selected shapes or selected lines. Annotations may be grouped together to form annotation groups.
Annotations to content allows users to expand upon and give context to the content. Relationships between the annotation and the content helps encode this information. For example, a circle by itself does not necessarily confer any significant meaning, but there may be significant meaning where the circle is around a particular piece of content. Preserving these relationship between annotations and content is thus desirable.
Certain annotations may be more relevant to one content than another. For example, for the case with two content, such as content 106 and 108, a user may add text annotation group 112 under content 106 labeling it as a tree. Likewise, the user may add text annotation group 114 under content 108 labeling it as a car. In such a case, the relationship between annotation group 112 and content 106 is more important than between, for example, annotation group 112 and content 108 or annotation group 114. In other cases, another annotation may refer to relationships between the content windows. For example, an arrow annotation 110 between content 106 and content 108 may indicate a relationship between content 106 and content 108. According to certain aspects of the present disclosure, relationships between content and annotations may be managed when moving or deleting content.
As a part of managing annotations, annotations may be grouped and associated with content. For example, the presentation system may receive four separate straight drawings annotation inputs, such as strokes. These annotations may be substantially connected or overlap each other at or around endpoints of each annotation, and the presentation system may group this set of separate annotations together and recognize the inputs as forming a square shaped annotation. This square may also be recognized as surrounding a piece of content and associated with the piece of content. The presentation system may then adjust the annotations in response to changes in the piece of content, for example, moving the annotations as the location of the piece of content is moved.
Generally, a stroke is a collection of touch points {Pj=(xj, yj)} that the touch screen registers from the moment a finger (or other instrument) touches down, till the finger lifts off. Whether a stroke is straight or curved is an important feature to take into consideration to determine the context of the writing/drawing. The straightness of a stroke {Pj} is defined as the average of the distances from each point (Pj) to a fitting straight line. In the simplest construction, the fitting line is merely the straight line connecting the first point (P0) and the last point (Pn). Thus, the straightness (S) of a stroke is obtained according to the following equation:
In which the x operator is the cross product of two vectors, and the ∥ ∥ operator is the magnitude of a vector. In a more accurate, but much more compute intensive construct, the fitting straight line can be obtained by linear regression method. In that case, the above equation still applies, with P0 and Pn being replaced by the starting and ending point of the new fitting line. Thresholds may be defined around the straightness of a stroke to determine whether a stroke is approximately straight, curved, circular, etc.
A determination may be made that the annotation inputs are writing at step 306. Where structured text is received, this determination is straightforward. For unstructured strokes, this determination may be made, for example, based on one or more of the statistics pertaining to the strokes made within a predetermined number of prior strokes or within a predetermined length of time before the current ink stroke: a) the average length of strokes, which is how long a stroke is; b) the “straightness” of strokes, which is how close a stroke follows a straight line; and c) the spatial distribution of strokes, which is how strokes which are adjacent in time are spatially distributed. Based on thresholds for average length of the strokes, and thresholds for “straightness” measurement of the strokes, handwriting of letters may be detected. These letters may be grouped into words and words into groups of words at step 308. This is discussed in more detail in conjunction with
At step 310, relationships may be determined based on drawings. Relationship drawings allow groups to be connected and the nature of the connector help contextualize the relationship between connected groups. In certain cases, relationships may be inferred based on drawings. These drawings may include those recognized as shapes and relationship drawings may be based on recognized shapes. These drawings may generally appear around, under, or between previously detected annotation groups or content. For example, a line may be detected underneath two previously recognized, separate, groups of words. This line may be recognized as underlining based on the line's position relative to the two groups of words, creating a relationship between the two groups of words. A circle shape may be recognized and a determination may be made that annotation groups or content within the circle shape are related. Lines, pointers, or arrows between annotation groups or content may create relationships when they connect the annotation groups or content or when they are between annotation groups or content and point in the direction of annotation groups or content. Additionally, strokes arranged in a relatively large crisscrossing hash pattern may be recognized as a table.
In certain cases, annotation groups or content, while unconnected by any drawing, may still be related. For example, text under or next to a content window may label the content and an association between the text and the content window would be appropriate. At step 312, relationships between annotation groups and content may be determined based on their proximity to each other. A relationship may be created when annotation groups and content are within a threshold distance to one another. According to certain aspects, there may be whitespace around content or annotation groups. Annotations added to this whitespace within a threshold distance of existing content or annotations may be associated with the existing content or annotations. Additionally, annotations having a beginning point within existing content or annotations, or having an end point within existing content or annotations may also be associated with the existing content or annotations.
