The invention relates to a method of and an arrangement for controlling the cursor movement on a computer display by means of a pointing device such as a mouse. The mouse driver, which is installed in the computer, converts the manually caused movement of the ball of the mouse to a corresponding scaled movement of the cursor on the display. In accordance with the invention, the mouse driver has a first mode, in which the cursor is moved on the display only as long as the mouse ball is in movement and only a distance that is directly proportional to its travel, and a second mode which is activated when a predetermined one of the control buttons of the mouse is activated and in which the movement of the cursor that is caused by a short movement of the mouse ball is continued in the same direction after the movement of the ball has stopped until said predetermined one of the control buttons is released, the cursor reaches the edge of the display or a new direction of movement is initiated by a movement of the mouse ball.

An icon/window which a user is selecting is precisely predicted to improve the operability of a GUI. This invention displays a GUI picture, including an icon/window and a pointer of a mouse or the like in a display screen of a computer, predicts an icon which the user is selecting based on the moving speed and the direction of movement of the pointer, and displays a tool tip or the like which indicate the function of the icon. This invention also predicts an operation which the user is effecting on the window based on the moving speed of the pointer and a distance between the pointer and a window, changes the display of the pointer from a conventional arrow head during the movement to a bidirectional arrow head appearing in changing the size of the window, for example, depending on the prediction, and further assists an operation to change the size of the window in response to clicking by the user.

A cursor moving system includes a designated-area management unit for processing for display on a screen of areas to be designated by a cursor. A cursor position management unit processes movement of a cursor indication position on the screen according to a cursor moving operation by a pointing device. A cursor position determination unit searches for a designated area to which the cursor belongs now, and another designated area existing in a travelling direction of the cursor, based on information on a current position of the cursor and information on a travelling direction of the cursor received from the cursor position management unit in response to the pointing device. It also determines whether or not the nearest designated area existing in a travelling direction is separated from the current designated area. If separated, then it informs the cursor position management unit, when the cursor arrives at the boundary of the current designated area, of position information on a cursor display position, which resides within the determined nearest other designated area and is nearest from the designated area in which the cursor resides now, as the current position information of the cursor at that time. The cursor position management unit recognizes the position information communicated from the cursor position determination unit as information of the current position, and thereafter sequentially modifies such a newly recognized current position information based on the travelling direction and amount information from the pointing device, so that the cursor is sequentially moved.

A system determining an intended cursor location on the computer display screen and automatically repositions the cursor at the intended location. If the user selects a command that alters the contents of the display, such as opening a new window, the system analyzes the new screen display to determine whether there are user selectable options associated with the new screen display. The system determines if one of the user selectable options is a default option and automatically positions the cursor at the default option. If the new screen display is an application program, the system attempts to locate a user selectable option and repositions the cursor at the user selectable option. When the new window is closed, the system returns the cursor to the position it was at before the new window was opened. The system also predicts an intended location for a screen display that has not been altered, and automatically positions the cursor at the intended location. This feature can be selectively enabled to prevent the inadvertent repositioning of the cursor in the display.

A method and system for implicitly resolving pointing ambiguities in human-computer interaction by implicitly analyzing user movements of a pointer toward a user targeted object located in an ambiguous multiple object domain and predicting the user targeted object, using different categories of heuristic (statically and/or dynamically learned) measures, such as (i) implicit user pointing gesture measures, (ii) application context, and (iii) number of computer suggestions of each predicted user targeted object. Featured are user pointing gesture measures of (1) speed-accuracy tradeoff, referred to as total movement time (TMT), and, amount of fine tuning (AFT) or tail-length (TL), and, (2) exact pointer position. A particular application context heuristic measure used is referred to as containment hierarchy. The invention is widely applicable to resolving a variety of different types of pointing ambiguities such as composite object types of pointing ambiguities, involving different types of pointing devices, and which are widely applicable to essentially any type of software and/or hardware methodology involving using a pointer, such as in computer aided design (CAD), object based graphical editing, and text editing.