EP1113413A2 - Poste de travail avec antemémoire pour police de caractères - Google Patents

Poste de travail avec antemémoire pour police de caractères Download PDF

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Publication number
EP1113413A2
EP1113413A2 EP00311648A EP00311648A EP1113413A2 EP 1113413 A2 EP1113413 A2 EP 1113413A2 EP 00311648 A EP00311648 A EP 00311648A EP 00311648 A EP00311648 A EP 00311648A EP 1113413 A2 EP1113413 A2 EP 1113413A2
Authority
EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
font
bitmaps
cache
stored
bitmap
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Withdrawn
Application number
EP00311648A
Other languages
German (de)
English (en)
Other versions
EP1113413A3 (fr
Inventor
Matthew W. Turek
William Murray Stoval (Iii)
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
GE Medical Systems Global Technology Co LLC
Original Assignee
GE Medical Systems Global Technology Co LLC
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by GE Medical Systems Global Technology Co LLC filed Critical GE Medical Systems Global Technology Co LLC
Publication of EP1113413A2 publication Critical patent/EP1113413A2/fr
Publication of EP1113413A3 publication Critical patent/EP1113413A3/fr
Withdrawn legal-status Critical Current

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Classifications

    • G—PHYSICS
    • G09—EDUCATION; CRYPTOGRAPHY; DISPLAY; ADVERTISING; SEALS
    • G09G—ARRANGEMENTS OR CIRCUITS FOR CONTROL OF INDICATING DEVICES USING STATIC MEANS TO PRESENT VARIABLE INFORMATION
    • G09G5/00—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators
    • G09G5/36—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators characterised by the display of a graphic pattern, e.g. using an all-points-addressable [APA] memory
    • G09G5/363—Graphics controllers
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G09—EDUCATION; CRYPTOGRAPHY; DISPLAY; ADVERTISING; SEALS
    • G09G—ARRANGEMENTS OR CIRCUITS FOR CONTROL OF INDICATING DEVICES USING STATIC MEANS TO PRESENT VARIABLE INFORMATION
    • G09G2360/00—Aspects of the architecture of display systems
    • G09G2360/12—Frame memory handling
    • G09G2360/121—Frame memory handling using a cache memory
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G09—EDUCATION; CRYPTOGRAPHY; DISPLAY; ADVERTISING; SEALS
    • G09G—ARRANGEMENTS OR CIRCUITS FOR CONTROL OF INDICATING DEVICES USING STATIC MEANS TO PRESENT VARIABLE INFORMATION
    • G09G5/00—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators
    • G09G5/22—Control arrangements or circuits for visual indicators common to cathode-ray tube indicators and other visual indicators characterised by the display of characters or indicia using display control signals derived from coded signals representing the characters or indicia, e.g. with a character-code memory
    • G09G5/24—Generation of individual character patterns

