METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR REDUCING SYSTEM OVERHEAD IN A MOTION DETECTOR FOR A TOUCH SCREEN DEVICE IN A MULTI-TASKING COMPUTER SYSTEM

摘要

BT9-91-046ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSUREA method and apparatus for efficientlydistinguishing between different types of input signalssimulated by a pointing device coupled to amulti-tasking computer system. The pointing device maybe a stylus, finger or other device that moves acrossthe surface of a touch screen or the like to generatepositional information. Depending on the response of adelay timer, the motion of the pointing device isrecognized by software application programs as inputinformation either from a mouse or from a gesture or ahandwriting input mode. If motion cessation across thescreen is detected with a predetermined time-delayperiod, the system accepts the input information in amouse-emulating mode. If motion is detected within thepredetermined time-delay period, the timer is reset.Thus, the system overhead associated with managing thetimer can be reduced because the timer is periodicallyreset and need not be reset after each movement of thepointing device as in the prior art. The periodicresetting can be based on intervals of n pointsgenerated by a moving pointing device, or n real-timeunits relative to a given point generated by thepointing device.