JP3221340B2 - Extended input device control method - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a control method of an extension device connected to an information processing apparatus, and more particularly, to a control method of an expansion apparatus connected to an information processing apparatus such as a small computer, for example, an engineering workstation. The present invention relates to a control dial control system which is an extended input device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In an information processing apparatus such as a small computer, for example, an engineering workstation or a personal computer, control of an extended input device connected via, for example, an RS-232C interface is performed by:
Usually, it is not implemented in the basic software on the computer side, and therefore, it is necessary to control each application executed in the information processing apparatus. Note that RS (re
232C is an interface standard (physical interface between the data terminal device DTE and the line termination device DCE) for exchanging data by connecting computers or a computer and a peripheral device, and is an Electronic Industries Association (EIA). This is a serial interface defined by.

In this conventional system, it is necessary for each application to control an extended input device, and accordingly, other standard input devices (keyboard, mouse, etc.) are required.
Therefore, there is a tendency that the process description of programming becomes complicated.

FIG. 4 shows an example of the configuration of a conventional system. Referring to FIG. 4, an engineering workstation (EWS), which is a client device, and an RS-23
Since the control for the control dial 40, which is an extended input device, connected via the 2C interface is not implemented in the X Window server 20, the application 10 executes the X Window System event processing. A control dial control unit 12 is provided in addition to the unit 11.

[0005] The X window system event processing unit 11 of the application 10 performs an X window event solicitation and an X window event reception process with respect to the X window server 20. Application 1
0, the control dial control program 12 executes enable control for the control dial 40, waits for an operation to be performed on the control dial 40, and when an operation occurs for the control dial 40, the control program 12 incorporated in the application program 10 And receive dial data. The X Window System is a multi-window display software developed by the Athena project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. LO
OK ”and other graphical user interfaces (GU
Implement I).

In the conventional system shown in FIG.
In the application 10, reception of data from the control dial 40 does not become an event (X window event).
It is necessary to branch and process the window event and the data received from the control dial 40, which makes the processing complicated and complicated.

[0007]

As described above, the conventional system has the following problems.

(1) The first problem is that the application depends on the connection state of the extended input device which should not originally depend on it. As an example, when the extension input device is not connected or the like, or when the extension input device is being operated, the processing of the application depends on a hardware failure (for example, insufficient power supply).

The reason is that a control program incorporated in an application is used to control enable / disable of an extended input device, read of received data, and the like.

In particular, when reading received data from an extended input device, the application receiving the data is directly affected by a hardware failure on the device side, so that the reliability of the application itself is impaired. .

(2) The second problem is that when the application is implemented on a plurality of platforms, the portability (portability) of the application itself is greatly impaired.

[0012] The reason is that by controlling the above-mentioned extended input device individually by an application, a platform-dependent portion is embedded in a program, and when shifting to another platform, This will require modifying the application for each platform.

As a result, the range of correction when shifting to another platform is increased, the number of man-hours is increased, and it is not preferable from the viewpoint of application productivity / maintenance.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, the present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and has as its object to provide an extension connected to, for example, an RS-232C interface provided in an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer or an engineering workstation. It is an object of the present invention to provide a control method for controlling an input device by separating a device control unit in an application to improve portability, productivity, and maintainability of the application.

[0015]

In order to achieve the above object, a control method according to the present invention uses an R system provided in an information processing apparatus.
In a control method of an extended input device connected via a predetermined interface such as S-232C, enable / disable control of the extended input device is performed, data from the extended input device is received, and data from the extended input device is received. A control means for distributing the received data to an application which is soliciting the data of the above is provided separately from the application.

According to the present invention, in a system in which a client device solicits an event from a server device and receives a message event from the server device, an extension device is connected to the client device via a predetermined interface. Performing enable / disable control of the expansion device, receiving data from the expansion device, and distributing the received data to an application on the client device soliciting data from the expansion device. A control means for controlling is provided independently of the application, and when an application on the client device requests data input from the extension device, the application performs an event solicitation to the server device, and Means for receiving data from the expansion device Here, the control means delivers the received data to the server device, the application of the client device receives the received data in a message event from the server apparatus, it is characterized.

