Bookmarks for a digital oscillographic instrument

• US 20030169257A1
• Filed: 03/13/2003
• Published: 09/11/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Danny J. Oldfield, Jay A. Alexander
• Original Assignee: Danny J. Oldfield, Jay A. Alexander
• Inventors: Oldfield, Danny J., Alexander, Jay A.
• Granted Patent: US 6,958,754 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/440
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 1/025 concerning dedicated user interfaces, e.g. GUI, or dedicated keyboards G01R31/31912 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 13/02 for displaying measured electric variables in digital form
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/206 Drawing of charts or graphs

Abstract

A digital oscilloscope assists in the process of identifying, cataloging and restoring views of interest within a stored trace acquisition by implementing the notion of bookmarks. In response to a command to establish a bookmark, the scope takes note of selected display control parameters, such as the location of the view in the overall acquired trace and horizontal time per division, and stores that as a named bookmark. The scope accepts from the operator a comment associated with each bookmark. Another command lists defined bookmarks and causes the scope to re-institute the view and parameters associated with a specified bookmark. There is a mechanism for editing the descriptors or parameters that are defined by a bookmark.

Claims

1. A method of displaying a portion of a waveform having digital values stored in a memory as an ordered sequence of values, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) selecting a waveform portion of interest by specifying the value of at least one parameter that affects which digital values are used to create the display;

(b) associating a label with the at least one parameter;

(c) storing in a memory the association of the label with the at least one parameter;

(d) subsequent to steps (a)-(c), choosing a label that has been associated in step (b) and whose association was stored in step (c); and

(e) subsequent to step (d), displaying the waveform portion selected in step (a) and associated with the label chosen in step (b) by invoking the value of the at least one parameter associated with the label chosen in step (d).

2. A method as in claim 1 wherein steps (a)-(c) are repeated a plurality of times for a corresponding plurality of waveform portions, and wherein step (d) is performed subsequent to the additional sep of displaying a list of labels stored by step (c).

3. A method as in claim 1 wherein step (b) includes associating a comment text with the label, step (c) includes storing the comment text, and step (d) further includes the step of displaying the comment text for a label that can be chosen.

4. A method as in claim 1 wherein the digital values are digitized values for an electronic signal and the memory they are stored in is the memory of an oscilloscope.

5. A method as in claim 4 wherein the at least one parameter includes a delay relative to a selected reference location in the complete waveform.

6. A method as in claim 4 wherein the at least one parameter includes a horizontal time per division.

7. A method as in claim 1 further comprising the step of displaying a symbolic representation of an entire waveform and including at locations thereon labeled annunciators having the same labels as can be chosen in step (d), the locations thereon corresponding to the relative positions of the waveform portions.

8. A method as in claim 7 further comprising the step of implementing a GUI and step (d) of claim 1 comprises clicking a mouse whose pointer has been positioned proximate a labeled annunciator.

9. A method as in claim 8 wherein the GUI displays a comment text associated with the labeled annunciator prior to the mouse click.

10. A waveform display apparatus comprising:

a memory containing ordered digital values representing the sequential values of a work signal of interest;

a user interface;

a display coupled to the user interface and to the memory, the display creating in response to viewing commands entered via the user interface visible images of different selected subsets of the ordered digital values; and

a bookmark controller coupled to the user interface and to the display, the bookmark controller responsive to a command, entered via the user interface, to create a bookmark by recording in a bookmark table collections of selected parameters describing the viewing commands respectively associated with the visible images, and the bookmark controller, in response to a command entered via the user interface to visit a bookmark, causing the display to invoke the parameters of a selected collection and produce the visible image of the associated bookmark on the display.

11. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein the user interface further comprises a GUI implemented by program code executed by a microprocessor coupled to a program memory.

12. Apparatus as in claim 11 wherein the user interface includes a symbol whose extent in one dimension represents the entirety of the sequential values in the memory, each bookmark created by the bookmark controller are represented by a corresponding icon, and the icon for a bookmark is displayed proximate the symbol in a location corresponding to where a visible image for that bookmark would be located in the sequential values.

13. Apparatus as in claim 12 wherein the symbol is annotated to denote the corresponding extent of the corresponding bookmark.

14. Apparatus is in claim 11 wherein bookmarks are represented by associated icons displayed proximate locations along a waveform trace created by the display, which locations correspond to the positions therein of the visible images created by visiting those bookmarks.

15. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein the selected parameters include a delay value.

16. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein the selected parameters include a comment.

17. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein bookmarks are represented by icons of selectable shape and the selected parameters include an indication of an icon'"'"'s selected shape.

18. Apparatus as in claim 12 further comprising a mouse and wherein the bookmark controller causes a visit to a bookmark in response to a mouse click over an icon corresponding to that bookmark.

19. Apparatus as in claim 14 further comprising a mouse and wherein the bookmark controller causes a visit to a bookmark in response to a mouse click over an icon corresponding to that bookmark.

20. Apparatus as in claim 12 further comprising a mouse and wherein the bookmark controller causes the location of a bookmark to change in response to dragging its associated icon with the mouse.

21. Apparatus as in claim 14 further comprising a mouse and wherein the bookmark controller causes the location of a bookmark to change in response to dragging its associated icon with the mouse.

22. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein a command to visit a bookmark invokes a time per horizontal division originally associated with the visible image of that bookmark.

23. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein a command to visit a bookmark leaves an existing time per horizontal division in effect.

24. Apparatus as in claim 10 wherein the waveform display apparatus comprises a digital oscilloscope.