Bell Telephone Laboratories

James R Fleming

Gerald S Soloway

William A Frezza

A technique for processing pictorial information to enable its display on a desired display device independent of the latter's resolution characteristics includes a unique encoding procedure and a corresponding decoding and display procedure. Attributes of each element of a picture or image (such as its color) are specified by a group of N bits. The bits are assembled to form M-bit active portions of a series of bytes. M and N need not be integrally related. Ones of the words also define the size of the elements with respect to a unit display space (the horizontal and vertical dimensions of each element can be different), the order in which the elements are arranged in the picture (e.g., left to right or vice versa) and the value of N. The bytes are decoded and the picture displayed by locating each pel in the unit screen coordinate space, mapping each location to a corresponding storage location in an array formed by a frame memory, writing the attributes of each pel in one or more of the storage locations, and sequentially reading the contents of the memory and applying the output to the display device.

Pictorial information processing technique

A method and apparatus, comprising a video data bus (8), a plurality of video memory modules (VM1-VMN), and bus arbitration circuits (BAC1-BACN) associated with each video memory module, are disclosed for compiling digital image information for display. A data processor (1) addresses the plurality of video memory modules over a processor data bus (2), the data processor for assigning a priority value to picture element data stored in the video memory modules. Upon command of the data processor, a frame (5 to 300) of picture element data is serially compiled on the video data bus (8). Data contention between video memory modules for access to the video data bus is controlled by the bus arbitration circuits, the picture element data bidding with the highest priority value gaining access. In one embodiment, the priority value represents the depth of a point of a solid object for display and/or the relative depth of picture element data comprising the object for display. The data processor may change the priority value associated with picture element data for display as well as the coordinates of data location in the display. Accordingly, textual characters having the highest priority and solid objects having a lesser priority may appear to move in front of one another on a background having the lowest priority value without interference in a sequence of frames of information for display.

Method and apparatus for compiling three-dimensional digital image

A graphic display terminal is arranged to receive from a sending source drawing instructions containing the description of a display character. The terminal, under control independent from the sending source, interprets each received drawing instruction into a particular picture description bit pattern tailored to the characteristics of the terminal display device. The interpreted bits are then stored in a graphic repertory for subsequent retrievel under control of code received from the sending source. In this manner dynamically redefinable character sets may be created and used without regard to a particular terminal implementation.

Terminal generation of dynamically redefinable character sets

The present terminal independent color memory for a digital image display system provides for inter-system compatability, color display systems generally having varying modes of access to color memories, varying color memory capacities, and features such as blinking implemented in varying ways. The data processor (1) of the present system may access color memory (6a) of video controller (6) or color values stored in permanent memory (9) or random access memory (10), responsive to the same command language. The present data processor (1) is also capable of entering color data values comprising color hues and gray levels into color memory for use in a terminal independent manner. Multiple process chained blinking from a particular color to a particular color is also provided by the present processor, the several processes in time-delayed relationship to one another.

Terminal independent color memory for a digital image display system

A method and apparatus for compactly describing an image made up of concatenated lines or filled polygons. The drawing of lines for the image begins at an initial drawing point determined in a coordinate system defined by a unit screen and proceeds from point to point with the relative coordinates of each successive point specified as a positive or negative step in the horizontal and/or the vertical direction from the previous point. The step size parameters which separately define both the amount of a change in the horizontal direction and the amount of a change in the vertical direction are initially specified in fractional parts of the unit screen and remain constant in magnitude throughout the operation. The image is reflected about the horizontal axis and about the vertical axis simply by changing the sign of the step sizes. Turning on and off the drawing process is also facilitated.

Growing community of inventors

Indianapolis, IN, United States of America

James R Fleming