Further, the control dial control program of the present invention provides a control for controlling an extended input device such as a control dial connected via a predetermined interface such as RS-232C provided in an information processing device such as a workstation. A program for enabling / disabling the extended input device;
Means for receiving data from the extended input device and delivering the received data to an application on the information processing device that is soliciting data from the extended input device, separately and independently from the application It is characterized by being arranged.

[0018]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a control program for controlling an extended input device connected to a data processing device via a predetermined interface such as RS-232C is provided independently of an application. The control program distributes the received data to the application that is seeking the received data from the extended input device.

More specifically, the control program (3 in FIG. 1)
0) has control means such as enable / disable for the extended input device, reads received data, and distributes the received data to an application which is soliciting data from the extended input device.

The application to which the data is delivered is:
At the same time, it is possible to deliver to only one of them, and the control program selects an application to be delivered by keeping an application for soliciting received data under its monitoring.

In the embodiment of the present invention, by controlling the extended input device by the control program,
In the application, the procedure for soliciting data reception from the extended input device and receiving data from the extended input device is the same as the processing description of other standard input devices such as a keyboard, so the modification range in the application can be minimized. Becomes

In the embodiment of the present invention, the control program and the application are independent even if some trouble occurs in the extended input device.
The application can continue to operate completely independently, except that no data received from the extended input device is delivered.

As described above, in the embodiment of the present invention, the procedure for soliciting / receiving data from the extended input device on the application side has the same processing description as that of the other standard input devices. Can be migrated to other platforms without compromising, ensuring application portability,
Improved maintainability can be expected.

Further, since data transmitted from the control program to the application is converted into data required by a data conversion unit in the control program, operability of the extended input device can be improved. That is, by converting the data received from the extension input device, for example, it is possible to delete minute data, change the delivery data unit, etc., and it is expected that operability on the application side can be improved.

[0025]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS In order to explain the embodiments of the present invention in more detail, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of one embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 1, in one embodiment of the present invention, a control program 30 monitors a displacement of a control dial 40 connected to an RS-232C interface, and sends an application 10 requesting data received from the control dial 40. , Data delivery is performed.

That is, the control program 30 executes enable control for the control dial 40,
Wait for an operation on the control dial 40 to occur.

When an operation occurs on the control dial 40, the control program 30 receives the dial data, and transmits the received data from the control dial 40 to the solicited application via the X Window server 20. To complete the data delivery.

The application 10 executes a process of capturing the delivered dial data in the same manner as other standard input devices.

The application 10 to which the control program 30 distributes the dial data, among the ones soliciting the dial data, has the window focus of the X Window System at that time. .

An application capable of soliciting dial data is an X Window server 20.
Is a prerequisite for the client process.

Next, the operation of one embodiment of the present invention will be described.
This will be described in detail with reference to FIG. FIG.
FIG. 3A is a diagram showing the configuration and processing of the control program 30 in FIG.

The control dial control unit 32 of the control program 30 transmits a control code to the control dial 40, enables the control dial 40, and monitors the operation on the control dial 40 thereafter.

At the same time, the control dial 4
Registration of the application 10 for soliciting input data from 0 is also performed as required at the time of request, and after registration, the application 10 is placed under monitoring of the control program 30.

After receiving data from the control dial 40 due to an artificial operation, the control program 30 performs data conversion. At the time of conversion, data is truncated and data is converted according to the conversion parameters set in the control program 30.

Finally, the application 10 to be delivered
Is determined, and data delivery is executed for the application. For data delivery, use the X Window System's client message event (Client Message Event) to send X data.
The data is delivered to the application 10 that is the final target via the window (X Window) server 20.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in further detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the operation of the system according to the embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, in the embodiment of the present invention, an application 10 executed on the engineering workstation 1, a control dial 40 of an extended input device, and a control program 30 for controlling the same are provided. .

