CN101228497A - Method and device for inputting text - Google Patents

Abstract

A text entry method for an electronic device, comprising: changing from a first text entry method to a second text entry method in response to a trigger in a sequence of entries made by a user, wherein the second text entry method displays a text corresponding to the entry The text of the sequence, where the input sequence includes the text corresponding to the trigger. A text input method for use on an electronic device, comprising: searching for a word in a database having a first state and a second alternative state based on an input sequence made by a user; changing state from the first state to the second state; and displaying at least one word resulting from the search that contains text corresponding to the trigger.

Description

Method and device for inputting text

technical field

Embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and apparatus for inputting text.

definition

An "alphanumeric string" is a string of consecutive alphanumeric characters beginning with a space.

A "word" is a string of alphanumeric characters possibly followed by a space.

An "alphanumeric character" is any letter, number, or character usable in an email address, such as _, @, etc.

Background technique

One problem with using handheld mobile electronic devices is the process of entering text. For example, in common mobile phones using a keypad of ITU-T characters, each key in the keypad is associated with several letters. A single key could for example be associated with the letters a, b and c. Pressing the key once produces the letter a, pressing the key twice within a short threshold time period produces the letter b, and pressing the key three times within a short threshold time period produces the letter c. Press the key twice slightly slower, that is, the interval between pressing the key twice is greater than a time threshold, then two a's are generated. Using a keypad in this manner can be very slow; therefore, different methods of entering text using a keypad of 12 key characters have been developed. One such method is to use predictive/disambiguation text software, such as "T9" from Tejet Communications. The functionality of the "T9" is described in US Patent 5,818,437 (Terjet Communications Corporation), entitled "Reduced Keyboard Disambiguating Computer," the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

For implementation reasons, standard databases for predictive text entry are limited and do not include all the words a user might want to use. This makes the use of predictive text input cumbersome, especially when using appropriate nouns that provide a unique set of words that are not contained in standard databases.

Contents of the invention

In accordance with one embodiment of the claimed invention, there is provided a text entry method for an electronic device comprising: changing from a first text entry method to a second text entry method in response to a trigger in a sequence of entries made by a user , wherein the second text input method displays text corresponding to the input sequence, wherein the input sequence includes text corresponding to the trigger.

In accordance with another embodiment of the claimed invention there is provided software comprising computer program instructions for automatically changing from a first text entry method to a second text entry method in response to a trigger in a sequence of entries made by a user, wherein A second text entry method displays text corresponding to the input sequence, wherein the input sequence includes text corresponding to the trigger.

In accordance with another embodiment of the claimed invention, there is provided an electronic device for user input of text, comprising: a user input device; a display; a processor; a memory storing personal data, including a database of words, wherein the At least a portion of the words are taken from the stored personal data, and a set of processor instructions causing the processor to: change a first text entry method to a second text entry method in response to a trigger in a sequence of entries made by a user via the input device Two text input methods, wherein the second text input method displays text corresponding to the input sequence, wherein the input sequence includes text corresponding to the trigger.

In accordance with another embodiment of the claimed invention, there is provided a text entry method for use on an electronic device, comprising: searching a database having a first state and a second alternate state for a word based on a sequence of entries made by a user ; changing the state of the database from the first state to the second state in response to a trigger in the input sequence; and displaying at least one word resulting from the search that contains text corresponding to the trigger.

In accordance with another embodiment of the claimed invention, there is provided disambiguation software comprising computer program instructions for searching a database for words based on a sequence of inputs made by a user; triggering to alter the database; searching the altered database for words based on an input sequence made by the user; and displaying at least one word resulting from the search that contains text corresponding to the trigger.

In accordance with another embodiment of the claimed invention, there is provided an electronic device for user input of text, comprising: a user input device; a display; a processor; a memory storing personal data, including a database of words, wherein the at least a portion of the words are taken from the stored personal data, and a set of processor instructions causing the processor to: alter the database in response to a predetermined trigger in a sequence of inputs made by the user via the input device based on the user via the input device A sequence of inputs made by a user input device searches the database for words; and at least one word resulting from the search containing text corresponding to the trigger is displayed via the display.

One aspect of the present invention may provide a text input method used in an electronic device, comprising: searching for a word in a database based on an input sequence made by a user; and displaying at least one word obtained by the search, wherein at least one of the words in the database is Some of the words are taken from personal data stored on the device. Words taken from personal data stored in the device may be given high priority. The priority of a word may control the likelihood of that word from a search and/or the order in which words from a search are displayed.

