International Business Machines Corporation

Patrick D Motola

Silous F Clements

Shirley F Swift

Richard P Dachowski

Richard Ormond Simpson

Robert Amezcua

The disclosure relates to an improvement in data processing systems involving a host processor and a remote printer which prints alphanumeric characters from data communicated from the host to the printer. The improvement provides the provision of an intermediate processor having an interactive display terminal. There are means in this intermediate processor for controlling the setup of repetitive format parameters of documents containing the alphanumeric characters printed by the printer. In addition, there are means on the display terminal for displaying in the form of a menu the various document parameters available to the setup means in the intermediate processor. Thus, an operator at the display terminal may select appropriate parameters for setting up the repetitive format of the document.

Data processor printer setup through a remote display terminal

An improvement is provided to a text processor having an interactive display terminal. The improvement provides for a combination of said text processor with a data processor and means for conducting data processing sessions utilizing the data processor between text processing sessions carried out by said text processor. During such data processing sessions, the interactive display terminal of said text processor emulates a data processing terminal. The emulated display terminal is connected to the data processor whereby the emulated terminal functions as a display terminal for the data processor. Further, means are provided which are operational during the data processing session to define the outer dimensions of a limited area on the display terminal to correspond to the dimensions of the data processing display terminal screen being emulated. In accordance with a more particular aspect of the disclosure, means are provided in the text processing system for storing data representative of the outlines of a plurality of different data processing display screen to be emulated together with means for selecting one of the plurality of stored outlines to be displayed on the emulated screen.

Emulation of data processing display terminals of variable screen size

A display word processor (11) has the capability of emulating a data processing terminal for a host data processor (10) in an information processing system. With such a capability, the display word processor may be switched between data processing and word or text processing sessions. In this information processing system, the interactive display (17) is operable during data processing sessions to display a word processing message when a word processing task is being carried out as a background task during the data processing session. The word processing message may be displayed on a message line (7) which may be shared with a data processing message. Alternatively, if the interactive display terminal (17') is large enough, the word processing message line (9) may be displayed in an area dedicated to the word processing message.

Interactive display terminal with alternating data processing and text

The disclosure relates to an improvement to an information processing system for conducting data processing operations wherein the processing relates to the value of the information and conducting text processing operations wherein the processing affects only the format of information. The improvement provides the combination of means for initiating a data processing session in said system, means for switching to a text processing session before the completion of the data processing session, means for storing the status of the non-completed data processing session during the text processing session, and means for switching back from the text processing session to the non-completed data processing session.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Patrick D Motola