The control program 30 operates independently of the application 10 and controls the extended input device 40.

Next, the operation of the embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to FIG.

First, referring to FIG. 3A, at the start of use of the application 10 (at the time of login), the control program 30 performs enable control on the control dial 40. Thereby, the control dial 40
Can be received, and thereafter, it is in a state of waiting for data reception.

At this point, the control program 30 places the application 10 under monitoring and selects an application to which the received data is to be delivered.

Subsequently, referring to FIG. 3B, when an artificial operation is performed on the control dial 40, the control program 30 receives data and performs internal data conversion. At the time of data conversion, after performing processing such as truncation of data equal to or less than the minimum value specified by the conversion parameter and weighting in data units, the data is delivered to the application 10. At this time, the data to be delivered is delivered as one set of the dial number and the displacement data. It should be noted that the application at the delivery destination dispatches dynamically, and simultaneously executes data delivery to only one application.

Finally, referring to FIG. 3C, when the application 10 ends (logs off), disable control is performed on the control dial 40, and no data is received thereafter.

[0045]

As described above, according to the present invention, the following effects can be obtained.

(1) The first effect of the present invention is that the portability of the application itself can be improved. This will enable migration to multiple platforms and increase application productivity /
Improved maintainability can be expected.

The reason is that in the present invention, the extended input device control unit is separated from the application to the control program side, so that the device dependent unit can be processed by the control program. That is,
This is because all the device-dependent units are black-boxed from the viewpoint of the application, and there is no need to perform any processing related to device control.

(2) A second effect of the present invention is that the input processing unit of the standard input device of the application and the input processing unit of the extended input device can be shared. The present invention unifies the data reception of the input processing unit, which has been conventionally exclusive, so that the synchronization of the data processing is improved, and it is possible to perform processing such as more efficient processing and advanced time-series data replacement. .

(3) A third effect of the present invention is that the independence of the application itself is enhanced.

As described above, in the conventional method, it is necessary to execute enable / disable of the extended input device, reading of received data, error processing, and the like by the application, and the application depends on the state of the device. The evil was occurring.

In the present invention, the application can operate independently by separating the device-dependent unit into a control program.

(4) A fourth effect of the present invention is that when the hardware specifications of the extended input device are the same, the above-described control program is implemented on other platforms (implimen).
t) to be able to do it.

Further, even when the hardware specifications are different, it can be implemented by a slight modification such as a change of a control code or a modification of a data receiving unit. Even in this case, the application requires no modification. No need to do.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining the configuration and operation of a control program according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the operation of one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a conventional method.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Engineering workstation 10 Application 11 X window system event processing part 20 X window (X Window) server 30 Control program 40 Control dial

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] 1. An RS-232C provided in an information processing apparatus.
In a control method of an extended input device connected via a predetermined interface, the extended input device is enabled / disabled, data is received from the extended input device, and data from the extended input device is transmitted. A control method for an extended input device, wherein a control means for delivering the received data to an application solicited is provided separately from the application. 2. A system in which a client device solicits an event from a server device and receives a message event from the server device, wherein an extension device is connected to the client device via a predetermined interface. Control means for performing enable / disable control of the communication device, receiving data from the expansion device, and controlling delivery of the received data to an application on the client device soliciting data from the expansion device. Independently of the application, and when the application on the client device requests data input from the extension device, the application performs an event solicitation to the server device, and the control unit performs the extension. When receiving data from the device,
The control method of an extended device, wherein the control means distributes the received data to the server device, and the application of the client device receives the received data in a message event from the server device. 3. The control method according to claim 2, wherein said control means further comprises a conversion means for converting data received from said expansion device into a desired form. 4. The control method according to claim 2, wherein said extension device comprises a control dial.