Letters and words may also be grouped based on time. For example a time interval between a last stroke and a next stroke may be measured and compared against a dynamically adjusted average time between strokes. For example, the time between writing letter 402 and letter 404 may be compared to the average time between writing letters 402-406 and where the time between strokes is larger than the average time the previously written letter 402 may be recognized as separating a word and letter 402 grouped as a word. Similarly, the time between writing letters 404 and 406 may be shorter than the average time and therefore letters 404 and 406 grouped as a word. In certain cases, this time comparison may also be subject to a certain threshold time to be recognized as separating words rather than letters.
The above procedures for grouping based on time and spacing may then be repeated at the word level, based on the identified words, in order to group logical sets of words.
Once relationships between annotation groups and content have been determined, these relationships may be intelligently preserved even if content is moved.
In comparison to
How the connection is maintained may be based on the connection annotation detected. For connecting annotations, such as arrow annotation 510, associated with multiple content or annotations, these annotations may be modified and redrawn based on the original intended relationships between the multiple content or annotation groups. For example, arrow annotation 510 may be associated with both content 508 and 506 and relate the content to each other and this relative connection may be preserved by redrawing the arrow annotation 510 to maintain the connection between the original location of content 506 and the new location of content 508.
In some cases, relationships cannot be preserved.
The system bus 710 may be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. A basic input/output system (BIOS) stored in ROM 740 or the like, may provide the basic routine that helps to transfer information between elements within the computing device 700, such as during start-up. The computing device 700 further includes storage devices 760 such as a hard disk drive, a magnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, tape drive or the like. The storage device 760 can include software modules 762, 764, 766 for controlling the processor 720. Other hardware or software modules are contemplated. The storage device 760 is connected to the system bus 710 by a drive interface. The drives and the associated computer readable storage media provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for the computing device 700. In one aspect, a hardware module that performs a particular function includes the software component stored in a non-transitory computer-readable medium in connection with the necessary hardware components, such as the processor 720, bus 710, output device 770, and so forth, to carry out the function.
Although the exemplary embodiment described herein employs the hard disk 760, other types of computer readable media which can store data that are accessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital versatile disks, cartridges, random access memories (RAMs) 750, read only memory (ROM) 740, a cable or wireless signal containing a bit stream and the like, may also be used in the exemplary operating environment. Non-transitory computer-readable storage media expressly exclude media such as energy, carrier signals, electromagnetic waves, and signals per se.
To enable user interaction with the computing device 700, an input device 790 represents any number of input mechanisms, such as a microphone for speech, a touch-sensitive screen for gesture or graphical input, keyboard, mouse, motion input, speech and so forth. An output device 770 can comprise one or more of a number of output mechanisms, including a digital whiteboard or touchscreen. This output device may also be able to receive input, such as with a touchscreen. In some instances, multimodal systems enable a user to provide multiple types of input to communicate with the computing device 700. The communications interface 780 generally governs and manages the user input and system output. There is no restriction on operating on any particular hardware arrangement and therefore the basic features here may be substituted for improved hardware or firmware arrangements as they are developed.
For clarity of explanation, the embodiment of
Embodiments within the scope of the present disclosure may also include tangible and/or non-transitory computer-readable storage media for carrying or having computer-executable instructions or data structures stored thereon. Such non-transitory computer-readable storage media can be any available media that can be accessed by a general purpose or special purpose computer, including the functional design of any special purpose processor as discussed above. By way of example, and not limitation, such non-transitory computer-readable media can include RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to carry or store desired program code means in the form of computer-executable instructions, data structures, or processor chip design. When information is transferred or provided over a network or another communications connection (either hardwired, wireless, or combination thereof) to a computer, the computer properly views the connection as a computer-readable medium. Thus, any such connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of the computer-readable media.
Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions and data which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function or group of functions. Computer-executable instructions also include program modules that are executed by computers in stand-alone or network environments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, components, data structures, objects, and the functions inherent in the design of special-purpose processors, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computer-executable instructions, associated data structures, and program modules represent examples of the program code means for executing steps of the methods disclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executable instructions or associated data structures represents examples of corresponding acts for implementing the functions described in such steps.
Embodiments of the disclosure may be practiced in network computing environments with many types of computer system configurations, including personal computers, hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. Embodiments may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by local and remote processing devices that are linked (either by hardwired links, wireless links, or by a combination thereof) through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
The various embodiments described above are provided by way of illustration only, and should not be construed so as to limit the scope of the disclosure. Various modifications and changes can be made to the principles and embodiments described herein without departing from the scope of the disclosure and without departing from the claims which follow.
This application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. ______, filed Jun. 6, 2017, U.S. application Ser. No. ______, filed Jun. 6, 2017, U.S. application Ser. No. ______, filed Jun. 6, 2017, and to U.S. application Ser. No. ______, filed Jun. 6, 2017, the contents of which applications are entirely incorporated by reference herein.