Definitions

  • the field of the invention is display systems, and particularly the display of text characters in workstations and the like.
  • the present invention is a method and means for rendering text on a display using a plurality of different fonts. Bitmaps for each font being displayed are stored in a font cache, and as text rendering commands are generated to display a character of a particular font, the corresponding bitmap stored in the font cache is used. When a new font is requested by a text rendering command, the corresponding set of bitmaps for that font are generated and stored in the font cache. When the font cache is full, the least often used font is removed from the font cache to make room for new fonts.
  • the workstation includes a mini-tower 10 which houses a processor and associated circuitry, memory, and peripheral interface circuits.
  • One of the peripheral devices is a commercially available CRT monitor 12 which connects to a graphics circuit housed in the mini-tower 10, and another peripheral device is a keyboard and mouse 14 that connects to a PCI-based controller in the mini-tower 10.
  • An operator may input data through the keyboard and control the position of a cursor on the monitor display 12 using the mouse.
  • the workstation 10 may operate as a stand alone graphic display system, or it may be connected to receive digitised image data directly from a medical imaging system such as an x-ray system, x-ray CT system, MRI system, PET scanner system or nuclear medicine system.
  • the workstation 10 typically contains application programs which perform image processing functions, such as, filtering the medical images, transforming the size and orientation of the medical images and adding textual information to the medical images.
  • the workstation includes a processor 20 which executes instructions stored in a memory 22.
  • the processor 20 is a commercially available device sold by Sun Microsystems, Inc. under the trademark UltraSPARC-IIi. It incorporates on-chip memory and I/O control to facilitate system integration. It is a superscalar processor implementing the SPARC-V9 64-bit RISC architecture and executing the instruction set sold commercially under the trademark "VIS". It also includes an integral PCI bus driver which provides a direct interface with a 32-bit PCI bus 24. It also includes integral memory management circuitry for handling all external memory 22.
  • the PCI bus 24 is an industry standard bus that transfers 32-bits of data at 33MHz between the processor 20 and a number of peripheral controller cards. These include a PCI EIDE controller 26 which provides a high-speed transfer of data to and from a CD ROM drive 28 and a disc drive 30. A keyboard and Ethernet controller 32 supports data transfer with a number of peripheral devices, including input from the keyboard and mouse 14 and communication with Ethernet ports on medical imaging equipment. And finally, a graphics controller 34 couples the PCI bus 24 to the CRT monitor 12 through a standard VGA connection 36.
  • the graphics controller 34 is interfaced with the PCI bus 24 by a PCI interface 38.
  • the graphics controller 34 provides 8-bit or 24-bit color high performance graphics functions to the user.
  • the graphics functions defined under the standard identified with the Silicon Graphics, Inc. trademark "OpenGL” are supported by the graphics controller 34.
  • the graphics controller 34 includes a frame buffer controller 40 that operates in response to instructions stored in a PROM memory 42 to perform requested graphic functions. These functions include providing the latter half of 3D graphics rendering pipeline functions, providing acceleration for windowing functions and complex graphics applications. It also performs pixel processing to accelerate functionality such as transparency and antialiasing. It also provides rendering acceleration for dot, line, text, triangles, and fill patterns, as well as windowing functions, including fill, scroll, text, two and three dimensional vectors, and polygons.
  • Image data which is processed by the frame buffer controller 40 is stored in a frame buffer memory 44.
  • the frame buffer 44 is coupled to the controller 40 by a 36-bit data bus 46, and image data is written to and read from the frame buffer 44 under the direction of control signals and address signals on a control bus 48.
  • the frame buffer memory 44 is also connected to a RAMDAC circuit 50 which converts the digital pixel values stored in the frame buffer memory 44 into analog signals and sends them through standard VGA connection 36 to the monitor 12.
  • the RAMDAC 50 supports the simultaneous display of 8-bit and 24-bit color images and provides video timing for a number of different image resolutions.
  • medical images may be input to the workstation in a number of ways.
  • the workstation is connected directly to the medical imaging equipment through an Ethernet link.
  • the image data is downloaded to the workstation through the Ethernet controller 32 and stored in memory 22.
  • a number of image processing functions may be performed on the image data in the memory 22.
  • a two-dimensional image may then be displayed on the monitor 12 by transferring a two-dimensional array of pixel data to the graphics controller 34 which automatically produces the corresponding analog signals for the monitor 12.
  • the array of image pixel data to be displayed is stored in the frame buffer memory 44.
  • the frame buffer controller 40 operates in concert with the RAMDAC 50 to produce a corresponding display on monitor 12 as indicated at process block 100.
  • the operator may create textual information or labels which are to be added to the displayed image as indicated at process block 102.
  • This textual information may be, for example, information concerning the medical imaging system and the prescription used to acquire the image data, or it may be information about the patient or the anatomy depicted in the image.
  • a text rendering command When an application running on the workstation requires that text be rendered on the display 12, it produces a text rendering command.
  • This command indicates the particular text font to be used and the particular character within that font. For example, the particular character might be identified by an 8-bit ASCII code.
  • a program indicated in Fig. 5 is performed to render the text and manage the data structures stored in memory as shown in Fig. 4.
  • a font cache object is created as indicated at process block 202 to initialize the required data structures.
  • these data structures include a font cache 204 which is a block of memory reserved to store the bitmap data needed to render the characters.
  • the size of this font cache 204 is configurable and can be changed at any time to optimize the workstation performance for the particular tasks being performed. For example, if large amounts of textual information in many different fonts is being displayed on the monitor 12, a larger font cache 204 can be configured by entering appropriate data through keyboard 14.
  • a number of data structures are initialised that are required to manage the font cache 204.
  • a use counter 206 which retains a number indicative of the number of times a particular font stored in the font cache 204 has been used. This count is initialised to zero when a font is first requested by a TEXT render command.
  • Another data structure is a time requested number 208 which indicates the last time a particular font stored in font cache 204 was used. It is updated with the value of a real-time clock (not shown) maintained by the workstation each time its associated font stored in font cache 204 is used.
  • Text render commands are examined at decision block 210 to determine if the bitmaps for the requested font is stored in the font cache 204. If so, the use counter 206 for the requested font is incremented and its associated time requested data 208 is updated with the current time as indicated at process block 212. The bitmap for the requested character is then read from the font cache 204 as indicated at process block 214 and rendered on the display as indicated at process block 216.
  • bitmap data for the newly requested font must be produced as indicated at process block 220.
  • the creation of bitmaps is relatively time consuming process in which the font is loaded into memory from disc drive 30, memory space is allocated for the font bitmaps and each font character is rasterized into a corresponding bitmap. The result is a set of bitmaps along with a list of pointers to their locations in the block of memory in which they are stored.
  • the newly created font bitmaps are stored in the font cache 204.
  • the present contents of the font cache 204 is checked to determine if there is room for the new bitmaps. If so, the newly created font bitmaps are added to the font cache 204 as indicated at process block 224.
  • the use counters 206 for each font currently stored in the font cache 204 are checked to determine the least often used font. As indicated at decision block 226, if there is a single least used font, that font is replaced with the newly created font bitmaps as indicated at process block 228.
  • the present invention thus enables a more efficient use of available memory and a reduction in processing needed to generate font bitmaps.
  • the common font cache 204 may be shared by all applications producing text rendering commands, thus requiring only one copy of the font bitmaps being used. Font bitmaps are saved in the font cache 204 as long as memory space therein is available, making them available for later use by the same applications that prompted their generation or other applications. This reduces the instances in which font bitmaps must be generated with a consequent reduction in processing time.