This aspect of the invention may provide an electronic text entry method comprising: expanding a database using personal data stored in the device; searching for words in the expanded database based on input sequences made by the user; and displaying At least one word from the search.

This aspect of the invention may provide disambiguation software comprising computer program instructions for expanding a database with words taken from personal data stored in the device; searching the database for words based on a sequence of entries made by the user; and At least one word resulting from the search is displayed.

This aspect of the invention may provide a data structure for use by disambiguation software located in a device that associates each of a plurality of key identifier sequences with the set of words whose spelling corresponds to the respective key identifier sequence associated with at least some of the words from personal data stored on the device.

This aspect of the invention may provide an electronic device for user input of text comprising: a user input device; display; processor; memory storing personal data, including a database of words, wherein at least a portion of the words in the database are taken from From the stored personal data, and a set of processor instructions causing the processor to: search the database for a word based on a sequence of entries made by the user via the user input device; and display via the display the results resulting from the search at least one word.

Another aspect of the present invention may provide a text entry method for use in an electronic device, the method comprising: changing from using a first database for text entry to using a first database for text entry in response to a trigger in an entry sequence made by a user. A second database for text input. The text input method may display text corresponding to the input sequence, wherein the input sequence includes text corresponding to the trigger. The second database may contain personal data stored on the electronic device for purposes other than text entry.

Description of drawings

For a better understanding of the invention and to understand how it might be practiced, reference is made by way of example only to the accompanying drawings, which illustrate exemplary embodiments of the invention. In the attached picture:

FIG. 1 schematically shows a handheld mobile electronic device 10 for user text input;

Figure 2 illustrates the automatic switching between databases in response to a trigger in a series of keystrokes by the user; and

Figure 3 illustrates automatically turning off text entry predictions in response to one trigger in a series of keystrokes by the user.

Detailed ways

Fig. 1 schematically shows a handheld mobile electronic device 10 for user text entry. Examples of handheld mobile electronic devices include mobile cellular telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

The illustrated electronic device 10 includes a user input device 20; a display 30; a processor 40; a first memory 50 containing a database 52, a second memory 60 containing a set 62 of computer program instructions for the processor 40, and a A third memory 70 for personal data 72 . Although the first memory 40, the second memory 60 and the third memory 70 are shown and described as separate memories, it should be understood that they may also be separate parts of the same memory chip, and the separation between these parts may be be physical or logical.

Processor 40 is connected to receive input from user input device 20 and provide output to display 30 . The processor 40 is connected to read from and write to the memory 50 , 60 , 70 .

User input device 20 is any suitable user input device. It can be an ITU-T keypad. Each key of the keypad is associated with a number and/or alphanumeric characters. A sequence of keystrokes made by the user would thus correspond to a sequence of alphanumeric characters.

The first memory 50 stores a database 52 . The database 52 stores a plurality of key identifier sequences and associates each key identifier sequence with the set of words whose spelling corresponds to the key identifier sequence. The term "key identifier sequence" corresponds to the term used in US 5,818,437. The first memory 50 may also contain a priority level associated with each word.

The first memory 50 also stores a disambiguation computer program instruction that enables the processor 40 to disambiguate the generated sequence of key identifiers to form a word. When so enabled, whenever a character is added to the word string of alphanumeric characters input by the user via the input device 20, the processor 40 generates an identifier sequence and uses the generated key identifier sequence to query database52. Processor 40 receives replies from database 52 that all or some of the words in the set of words whose spellings correspond to the generated sequence of key identifiers. Processor 40 displays on display 30 one or more of the received words. Processor 40 may display on display 30 the word corresponding to the sequence of key identifiers with the highest priority level, or processor 40 may display a word corresponding to the sequence of key identifiers in order of priority level (highest first). word list.

The third memory 70 contains personal data 72 . The personal data 72 includes contact information such as name, address, email address, phone number, and the like. This data is typically stored by the user over a period of time and thus usually contains words selected by the user for storage. This personal data is used to augment database 52 as described below.

A set of computer program instructions 62 controls the operation of the processor 40 and the handheld mobile device 10, as described below. The computer program instructions may be embodied in a physical entity, such as a memory, a data carrier such as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, or a computer program product. The computer program instructions may be transmitted to device 10 via an electromagnetic carrier signal.

