Patent Application
20140006995
The present application claims the benefit of priority of Chinese Patent Application Serial Number 201210226928.2, entitled “METHOD FOR TOUCH INPUT AND DEVICE THEREFORE”, filed Jun. 29, 2012 with the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People's Republic of China, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
The present invention relates to a technical solution of touch input, and more specifically, to method for controlling a mobile apparatus having a touch screen and device therefore.
The mobile apparatus is widely used in ordinary work and life. As the touch screen becomes more popular, touch input has become a very important manner for inputting, especially for replacing the traditional physical keyboard with the virtual keyboard. In view of the restriction to the touch screen size of the mobile apparatus, the size and layout of the virtual keyboard can not simulate the traditional physical keyboard, which may affect the user's experience and input efficiency.
With respect to this, the existing virtual keyboards distribute different keys such as letters, special characters and numbers onto different pages, and when inputting the combination of letters, special characters and numbers, the user needs to switch to the page to which the character to be input belongs and then choose the target key, which requires a frequent switching among different pages.
There is provided a technical solution of enlarging a virtual keyboard in the prior art, for example the U.S. Pat. No. 6,211,856 which introduced a method for enlarging the displaying area of the touch screen by enlarging the displaying area in a size predefined by the user and performing scrolling operation on the parts beyond the screen boundary with a virtual direction key.
However, it requires a complicated process whether to move the virtual keyboard with a virtual direction key and then to input or to employ the way of switching pages, and therefore there is a space for improving in the prior art.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for controlling a mobile apparatus having a touch screen, the method including: generating a virtual keyboard which is larger than a virtual keyboard displaying area in the touch screen; and moving the virtual keyboard in response to a sliding of a touch point, where at least one direction component of a moving direction of the virtual keyboard is opposite to a direction component of a sliding direction of the touch point.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a device for controlling a mobile apparatus having a touch screen, the device including a virtual keyboard generating module configured to generate a virtual keyboard which is larger than a virtual keyboard displaying area in the touch screen; and a virtual keyboard moving module configured to move the virtual keyboard in response to a sliding of a touch point, where at least one direction component of a moving direction of the virtual keyboard is opposite to a direction component of a sliding direction of the touch point.
With the technical solutions of present application, looking for the target key can be speeded up through a relative motion of the touch point and the virtual keyboard, which causes the moving direction of the touch point approximately tend to the orientation in which the target key locates, thereby complying with the inputting habit and the intuition of the users much more. In a further improved technical solution, the whole area of the virtual keyboard can be moved into the virtual keyboard displaying area by sliding the touch point only once, which is much complied with the habit for using the physical keyboard and improves the users' experience and the inputting efficiency considerably.
Through the more detailed description of some embodiments of the present disclosure in the accompanying drawings, the above and other objects, features and advantages of the present disclosure will become more apparent, where the same reference generally refers to the same components in the embodiments of the present disclosure.
Some preferable embodiments will be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which the preferable embodiments of the present disclosure have been illustrated. However, the present disclosure can be implemented in various manners, and thus should not be construed to be limited to the embodiments disclosed herein. On the contrary, those embodiments are provided for the thorough and complete understanding of the present disclosure, and completely conveying the scope of the present disclosure to those skilled in the art.
As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present invention may be embodied as a system, method or computer program product. Accordingly, aspects of the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Furthermore, in some embodiments, aspects of the present invention may take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable medium(s) having computer readable program code embodied thereon.
Any combination of one or more computer readable medium(s) may be utilized. The computer readable medium may be a computer readable signal medium or a computer readable storage medium. A computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readable storage medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. In the context of this document, a computer readable storage medium may be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
A computer readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may take any of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. A computer readable signal medium may be any computer readable medium that is not a computer readable storage medium and that can communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
Program code embodied on a computer readable medium may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of the foregoing.
Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects of the present invention may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the users computer, partly on the users computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).
Aspects of the present invention are described below with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer readable medium that can direct a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instructions which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, other programmable apparatus or other devices to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
With reference to
At step 201, a virtual keyboard is generated, the virtual keyboard being larger than a virtual keyboard displaying area of the touch screen.