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  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Computer Graphics (AREA)
  • Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Computer Hardware Design (AREA)
  • General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
  • Controls And Circuits For Display Device (AREA)
  • Record Information Processing For Printing (AREA)
EP00311648A 1999-12-28 2000-12-22 Poste de travail avec antemémoire pour police de caractères Withdrawn EP1113413A3 (fr)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US473401 1983-03-15
US47340199A 1999-12-28 1999-12-28

Publications (2)

Publication Number Publication Date
EP1113413A2 true EP1113413A2 (fr) 2001-07-04
EP1113413A3 EP1113413A3 (fr) 2003-03-26

Family

ID=23879377

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP00311648A Withdrawn EP1113413A3 (fr) 1999-12-28 2000-12-22 Poste de travail avec antemémoire pour police de caractères

Country Status (3)

Country Link
EP (1) EP1113413A3 (fr)
JP (1) JP2001249657A (fr)
IL (1) IL140459A0 (fr)

Cited By (2)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP1443403A3 (fr) * 2003-01-28 2007-10-10 Microsoft Corporation Méthode et système pour mise-à-jour atomique d' anté-mémoire centrale
CN112581279A (zh) * 2020-12-25 2021-03-30 深圳市富途网络科技有限公司 桌面金融软件的下单方法及相关产品

Families Citing this family (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
JP7827510B2 (ja) * 2022-03-24 2026-03-10 株式会社Ｓｃｒｅｅｎホールディングス 描画データ生成装置、描画システムおよび描画データ生成方法

Family Cites Families (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
JPH06289838A (ja) * 1993-04-05 1994-10-18 Fuji Xerox Co Ltd フォントキャッシュ制御装置およびその適用方法
EP0747825B1 (fr) * 1995-06-06 2001-09-19 Hewlett-Packard Company, A Delaware Corporation Système et procédé d'affectation de données de SDRAM
US5883640A (en) * 1996-08-15 1999-03-16 Hsieh; Paul Computing apparatus and operating method using string caching to improve graphics performance

Cited By (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP1443403A3 (fr) * 2003-01-28 2007-10-10 Microsoft Corporation Méthode et système pour mise-à-jour atomique d' anté-mémoire centrale
KR100906262B1 (ko) * 2003-01-28 2009-07-06 마이크로소프트 코포레이션 원자적으로 갱신되는 중앙 캐시 메모리를 위한 방법 및시스템
EP1993039A3 (fr) * 2003-01-28 2013-04-03 Microsoft Corporation Procédé et système pour mémoire cache centrale mise à jour automatiquement
CN112581279A (zh) * 2020-12-25 2021-03-30 深圳市富途网络科技有限公司 桌面金融软件的下单方法及相关产品
CN112581279B (zh) * 2020-12-25 2024-03-19 深圳市富途网络科技有限公司 桌面金融软件的下单方法及相关产品

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
JP2001249657A (ja) 2001-09-14
EP1113413A3 (fr) 2003-03-26
IL140459A0 (en) 2002-02-10

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