The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 04, 2000
Filed:
Mar. 27, 1998
Ramana B Rao, San Francisco, CA (US);
Stuart K Card, Los Alto Hills, CA (US);
Xerox Corporation, Stamford, CT (US);
Abstract
A method is disclosed for operating a processor-controlled system to produce a table image including graphical display objects in each of the cell regions indirectly representing the data values in an underlying n-dimensional (nD) information data array. Request signal data is received from a input signal source to present the table image in the display area of a display device connected to the processor-controlled system. In response to the request signal data, for each cell in the table image, the source data value and data type of a source data item in the nD data array is obtained, and a cell presentation type is selected using the data type. A graphical display object having at least one display feature representative of the data type of the data value is produced from the cell presentation type, and image definition data defining table image and the graphical display object for each cell is provided to a system display device for display. The underlying data in the nD data array is thus graphically and indirectly represented in the table image, facilitating the visual inspection and identification of patterns and trends in the data. In addition, for very large conventional table images that do not fit in a standard sized display area, indirect representation of the data occupies substantially less space in the display area, permitting very large tables to be entirely represented graphically in one image. A sophisticated user interface permits a system user to perform table manipulation functions, such as reordering rows and column, sorting rows or columns, and deriving new rows or column, in order to further reveal data trends and patterns in the graphical representations.