JPH045732A - Information processing device and information processing method - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Field of Application j] The present invention relates to processing means for specific information provided by user selection in a software program running on a computer.

[Prior Art] When a so-called application program used in a personal computer is developed by adding a new information processing function to a single program, it is developed as an independent program that includes that function. I needed to. For example, when an English-Japanese translation function is added to an application program that supports document creation and viewing, such as a word processor, the English-Japanese translation function has been developed to operate only on that word processor.

[Problem to be solved by the invention] However, in the conventional information processing method as described above, only the information processing means designed from the beginning can be used.
Furthermore, there is a problem that the program creation efficiency is low when a new information processing means is added.

Furthermore, with the spread of operating systems capable of parallel processing such as multitasking, personal computers in recent years have become connected to large computers, other computers, and large-capacity storage devices, and have become the constituent elements of so-called networks, storing vast amounts of information. It became possible to use it.

Furthermore, on operating systems that enable parallel processing, information is exchanged between programs using a function called interprocess communication. Therefore, we focused on the fact that by using the interprocess communication function, it is possible to provide a more general-purpose information processing means.

The present invention uses the above-mentioned inter-process communication to provide an information processing means that has a means for processing information using the aforementioned enormous amount of information and has high production efficiency. The purpose is to provide a method that allows arbitrary selection of means.

[Means for Solving the Problem] A first parallel information processing means according to the present invention is a processing system that enables parallel processing of a plurality of programs, and one or more application programs selected by a user; Processing of a group of information that can be supplied by the application program, in which processing groups that are processed simultaneously in real time, at least apparently, communicate with each other according to a predetermined communication procedure, and are selected by the user. The present invention is characterized in that it is configured to selectively enable the acquisition and processing of information groups managed by the second application program during the operation of the first application program.

In the second parallel information processing means according to the present invention, the first application program determines in advance what program should be executed as a second application program for managing the handling of information selected by the user. It is characterized in that the user selects one attribute from a plurality of added attributes to specify it.

[Operation] Hereinafter, an independent processing unit activated by an operating system capable of parallel processing will be referred to as a process. A process is a process that uses one or more promos (specific information processing means (for example, in a voice processing process, input information is interpreted as a code string representing voice and electrically converted to generate voice) for certain information. processing means).

The first parallel information processing means of the present invention includes a process (hereinafter referred to as the first process) having means for selecting specific information from a group of information to be handled, and information regarding the information specified by the process. Build a system in which processes that perform processing according to their own information processing means (hereinafter referred to as second process, third process, fourth process, etc.) have means for transmitting and receiving information between each other. do. As a result, a worker using an application program (for example, a word processor) as the first process selects certain information (such as a character string) from the document being processed, and uses this as input information in the second, third, and fourth processes. (dictionaries, photos, music search, etc.), and information obtained through various processing means such as information processing and search can be provided to the user using means such as images and sounds. It is something to do.

Further, in the second parallel information processing means, between the first process and a plurality of processes such as the second, third, and fourth processes that are different in information processing means, the second, third, and fourth processes are connected to each other. By intervening a process that has means for allowing the user to select which process to communicate with, it is possible to provide the user with multiple types of information regarding the source information.

[Example] Hereinafter, the present invention will be described as an example of a word processor process activated in an operating system capable of parallel processing and an English-Japanese dictionary process that communicates with each other using inter-process communication to perform a Japanese translation search for an English word. A detailed description will be given based on an example of the system.

FIG. 1 shows the state of the screen according to the first embodiment of the search method according to the present invention. In Figure 1, 1 is a state in which a document is being edited using a word processor, 2 is a state in which a character string is selected, 3 is a state in which the search results are displayed, and 4 is a state in which the search results are selected for use in document editing. shows.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram according to the above embodiment.

In FIG. 2, numeral 5 represents a word processor process which is an application or software used in document creation, which is assumed to be the final view of the user, and 6 constitutes a part of the document editing means in the word processor process 5. This is a means of editing strings. The character string editing means here refers to functions such as moving, deleting, and copying character strings that have been conventionally used, and includes means for selecting a specific character string in order to use the optical function. There is.

