Patent · US Expired

Image generator using a graphical flow diagram with automatic generation of output windows

US5490246A · kind A · utility

169Cited by
15References
34Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateAug 23, 1994
Grant dateFeb 6, 1996
Priority date
Expiry dateAug 23, 2014

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
  • CPC primaryY10S715/967
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A graphics editor generates an Appearance Construction Graph (ACG) which represents an image formation process as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). The ACG image transformation operations (transforms), and outputs (viewable images--sinks) which can be displayed, for example, in a window of a display screen, and manipulated to construct and edit complex images. Accordingly, the displayed ACG is a user interface that permits complex graphics images to be constructed in a straightforward manner, and thus easily understood and manipulated (edited) by an operator. The nodes in the ACG are selectively interconnected by links (edges). The complex image represented by the ACG can be constructed and displayed in a viewer window on the display screen by "running" the ACG. The graphics editor "runs" the ACG by performing operations on the image fragments as defined by the interconnected nodes of the ACG. When the ACG is "run", each output (or viewer) node displays its image in a viewer window which is automatically created.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.