A method of drawing figures for a multi-window system in which a plurality of window regions are set on a display screen, and in which a window which is partly overlapped on other windows and is partly concealed is controlled by being divided into a plurality of display or non-display subregions, and the displayed content is changed by designating the window. If a dot constituting the figure is generated from a dot generator, coordinate values of the dot are compared with position data of the de...

The window handler circuit is inserted between an image memory (7) having as many pages as there are possible windows and a screen controller capable of reading from any of the pages of the image memory. The handler comprises two auxiliary memories (3, 4) each of which stores bit maps in which a logic one bit indicates that the corresponding window includes an image element in the same line or the same column as the case may be as the screen position currently being scanned. A battery (5) of AND...

Window border generating circuitry in a bitmapped graphics workstation. The workstation includes a host processor, a raster scanned graphics display device and means for controlling the display of data in one or more windows on the screen of the display device. An individual bitmap is provided for each window. At any given time, display data is retrieved from one of the bitmaps associated with a window presently being refreshed. Circuitry detects when the screen raster is located at a position a...

In a multi-window system for setting a plurality of windows on the screen for independent display in each window, a novel display control method is disclosed in which a visible region of a given window is determined from the positions and overlapped relations between the windows on the display screen, and display data is selectively applied to the visible region. The visible region is checked for crossing between an object window and another window making up a reference window on the screen, and...

In this graphics display system with arbitrary overlapping viewports, a display graphics image is assembled by acquiring from a source of image graphics data line portions of said image defined by a set of sequential control word sequences contained in a control table. Advantageously, each control word sequence includes at least one first control word defining a line portion of single viewport, and a continuation field. At least some of the control word sequences also include at least one contin...

A view system is provided for each application program in a computer system in order to display application-generated information on a display. To increase graphic speed, the view system transfers graphic information directly into the screen buffer into a screen buffer area defined by a visible area definition. Since the view system creates a view defined by the visible area definition, the view can be made non-rectilinear by providing a suitable definition. The visible area definition may defin...

A security enhancement for laptop computers comprises the use of a moving visible area and an obscured area for the laptop screen. The visible area may be defined by the user to comprise a single word, a single line, or a plurality of lines of data. The obscured area may comprise all remaining space on the laptop screen not defined as the visible area, A user may specify that the obscured area be completely hidden from view (i.e.., such as by blackening or whiting out the area) or difficult to v...

As accessbar arbiter is provided that resolves conflicting requests from screen objects for locations on a video display. In addition, the accessbar arbiter governs the behavior of screen objects so as to prevent one screen object from negatively affecting another screen object. An example of these screen objects includes accessbars. An accessbar is a consistently visible user interface element that provides a user with access to computer programs. In a computer system, accessbars are typically ...

A method and apparatus for managing the display of multiple windows in a computer user interface in an efficient manner. Two separate window areas are allocated in a display area. A first area is an overlapped window area where windows may overlap each other. A second area is a tiled window area where windows may not overlap each other. User interface controls are provided to allow the user to designate a displayed window as tiled or overlapped and the designated window is moved from area to are...

A processing system 100 is disclosed which includes a system master 101, a system bus 102 coupled to the master, and a plurality of bus interface circuits 106 coupled to bus 102. A first one of the bus interfaces 106 includes a mapping signal input coupled to the master and a mapping signal output, the first bus interface 106 operable to latch-in at least one first selected address bit presented by the master on the system bus in response to a mapping enable signal received at the mapping signal...