System and method of supporting a plurality of color maps in a display for a digital data processing system

• US 5,142,615 A
• Filed: 08/15/1989
• Issued: 08/25/1992
• Est. Priority Date: 08/15/1989
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Digital Equipment Corporation (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Matthews, William H., Levesque, Pamela L., Seiler, Larry D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Harkcom, Gary V.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Zimmerman, Mark K.
• Application Number:
  US07/394,498
• Time in Patent Office: 1,106 Days
• Field of Search: 364/518, 364/521, 340/703, 395/120, 395/131, 395/160
• US Class Current: 345/595
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/14 Display of multiple viewports

Abstract

A display arrangement in a digital data processing system having an interface for controlling the display of hierarchically arranged display objects, each having associated display criteria, in response to a hierarchically-arranged layer control arrangement. The interface comprises a display criteria testing portion for determining the display criteria for each object, and a layer hierarchy control portion for controlling the creation of said layer control arrangement in response to the display criteria determined by the display criteria testing portion.

Claims

1. In a display arrangement in a digital data processing system, an interface for controlling display of hierarchically-arranged display objects on a display and removal of said display objects from said display, at least one of said display objects having associated display criteria that are different from display criteria associated with another one of said display objects, said interface comprising:

A. means for determining the display criteria for each object, said display criteria including colormap information identifying a colormap to be used in displaying said object, each object identifying a relationship of its colormap with colormaps used for objects therebelow in the hierarchy, and

B. means for maintaining a hierarchically-arranged layer control arrangement in response to the display criteria determined by the means for determining and the colormap relationship identified by each object, said layer control arrangement causing said display arrangement to display each of said hierarchically-arranged display objects in accordance with its associated display criteria so that the display criteria of one of said display objects are not used to display another one of said display objects having different display criteria when said one display object is removed from the display.

2. An interface as defined in claim 1 further comprising means for maintaining a tree-structured hierarchy of nodes and identifying said objects by said nodes in said tree-structured hierarchy, said means for maintaining generating said layer control arrangement in a tree-structured hierarchy in response to the hierarchy of said objects as identified by said nodes.

3. An interface as defined in claim 2 in which each node in said object hierarchy includes pointers to other nodes to identify a position of said node in said object hierarchy, said means for maintaining generating said tree-structured hierarchy of said layer control arrangement in response to said pointers.