The present invention generally relates to the field of text editing and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for facilitating touch-based text editing and relevant computer program products and storage medium.
Nowadays, more and more potable devices, such as handheld phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the like are equipped with a touch screen capable of simultaneously performing an input operation and a display operation in one device to replacing or at least partly replacing conventional alphanumeric and directional keys in terms of their functions. With the development of touch screen technique, touch screens have been one of the most important inputting tools in portable devices.
Although finger interaction with a touch screen is more intuitive and natural for most potable device users, a finger is perceived as lack of precision with respect to the touch screen. One reason for this is that the portable device is manufactured with a small size for portability and the size of its touch screen and the items that it can display are limited. In fact, in the situation of text editing in the screen of the portable device, users usually have difficulties in repositioning cursor and selecting a target to be edited.
There are various input modalities which can be used to edit text. Besides the conventional keyboard or soft-keyboard based input modalities, the input modalities based on speech recognition and handwriting recognition (with an electronic “pen”, a stylus or even a finger) are increasingly gaining popularity. However, in the real applications, it is difficult to maintain the accurate input performance across different operating conditions, especially with speech recognition and/or handwriting recognition technologies. The limitations of speech and/or handwriting recognition technology inevitably raise the issue of correcting recognition errors. Therefore, users need a mechanism to efficiently interact with the word or characters shown in the limited screen of the potable device so as to edit the inputted text and correct the errors in the inputted text.
For example, after selecting target word or characters, for example a misrecognized or mis-inputted word or character, users may need to input a new word or character to replace the selected one. The above-mentioned various input modalities can be used in this interactive correction procedure. How to fuse these input modalities and allow users to quickly edit text is very important to gain a smoothly and joyful user experience, which is also a design challenge in the limited portable device screen.
Therefore, there is a desire of a new mechanism for facilitating text editing in a portable device with a size-limited touch screen.
The above discussion is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as a limitation to the scope of the claimed subject matters in the present application.
To solve the technical problems in the prior art, the present invention proposes new interacting mechanism for facilitating text editing in a portable device with a size-limited touch screen, especially for the speech recognition recovery.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for facilitating text editing. The method comprises: providing a first editing region displaying a plurality of inputted characters; providing a second editing region in which a subset of the inputted characters is displayed enlargedly for being edited on the basis of a language unit; performing, in responding to receiving an editing input to the second editing region, a joint update to corresponding characters in the second editing region and the first editing region.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for facilitating text editing. The apparatus comprising: means for providing a first editing region displaying a plurality of inputted characters; means for providing a second editing region in which a subset of the inputted characters is displayed enlargedly for being edited on the basis of a language unit; means for performing, in responding to receiving an editing input to the second editing region, a joint update to corresponding characters in the second editing region and the first editing region.
According to the third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a device. The device comprises a processor unit being configured to control said device; a memory storing computer program instructions which cause when running by the processor to perform a method for facilitating text editing in a potable device, the method comprising: providing a first editing region displaying a plurality of inputted characters; providing a second editing region in which a subset of the inputted characters is displayed enlargedly for being edited on the basis of a language unit; performing, in responding to receiving an editing input to the second editing region, a joint update to corresponding characters in the second editing region and the first editing region.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer program product. The computer program comprises a computer readable storage structure embodying computer program code thereon for execution by a computer processor, wherein said computer program code is hosted by a device and comprises instructions for performing a method including: providing a first editing region displaying a plurality of inputted characters; providing a second editing region in which a subset of the inputted characters is displayed enlargedly for being edited on the basis of a language unit; performing, in responding to receiving an editing input to the second editing region, a joint update to corresponding characters in the second editing region and the first editing region.
As the present invention is better understood, other objects and effects of the present invention will become more apparent and easy to be understood from the following description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein:
Like reference numerals designate the same, similar, or corresponding features or functions throughout the drawings.