Any touch screen in the art including, but not limited to the touch screens of capacitance type, resistance type or the like can be used. The user performs human-machine interactions through a graphical interface displayed on the touch screen which includes at least a virtual keyboard displaying area and an optional text inputting area, a menu controlling area and so on. Moreover, the virtual keyboard may have a shape similar to or different from that of the keyboard displaying area.
When the virtual keyboard displaying area 302 is filled with a virtual keyboard having a large number of keys, the keys in the virtual keyboard displaying area will be small and dense, which may affect the accuracy of touch input by the user. Therefore, a virtual keyboard 303 larger than the virtual keyboard displaying area 302 can be generated in this step. When the virtual keyboard 303 is large enough, the traditional mode of multi-view virtual keyboard will be broken and the commonly used key areas such as digit area, special character area, punctuation area and letter area can be spread on the virtual keyboard 303, thereby saving time for switching in different views and improving the efficiency and the experience of the users. In one embodiment, the virtual keyboard 303 can be generated when it is detected that the user wants to input and then be returned to the initial state where the virtual keyboard displaying area is full with the whole virtual keyboard after a delay of a predefined period.
There can be other ways for generating a virtual keyboard larger than the virtual keyboard displaying area in addition to that in the embodiment shown in
As for the parts of the virtual keyboard beyond the virtual keyboard displaying area, the inventor proposed an improved method which will be explained below with reference to step 202 in detail.
At step 202 shown in
The moving direction of the virtual keyboard can be different from that of the touch point in the horizontal or the vertical direction or be different at the both directions.
In one embodiment, the sliding speeds of the virtual keyboard and the touch point can be the same or in a proportional relationship, thereby speeding up looking for the target key through a relative motion. In some cases, however, where the size of the virtual keyboard exceeds the displaying area of the screen or the starting point of the sliding of the touch point is close to the boundary of the displaying area, resulting in a short sliding distance, multiple sliding actions by the user may be needed to reach the desired position of the virtual keyboard.
In an improved embodiment, the relationship between the instant moving speeds of the virtual keyboard and the touch point can be controlled such that when the touch point moves to a first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area, a first boundary of the virtual keyboard moves to correspond to the first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area.
In another embodiment, the relationship between the instant moving speed of the virtual keyboard and the instant sliding speed of the touch point can also be controlled such that when the touch point slides to a first boundary point of the virtual keyboard displaying area, the first boundary point of the virtual keyboard moves to correspond to the first boundary point of the virtual keyboard displaying area.
According to an implementation of present application, the relationship between the moving speed of the virtual keyboard and the sliding speed of the touch point can be controlled in accordance with the positional relationship among the virtual keyboard, virtual keyboard displaying area and the touch point.
The method can further include entering a target key in response to detecting an inputting operation at the position of the target key on the virtual keyboard.
For those skilled in the art, there exists techniques for distinguishing whether the operation at the position of a certain key on the virtual keyboard is an entering operation or a sliding operation. For example, the distinguishing of whether the operation at the position of a certain key on the virtual keyboard is an entering operation or a sliding operation can be performed based on whether the duration period of contact exceeds a predetermined duration threshold. In another embodiment, the first touch (for example, the odd times of touch) can be considered as a sliding operation and after the virtual keyboard is moved to a new position according to the method mentioned above, the second touch following (for example, the even times of touch) can be considered as an entering operation, and the key at the position of the contact point is the key that is entered.
As an improvement, the keys on a track slide by the touch point are sequentially enlarged and lasted for a predetermined period, after which they are restored to the original size so as to make the input of user convenient. The magnification factor of the keys can also be determined based on the contact area of the finger with the touch screen.