Further, the character string editing means uses a so-called shared memory 7, which is a storage area that has a function of sharing and exchanging data between a plurality of processes in an operating system capable of parallel processing. Note that the shared memory referred to here is an area that can be used by any process by using a format (character string, drawing, audio, etc.) prepared in advance by the operating system and using a predetermined procedure. Hereinafter, operations on the shared memory will be performed according to the above-described predetermined procedure. Reference numeral 8 denotes an English-Japanese dictionary process which is a process for searching based on the character string specified by the character string editing means 6 and translating English words into Japanese. 9 indicates a queue used for inter-process communication in an operating system capable of parallel processing, a string queue using a storage area called a queue. Reference numeral 11 indicates a dictionary search means for searching for corresponding Japanese translation data based on the character string read from the character string queue, and reference numeral 12 indicates an English-Japanese dictionary file referred to by the dictionary search means. Reference numeral 10 denotes a means for starting a search result display process, which will be described later. 13
is a search result display process that is activated by the activation means 10 in order to allow the user to refer to the Japanese translation data provided by the dictionary search means 11. Note that this process is a child process that is a process startup means in an operating system capable of parallel processing, and is asynchronous (
It is started as something that runs in parallel). 14 is a display data queue in which search results are written in the format shown in FIG. Numeral 15 is a character string editing means for editing the Japanese translation data given in the search result display process 13 using the shared memory 7, similar to the character string editing means 6, and for utilizing it in the word processor 5 through the shared memory 7. The arrow 16 indicates that the string is specified by the string editing means 6 and is written into the string queue 9, and the arrow 17 indicates that the English-Japanese dictionary file is searched. An arrow 18 indicates that the display process 13 is started by the display process starting means 10. Arrow 19 represents writing the search results into the display data queue. Arrows 20 indicate reading and writing from and to the shared memory 7 by the character string editing means 6 and 15.

Next, the contents of the processing operation of the character string editing means in the word processor 5 designed according to the specifications of an operating system capable of parallel processing will be explained with reference to the flowchart of FIG. Note that functions of other word processors that are not directly related to the present invention will be omitted. Here, we will explain how to specify deletion, copying, and replacement of strings among the string editing methods.

Only the search specifications will be described. Now, rwor
In state 2, where the English word dJ is specified by the character string selection means, a subsequent operation branches (1). When the deletion operation is performed, the string is selected, so (2)
, copy rwo r dJ to the shared memory 7 (3), then delete the character string [wordJ (4), if the character string is being selected when the copy operation is performed (5), (3)
), and similarly copies it to the shared memory 7 (6). When the replacement operation is performed, if the string is being selected, delete the string rwordJ (-8) in the same way as in (7) and (4).
The character string given by the deletion or copying operation from the shared memory 7 is inserted in place of the character string deleted in (8) (9). If a character string is not being selected here, the insertion operation is performed at the position where the user is inputting. When a search is operated and a character string is being selected (10), the specified character string "wordJ" is written in the character string queue (
11).

Next, the operation of the English-Japanese dictionary process 8 will be explained according to the flowchart shown in FIG. First, from string queue 9,
The character string [wordJ
Read out (12). It is determined whether the character string has been read (13), and if the character string has not been read, the process returns to step (12). Note that the processes in (12) and (13) are processed by wait instructions provided by the operating system, and if the string does not exist in the string queue 9, the process enters a wait state and stops its operation. Become. If reading has been performed, the English-Japanese dictionary file 12 is searched (14).

Next, check whether the display process 13 is running.
), if not activated, the display process 13 is activated (16). Furthermore, the search results are written to the display data queue of the display process in the format shown in FIG. 5 (17). According to this example, data such as [English-Japanese dictionary 8, words, words, . . . , lyrics] will be written.

Next, the operation contents of the display process 13 are shown in FIGS. 6 and 7.
This will be explained using the flowchart shown in the figure.

The display data is read from the display data queue written in step (17) (18). Once the display data is read, a window thread, which will be described in detail later, is activated. A window is an explicit division indicating that something operates separately on the screen (1 and 3 shown in FIG. 1 are windows, respectively). Further, a thread is a processing unit that operates in parallel within a process. The window thread opens a window for each display data and performs operations corresponding to each window. In this example, a window as shown in 3 should be opened by this window thread. The operation of the window thread will be explained according to FIG. First, open the display window shown in 3 (21) and wait for an operation on the window (22)
, (23) If the window operation is "close" (24
) If a thread corresponding to another window is not running, terminate the optical display process (26); if there is a thread running, close the window corresponding to this thread and terminate the thread. Also, if it is a string editing operation (2
7), operated by the same character string editing means as in Fig. 3 (
28). Other window operations are performed according to their respective processing procedures (29). As described above, windows corresponding to a plurality of words can be displayed by performing parallel processing for each window.