As shown in
At step S110, a first editing region displaying a plurality of inputted characters is provided in a user interface. The plurality of inputted characters are, for example, resulted from speech-to-text recognition, handwriting recognition, optical character recognition (OCR) and/or the result of captured keystroke. Usually, a user would like to perform the input on the basis of natural sentences or even natural paragraphs, which expresses a complete purport. The first editing region functions as the overview and provides the user with a contextual view of whole text including the plurality of inputted characters. As limited by the size of the screen of the portable device, the plurality of inputted characters displayed by the first editing region is preferably with a scaled-down size.
At step S120, a second editing region in which a subset of the inputted characters is displayed enlargedly for being edited on the basis of a language unit is provided. The subset of the inputted characters which needs to be further edited or corrected can be for example selected by the user from the first editing region via a selecting means and shown in the second editing region. Preferably, the selected subset of the inputted characters shown in the second editing region can be edited on the basis of a minimal language unit, for example, a Chinese character in Chinese, a word or even a character of a word in English. The second editing region functions as a detail view of the selected characters and allows the user to view them in detail and interact with respective characters to make error corrections or further editing. In a preferred embodiment, the second editing region can be flipped and/or scanned to enable a navigation of the detailed text as shown in the first editing region. In the most cases, the first editing region and the second editing region are configured to be displayed simultaneously, so as to provide the user both the contextual view and enlarged detailed view of the text.
At step S130, an editing input to the second editing region is received. Editing inputs include any type of inputs for making text editing, for example, moving cursor, deleting, selecting character(s), selecting an editing modality, adding a new character or symbol, and so on.
With reference to the following discussion of the present invention, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the present invention can support any type of the editing input by configuring corresponding processing for supported input types. That is, the present invention will not be restricted to any specific input type discussed as examples in the present disclosure, but can be applicable to any new editing scenario which may require performing scenario-specific inputs of new types.
At step S140, a joint update to corresponding characters in the second editing region and the first editing region is performed. In fact, the first editing region and second editing region are associated with each other. When the received input to the second editing region results in a change of the enlarged characters displayed in the second editing region, the corresponding characters as shown in the first editing region will be updated jointly, to display in the first editing region the overview of the whole text containing the corresponding change.
At step S150, the flow of the method for facilitating text editing according to one illustrative embodiment of the present invention ends.
With the illustration of
Hereafter, with respect to the figures showing views of the user interface according to illustrative embodiments of the present invention, the details and advantages of the present invention will be more apparent.
As shown in
The second editing region 220 of the user interface 200 is provided horizontally under the first editing region 210. Of course, different layout for the second editing region 220 relative to the first editing region 210 can also be adopted, which will not make any limitation to the protection scope of the present invention. In the second editing region 220, a subset of the inputted characters selected from the first editing region 210 via a selecting means 211 such as a hint box or a sliding line is displayed in an enlarged style. As shown in
The user interface 200 may optionally contain several functional buttons 230 to enable corresponding functionalities for facilitating text editing. As shown in
For example, the user begins speech input by pressing the speech input button in the user interface. When the user ends this speech input procedure for example by pressing again the speech input button, the result of speech recognition is shown in the first editing region 210, which usually contains a plurality of speech-inputted characters. The hint box 211 of a certain length (acting as the selecting means in this example) appears at its default location (for example, the end) of the speech-inputted text displayed in the first editing region 210. The user may change the location of the hint box 211 by directly clicking desired location in the first editing region 210 or dragging the hint box 211 to the desired location. The hint box 211 selects a subset of the inputted characters shown in the first editing region 210. Enlarged version of the characters in the hint box 211 is displayed in the second editing region 220 as buttonized characters. In other word, the hint box 211 gives the user a hint of which part of the inputted characters in the first editing region 210 is visible in the second editing region 220. As an advantageous option, both the hint box 211 of the first editing region 210 and the second editing region 220 can be activated or hided in responding to specific indication of the user.
As shown in
Since the hint box 211 can be configured to be moved following the cursor, the relative location of the hint box 211 and the cursor should be considered in practice. In one implementation, it may predefined that the center of the hint box 211 always follows the user's fingertip by default and the cursor always also follows the user's fingertip. If the user clicks somewhere in the beginning/last characters within the length of the hint box 211, the hint box 211 will cover the beginning/last characters within the length of the hint box 211 and the cursor should follow the user's fingertip. In the case of the inputted characters less than the default length of the hint box 211, the length of the hint box 211 can be configured to be changed according to the text length.