When D1/V1h=D2/V2h is satisfied, i.e. V2h=V1h*D2/D1, the virtual keyboard will move to the first corresponding boundary B2 when the touch point moves to the first boundary B1. That is, the B2 will be displayed at the first boundary B1 of the virtual keyboard displaying area. In the embodiment shown in
Therefore, based on the above embodiments, a technical solution of present application can be generalized, that is, that when the touch point moves to a first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area, the virtual keyboard will move to a first corresponding boundary corresponding to the first boundary if the moving speed of the virtual keyboard v2=v1*d2/d1 is satisfied with respect to any one of the components in the opposite directions (in horizontal or vertical direction). Where v1 is a corresponding direction component of the sliding speed of the touch point which is opposite to the direction component v2, d1 is a distance from the touch point to the first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area in the direction of the opposite direction components, and d2 is a distance from the first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area to the first corresponding boundary of the virtual keyboard in the direction of the opposite direction components.
With the above implementations, the whole area of the virtual keyboard can be moved into the virtual keyboard displaying area by sliding the touch point only once. At the same time, the moving direction of the touch point can approximately tend to the orientation in which the target key locates, thereby complying with the intuition of the users much more. Moreover, with the technical solution of present application that the speed of the virtual keyboard is different as the starting position of the finger's sliding differs, a new experience is provided to the user That is, when starting sliding with the fingers at different floating positions (different fingers floating at different positions on the touch screen), the moving speed of the virtual keyboard will be different. The user can slide with the finger (for example the thumb) farther from the target key when intending to move the virtual keyboard to a relatively near target key with relatively slow speed and can slide with the finger (for example, the little finger) close to the boundary of the keyboard displaying area when intending to move to the boundary of the virtual keyboard quickly.
a virtual keyboard generating module 701 configured to generate a virtual keyboard which is larger than a virtual keyboard displaying area in the touch screen;
a virtual keyboard moving module 702 configured to move the virtual keyboard in response to the sliding of a touch point, where at least one direction component of a moving direction of the virtual keyboard is opposite to a direction component of a sliding direction of the touch point. The opposite direction components can be horizontal direction components and/or vertical direction components.
In an improved embodiment, the virtual keyboard moving module 702 includes a module for controlling a relationship between a moving speed of the virtual keyboard and a sliding speed of the touch point so that when the touch point moves to a first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area, a first boundary of the virtual keyboard will move to correspond to the first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area. In another improved embodiment, the virtual keyboard moving module 702 includes a module for controlling a relationship between a moving speed of the virtual keyboard and a sliding speed of the touch point so that when the touch point slides to a first boundary point of the virtual keyboard displaying area, a first boundary point of the virtual keyboard will move to correspond to the first boundary point of the virtual keyboard displaying area.
In the above embodiments, the virtual keyboard moving module further includes a module for controlling a relationship between a moving speed of the virtual keyboard and a sliding speed of the touch point in accordance with a positional relationship among the virtual keyboard, the virtual keyboard displaying area and the touch point.
In the above embodiments, the module for controlling a relationship between a moving speed of the virtual keyboard and a sliding speed of the touch point in accordance with a positional relationship among the virtual keyboard, the virtual keyboard displaying area and the touch point can further includes a module for causing the opposite direction component of the moving speed of the virtual keyboard v2 to meet with the equation v2=v1*d2/d1, where v1 is a corresponding direction component of the sliding speed of the touch point which is opposite to direction component v2, d1 is a distance from the touch point to the first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area in the direction of the opposite direction components, and d2 is a distance from the first boundary of the virtual keyboard displaying area to the first corresponding boundary of the virtual keyboard in the direction of the opposite direction components.
In another implementation, the virtual keyboard moving module further includes a module for causing the moving speed of the virtual keyboard to be the same as or in proportion to the sliding speed of the touch point.
As an improvement, the virtual keyboard moving module can further includes a module for entering a content represented by a key at a corresponding position when an inputting operation on the virtual keyboard by the user is detected.
It can be appreciated that the flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which includes one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block diagrams may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
The descriptions of the various embodiments of the present invention have been presented for purposes of illustration, but are not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the described embodiments. The terminology used herein was chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiments, the practical application or technical improvement over technologies found in the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodiments disclosed herein.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 201210226928.2 | Jun 2012 | CN | national |