Next, a second embodiment of the search method according to the present invention will be explained. FIG. 8 is a block diagram of this embodiment. As process A, a word processor process, which is an application program, is used, and as process B, the English-Japanese dictionary process used in the first embodiment is used. Further, as process C, a photographic process is used, and as process D, a music process is used. These processes C and D have basically the same structure as the English-Japanese dictionary process B, and each has an information providing means in place of the display process 13. Further, the process selection process shown in process E has a plurality of process selection means according to the second aspect of the present invention.

FIG. 9 shows a process having an information processing means that is currently activated by selecting the character string 21 "The Beatles" and sending it as a message to the information processing means process, that is, an English-Japanese dictionary process B1 a photographic process C1 a music process D. A process selection window 22 is displayed for selection. The operation of the processing selection process E is explained using the flowchart in FIG. 10.
2) Obtain the character string "Beatles" from the word processor process A by the same means as in (13), and open the selection window 21 (30). Enter the selection (31
), close the selection window (32). Next, add the string "The Beatles" to the string queue of the selected processing process.
(33).

FIG. 11 shows a state in which "The Beatles" 21 is selected and image data 23 which is the result of selecting and processing a photographic process is displayed. Also, Fig. 12 shows rYe st er
dayJ is selected, the English-Japanese dictionary process is selected, the result 25 of the English-Japanese translation search is displayed, and the music process is selected, and the song "Yesterday" is being played by this process.

[Effects of the Invention] The present invention has the effect of having so-called object-oriented operability in which objects are selected and manipulated.

Further, according to the present invention, when developing software, addition of additional functions can be easily designed, and general-purpose development is possible.

Furthermore, according to the present invention, additional processing processes such as processes B and C1D can be developed to operate on large-scale computers existing on a network, which increases the utility value of personal computers in such networks. will further improve.

In recent years, it has become extremely difficult to create programs for inputting and outputting information to and from computers, such as window operations and file input/output, for each type of computer. When a programmer or general user who is not an expert in programming for a particular model creates a program that performs a certain process, he or she cannot do so unless he or she has knowledge about these input/output parts rather than the process itself. In such a situation, according to the present invention, it is possible to use an existing program for the input/output portion, so a program can be easily created even without knowledge regarding input/output. In order to improve the efficiency and ease of creation as described above, by making the present invention a part of the operating system, it becomes possible to construct a system with more versatility.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the display state in the first embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram, FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the character string editing means, FIG. 4 is a flowchart of the English-Japanese dictionary process, and FIG. Figure 6 is a flowchart of the display process; Figure 7 is a flowchart of the window thread in the display process;
FIG. 8 is a block diagram of the second embodiment of the present invention;
The figure shows the display state of the process selection window, Figure 10 is a flowchart of the process selection process, Figure 11 shows the image display state by the photo process, and Figure 12 shows the English-Japanese translation search result display state by the English-Japanese dictionary process. And, it is an explanatory view showing a state in which music is played by a music process. 1...Word processor process screen 2...Character string selection state 3...English-Japanese translation search result display window 4...Character string selection state 5...Word processor process 6...Character string editing means 7... Shared memory 8... English-Japanese dictionary process 9... Character string queue 10... Display process starting means 11... English-Japanese dictionary searching means 12... English-Japanese dictionary file 13... Display process 14 ...Display data queue 15...Character string editing means 16...Writing to the string queue 17...English-Japanese dictionary file search 18...Display process startup 19...Writing to the display data queue 20 ... Editing strings using shared memory 21 ... Character string selection state 22 ... Processing selection window 23 ... Image display window 24 ... Character string selection state 25 ... English-Japanese translation search results Above the display window Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 9 Figure 10

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) In a processing system that enables parallel processing of multiple programs, processing of one or more application programs selected by the user and a group of information that can be supplied by the application programs, and in real time, at least Processing groups that appear to be processed simultaneously communicate with each other according to a predetermined communication procedure, and the second application program manages the operation of the first application program selected by the user. Parallel information processing means configured to selectively enable acquisition and processing of information groups. (2) The first application program determines which program should be executed as the second application program that manages the handling of the information selected by the user, and selects one of the multiple attributes added to the information in advance. A parallel information processing means characterized in that one attribute is specified by a user selecting it.