It should be noted that as the subset of the inputted characters displayed in the second editing region 220 will be changed accordingly when moving the hint box 211 of the first editing region 210, it is possible to browse in the second editing region 220 all the inputted text by clicking a desired location of the hint box 211 or dragging the hint box 211 in the first editing region 210.
Additionally and/or alternatively, the second editing region 220 per se can be provided with a mechanism for browsing the text.
As shown in
In order to meet different requirements in navigation, the characters in the second editing region 220 is preferably configured to be zoomed in or zoomed out, so that the user can dynamically change the number of the characters (as the language units) shown in the second editing region 220, as shown in
In the second editing region 220, the buttonized characters 221 in the second editing region 220 can be activated to reveal a candidate list 510 of statistically relevant characters. As shown in
As shown in
As shown in
In order to correct errors in the text or further edit the text, a handwriting mode can be activated in the user interface 200.
The user may, for example, click the handwriting input button in the user interface 200, and then the handwriting pane 600 pops up in the user interface 200, in which the first editing region 210 can be hidden or defocused while the second editing region 220 appears along with the handwriting pane 600, as shown in
With reference to
As shown in
It should be appreciated that although in the handwriting mode, the first editing region 210 is invisible or defocused, the text contained in the first editing region is also updated along with the second editing region 220. When the user switches off the handwriting pane 600, the first editing region 210 will display the updated text.
In the above described embodiments with reference to
To delete one or more inputted characters, the user needs to select target character(s) in the second editing region 220, for example, by dragging along in the second editing region 220, or put the cursor to a desired location of the second editing region 220. Then, the user may enable a deleting operation in the way that is supported by the system.
As shown in
The mobile terminal 900 comprises a speaker or earphone 902, a microphone 906, a touch display 903 and a set of keys 904 which may include virtual keys 904a, soft keys 904b, 904c and a joystick 905 or other type of navigational input device.
The internal component, software and protocol structure of the mobile terminal 900 will now be described with reference to
The MMI 1034 also includes one or more hardware controllers, which together with the MMI drivers cooperate with the first display 1036/903, and the keypad 1038/904 as well as various other I/O devices such as microphone, speaker, vibrator, ringtone generator, LED indicator, etc. As is commonly known, the user may operate the mobile terminal through the man-machine interface thus formed.
The software can also include various modules, protocol stacks, drivers, etc., which are commonly designated as 1030 and which provide communication services (such as transport, network and connectivity) for an RF interface 1006, and optionally a Bluetooth interface 1008 and/or an IrDA interface 1010 for local connectivity. The RF interface 1006 comprises an internal or external antenna as well as appropriate radio circuitry for establishing and maintaining a wireless link to a base station. As is well known to a man skilled in the art, the radio circuitry comprises a series of analogue and digital electronic components, together forming a radio receiver and transmitter. These components include, band pass filters, amplifiers, mixers, local oscillators, low pass filters, AD/DA converters, etc.
The mobile terminal also has a SIM card 1004 and an associated reader. As is commonly known, the SIM card 1004 comprises a processor as well as local work and data memory.
The various aspects of what is described above can be used alone or in various combinations. The teaching of this application may be implemented by a combination of hardware and software, but can also be implemented in hardware or software. The teaching of this application can also be embodied as computer program product on a computer readable medium, which can be any material media, such as floppy disks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, hard drivers, even network media and etc.
The specification of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art. It is understood by those skilled in the art that the method and means in the embodiments of the present invention can be implemented in software, hardware, firmware or a combination thereof.
Therefore, the embodiments were chosen and described in order to better explain the principles of the invention, the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand that all modifications and alterations made without departing from the spirit of the present invention fall into the protection scope of the present invention as defined in the appended claims.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/CN2009/075875 | 12/23/2009 | WO | 00 | 6/21/2012 |