Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Jitsu Iwaki

Nobuhiro Inoue

Toshihiko Nannichi

Toshiro Nose

Kazuhiro Kisaichi

Katsunari Sasaki

John Riley

Texts including required message are entered with a small number of keys such as those of a cellular telephone. In this case, a conversion table is unnecessary and the number of key operations is reduced. The number of input characters or input character strings composed by sequentially selecting one from a plurality of alphabets distributed to sequentially entered keys is relevant to the number of operation keys (N) raised to the number of distributed character (M) power (&equals;NM) including meaningless characters or character strings and, with respect to these, character conversion is executed by referring to a dictionary means, through the operation of the conversion/next candidate key. The dictionary means stores numeric strings and words of meaningful characters or character strings among the said characters and character strings.

Character input device and method

The present invention concerns a coordinate input device for entering coordinate values by superposing on a display device (LCD or CRT). The device is comprised of a coordinate input section wherein a first conductive sheet for x-coordinate detection provided with electrodes on a pair of end edges and a second conductive sheet for y-coordinate detection provided with electrodes on a pair of end edges are superposed through a spacer so that respective electrodes intersect orthogonally. In a low power consumption mode of operation; a predetermined voltage is applied between one of the electrodes of the first conductive sheet and one of electrodes of the second conductive sheet for detecting a variation of the voltage. When the voltage varies the device switches, a predetermined voltage is applied between one electrode x1 of the first conductive sheet and one electrode y2 of the second conductive sheet. When the voltage does not vary, no current flows between the pair of electrodes x1, x2 (or y1, y2) of either of the first conductive sheet or the second conductive sheet, therefore the low power consumption is maintained.

Coordinate input device

Texts including required message are entered with a small number of keys such as those of a cellular telephone. In this case, a conversion table is unnecessary and the number of key operations is reduced. The number of input characters or input character strings composed by sequentially selecting one from a plurality of alphabets distributed to sequentially entered keys is relevant to the number of operation keys (N) raised to the number of distributed character (M) power (=NM) including meaningless characters or character strings and, with respect to these, character conversion is executed by referring to a dictionary means, through the operation of the conversion next candidate key. The dictionary means stores numeric strings and words of meaningful characters or character strings among the said characters and character strings.

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Kunitachi, Japan

Jitsu Iwaki