Database 52 has a "standard" state and an "extended" state. In the standard state the database contains the standard contents of the database and may also contain words which have been explicitly added to the database by the user. This state of the database can be optimized for normal mundane applications. In this state, none of the words in the database 52 are taken from the personal data 72 stored on the device.

In the expanded state, the database 52 contains the contents of this database in the standard state and, in addition, a number of words taken from the personal data 72 stored in the third memory 70 . This state of the database 52 can be optimized to enter correct nouns such as names and addresses. This optimization can be done, for example, by assigning a high priority level to words taken from personal data. Different words taken from personal data 72 may have different priority levels.

As shown in FIG. 2, in response to a trigger in a sequence of keystrokes made 200 by a user, the database 52 automatically switches 202 from the standard state to the extended state. Thus, the sequence of key identifiers generated before the trigger key is provided to the "standard" first database 204 and the sequence of key identifiers generated after the trigger key is provided to the "extended" second database 206 . The trigger is a key press or a series of key presses that satisfy the first state.

The trigger may be, for example, an input corresponding to a character having a predetermined form, such as an initial letter of a word capitalized when the word is not at the beginning of a sentence. The trigger is thus a keystroke that probably corresponds to the correct initial of a noun, since it starts a word and is not followed by a period (ie, "."). In this example, the trigger is a character of a predetermined form that is incorporated into the text input made by the user and is also incorporated into the output of the first or second database, which is the same as used as a command but not included in One or more dedicated, random, nonsensical control keys in text output are reversed, that is, the trigger appears as a character in input, and also appears in the same form as a character in output.

In one embodiment, for a capital letter to operate as a trigger, it must not be the first letter in a chain of capital letters. In this embodiment, as shown in FIG. 3, if a series of keys entered satisfies 302 the second state (e.g., two consecutive capital letters) when the disambiguation function is turned on 300, then the disambiguation function for that word is turned off 304 and does not generate an identifier sequence each time a character is added to the alphanumeric string, or, alternatively, uses a database in the standard state.

After the word that caused the trigger to fail is recognized by the user as part of the input text, the state of the database 52 may automatically return to the standard state. The database 52 is thus dynamically expanded only when needed. It is not necessary for the user to add contact names to, for example, a standard database, and the selective expansion of the database in response to a trigger does not interfere with the normal use of predictive text entry.

As an example of using the described embodiments, in a device where the Finnish or English dictionary is set to open, the user attempts to enter the Chinese name "Yiliang" by typing 9-4-5-4-2-6-4. In this example, a device using only the database 52 in a standard state might prompt "Wihani" and not understand the word "Yiliang" at all. However, according to the embodiment described above, when the user capitalizes the first letter, the state of the database 52 changes to the expanded state. In this way, the first item prompted by the device will be "Yiliang".

In some languages (such as English), there are other nouns that are capitalized in written text. Such nouns are, for example, names of languages, dates, places and months. In one embodiment of the present invention, these nouns may also be automatically included in the database 52 when in the expanded state. In some languages, capitalized pronouns may also be automatically included as words in the database 52 when in the expanded state.

This extended database can be updated at the same time the user starts writing text, or can be initially built and updated each time the user adds a new entry to the dictionary or changes personal data.

Describing the database 52 as having two states is intended to describe both an implementation using two separate databases - one standard and one extended - and an implementation using a single database, but in a personal Searches for words in the data are somehow restricted to the standard state.

Although embodiments of the present invention have been described in the preceding paragraphs with reference to various examples, it should be understood that changes to the examples given can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

While the foregoing description has been endeavored to focus on those features of the invention believed to be of particular importance, it should be understood that applicants claim that any patentable features referred to above and/or shown in the accompanying drawings A feature or combination of features is protected whether or not it has been specifically emphasized.

