Patent Application
20080050017
The foregoing, as well as other objects, features, and advantages of this invention may be more completely understood by reference to the following detailed description when read together with the accompanying drawings in which:
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.
As shown, the portable device 102 includes a housing 112 which comprises a screen 114. The screen 114 may be connected to the housing 112 in such a way that the screen 114 is visible when the device 102 is in use. The screen 114 may be a touchscreen or touch sensitive screen that is operable to receive user input comprising handwritten text having a plurality of characters. The device 102 may also include a pen or stylus 116 or other similar apparatus used for providing input (e.g., handwriting input or drawing input) to the screen 114. In some embodiments, the device 102 may include a keypad 118 for entering input. For example, the device 102 may include a keypad for entering numerals (e.g., a telephone keypad). Alternatively, or in addition, the device 102 may have a keypad 118 for entering characters, e.g., a portion or all of a character set. However, in many embodiments, the screen 114 is the primary (or sole) mechanism for entering textual input, as described further below.
The processor 122 and memory 124 may be coupled together as well as to the screen 114. The memory 124 may store various operating system and/or application software for performing various applications such as one or more of calendaring/organizer/day planner, contact management, email, multimedia, or other applications. The memory is further operable to store data based on user input received to the screen 114, wherein the data corresponds to an image of handwritten text (or of images) entered by the user onto the screen 114.
The data-compression logic 126 is coupled to the memory and is operable to compress the data stored in the memory to produce compressed data. The data-compression logic may use any of various appropriate data-compression algorithms. In some embodiments, the data-compression logic 126 is implemented by data-compression software stored in the memory 124 and executed by the processor 122. In this embodiment, separate data-compression logic 126 is not required. Thus the term “data-compression logic” is intended to include dedicated or separate data-compression circuitry as well as data-compression software executed by the processor 122.
The package engine 128 may be coupled to the data-compression logic 126 and/or the memory 124. The package engine 128 may create packets for transmitting the data using various data packaging/transmission schemes or protocols, such as, for example, SMS, LMS, EMS, MMS, DTMF, FAX, Asynchronous Data Transmission, and/or TCP/IP, among others. In particular, the package engine 128 may generate SMS messages as it has become so ubiquitous and may be received by a wide variety of systems and devices. Additionally, the package engine 128 may generate concatenated SMS packets to transmit the image of the handwritten characters, as described below in more detail.
The communication circuitry 130 (e.g., wireless communication circuitry) is coupled to at least one of the memory 124, the data-compression logic 126, and/or the package engine 128. The wireless communication circuitry 130 is operable to transmit the compressed data to a remote device in a wireless fashion. The compressed data is useable to re-create the image of the handwritten text on the remote device.
The device 102 may be used with any of various character sets, including both Latin and non-Latin character sets. In at least some embodiments, the device 102 may be especially useful for non-Latin character sets. As used herein, the term “Latin” character sets has its ordinary meaning and for example refers to character sets which use the modern Latin alphabet, e.g., Romance (or Romanic) languages, Germanic languages (such as English, German, etc.), and/or other European languages. The term “non-Latin character sets” refers to character sets that are non-Latin, such as character sets used in China, India and Japan, among others. For example, the device 102 may be especially useful where the user inputs hand-written data in various Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and/or various other non-Latin languages. More specifically, the various languages may include Kanji, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Urdu, and/or Mandarin, among other languages. However, it should be noted that the languages described above are exemplary only and other languages are envisioned. Additionally, in some embodiments, as noted above, the device 102 may also be designed for all languages, e.g., including Latin character sets. In other words, the device 102 may be able to transmit characters without character-recognition in any language.
In at least some embodiments, the memory 124 does not store character recognition software for recognizing characters (text) entered by the user onto the screen 114. Rather, as discussed further below, characters or text entered by the user onto the screen 114 may be compressed and transmitted as images to one or more remote devices.
As shown, in 302, user input is received to the screen 114 of the wireless handheld device 102. The user input may be provided by pen or stylus 116 or other similar apparatus used for drawing images on a screen. The user input may comprise handwritten text having one or more characters, or a plurality of characters. As mentioned above, the handwritten character(s) may be of a non-Latin character set.
In 304, data is stored in the memory 124 of the wireless handheld device based on the user input. The stored data corresponds to an image of the handwritten text entered by the user in 302. For example, the data may be a bitmap representation of the character or image entered by the user in 302.
In 306, the data-compression logic 126 compresses the data to produce compressed data. The handwritten data may be compressed using standard data-compression algorithms including but not limited to FAX data compression algorithms, JPEG compression, and other types of image compression. The data compression may be lossless or lossy compression.
In 308, the compressed data may be packaged using package engine 128. The package engine 128 may create packets for transmitting the data using any of various protocols, such as SMS, MMS, TCP/IP, and/or other protocols, such as those listed above, among others. In one embodiment, the package engine 128 may create one or more SMS packets. For example, in one embodiment the package engine 128 may create a plurality of concatenated SMS packets, where the concatenated packets collectively contain the compressed data corresponding to the bitmap image of the characters entered by the user. In other words, the compressed data may be spread out over a plurality of packets, e.g., where the compressed data exceeds the size of an individual packet. For example, SMS packets may be restricted to 150 bytes and the compressed data may be several times larger than an individual SMS packet. In such cases, following the example above, the compressed data may be split into several packets which include information regarding their position in the compressed data, e.g., to facilitate aggregation of the packets into the full set of compressed data. Note that the descriptions above regarding SMS are exemplary only and that other methods or protocols may be used. Additionally, the concatenation described above may be applied to other protocols/transmission methods.
In 310, the compressed data is transmitted to a remote device in a wireless fashion. The compressed data is useable by the remote device to re-create the image of the handwritten text on the remote device. In one embodiment, transmission of the compressed data comprises generating packets based on the compressed data and transmitting the packets to the remote device in a wireless fashion. In 310 the compressed data may be transmitted as a plurality of concatenated SMS packets as mentioned above.
The data can be transmitted from the wireless device by methods which include but are not limited to the following: 1) Concatenated SMS (Short Message Services) messages. Short Message Services allow SMS transmission, where each SMS typically contains about 150 characters. The compressed image data can be transmitted by concatenating several SMS messages and reassembling these messages at the receiving device. Alternatively, the concatenated SMS can be received at a centralized server and re-formatted into any desired format for the target receiving device; 2) Wireless FAX; 3) MMS; and/or 4) Email with Image attachment, among others.
In at least some embodiments, the method for transmitting the handwritten text (the one or more characters) does not perform any character recognition on the handwritten text. As noted above, complex non-Latin character sets are cumbersome to enter through the keypad of mobile devices. Even simple drawings are difficult to input and transmit on present mobile devices. According to embodiments of the invention, a touchscreen 114 or other data entry device provides a much easier method to input handwritten data. The handwritten data includes but is not limited to language characters and image data. This data can be monochromatic or color depending on the capabilities of the device. This handwritten data does not require any type of processing for character recognition or image recognition.
As shown, in 402 image data of the handwritten text is received from a transmitting device. In some embodiments, the image data may be received via input 502 of reception device 500, shown in
Although the embodiments above have been described in considerable detail, other versions are possible. Numerous variations and modifications will become apparent to those skilled in the art once the above disclosure is fully appreciated. It is intended that the following claims be interpreted to embrace all such variations and modifications. Note the section headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to limit the description provided herein or the claims attached hereto.