Claims (28)

1. A text input method for electronic equipment, comprising: changing from a first text input method to a second text input method in response to a trigger in a sequence of inputs made by a user, wherein the second text input method displays text corresponding to the sequence of inputs, wherein the sequence of inputs includes a the corresponding text. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first method includes searching for words in a first database and displaying at least one word obtained from the search based on an input sequence made by a user, and the second method includes Based on a sequence of inputs made by the user, a second database is searched for words and at least one word resulting from the search is displayed. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the first database includes a first plurality of words and the second database includes a second plurality of different words. 4. A method as claimed in claim 2 or 3, wherein at least a part of the second plurality of words is taken from personal data stored on the device. 5. A method as claimed in claim 2, 3 or 4, wherein none of the words in the first database are taken from personal data stored on the device. 6. A method as claimed in any one of claims 2 to 5, further comprising augmenting the first database with personal data stored on the device not intended for text entry to form the second database. 7. The method according to any one of claims 2 to 6, wherein the words in the second database have at least a high priority or a low priority, and the words in the second database are taken from personal data stored on the device Words are given high priority. 8. A method as claimed in any one of claims 4 to 7, wherein the personal data comprises contact information. 9. A method as claimed in claims 4 to 8, wherein the personal data comprises a name. 10. A method as claimed in any one of claims 2 to 9, wherein the first database has a different word priority than the second database. 11. A method as claimed in claim 7 or 10, wherein the priority of a word controls the likelihood that the word will be obtained from a search. 12. A method as claimed in claim 7 or 10, wherein the priority of the words controls the display order of the words resulting from the search. 13. The method of any one of claims 2 to 12, wherein the change from the first text entry method to the second text entry method is temporary. 14. The method of any one of claims 2 to 13, wherein the first database and the second database are associated with each of a plurality of identifier sequences and a set of words whose spelling corresponds to the respective key identifier sequence and, search words in this database include: generating a sequence of identifiers based on the input sequence; and The generated identifier sequence is provided as input to the database, which returns at least one word from the set of words whose spelling corresponds to the generated key identifier sequence. 15. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 14, wherein the trigger is an input corresponding to one or more characters having a predetermined form. 16. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 15, wherein the trigger is an input corresponding to a character having a predetermined form but not at the beginning of a sentence. 17. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 16, wherein the trigger is an input corresponding to a character of a predetermined form at the beginning of a word. 18. A method as claimed in any one of claims 15 to 17, wherein the characters of the predetermined form are random capital letters. 19. The method of claim 18, wherein the character having the predetermined form is a capital letter followed by a non-capital letter. 20. The method of claim 1, wherein the first method includes searching for words in a first database and displaying at least one word obtained from the search based on an input sequence made by a user, and the second method includes This sequence of inputs made by the user is displayed. 21. The method of claim 20, wherein the trigger is an input sequence by the user including an acronym. 22. A method as claimed in claim 20 or 21, wherein the trigger is an input sequence of capital letters at the beginning of a word entered by the user. 23. A method as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the input sequence corresponds to an alphanumeric character string. 24. Software comprising computer program instructions for automatically changing from a first text entry method to a second text entry method in response to a trigger in a sequence of entries made by a user, wherein the second text entry method is displayed corresponding to The text of the input sequence, wherein the input sequence includes text corresponding to the trigger. 25. An electronic device for user input of text comprising: user input devices; monitor; processor; memory storing personal data, including a database of words, wherein at least some of the words in the database are taken from the stored personal data, and processor instructions causing the processor to: changing from a first text input method to a second text input method in response to a trigger in a sequence of inputs made by a user via the input device, wherein the second text input method displays text corresponding to the sequence of inputs, wherein the sequence of inputs Include the text corresponding to the trigger. 26. A text input method used on an electronic device, comprising: searching for a word in a database having a first state and a second alternate state based on an input sequence made by a user; changing the state of the database from the first state to the second state in response to a trigger in the input sequence; and At least one word resulting from the search containing text corresponding to the trigger is displayed. 27. Disambiguation software comprising computer program instructions for: search for words in a database based on an input sequence made by the user; altering the database in response to a predetermined trigger in a sequence of inputs made by a user; searching for words in the altered database based on an input sequence made by the user; and At least one word resulting from the search containing text corresponding to the trigger is displayed. 28. An electronic device for user input of text comprising: user input devices; monitor; processor; memory storing personal data, including a database of words, wherein at least some of the words in the database are taken from the stored personal data, and a set of processor instructions causing the processor to: changing the database in response to a predetermined trigger in a sequence of inputs made by the user via the input device, searching for a word in the database based on the sequence of inputs made by the user via the user input device; and displaying via the display at least A word resulting from the search that contains the text corresponding to the trigger.

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