E-book Graphic Object Page Width Adjustment
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Solution Overview
Problem
E-book readers with small screens and limited interactive capabilities provide a suboptimal user experience for reading and manipulating e-books, as they lack advanced touch screen functionality and intuitive navigation features compared to physical books.
Innovation Solution
An interactive input system utilizing a touch panel with frustrated total internal reflection technology, allowing multi-touch gestures for manipulating e-book objects, such as flipping pages, rotating books, and adjusting page widths based on the number of pages, to enhance the reading experience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Weight of moving object
If e-book readers use small screens with dedicated buttons for navigation, then device portability is improved, but user experience and ease of operation deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from traditional 2D button navigation to 3D multi-touch gestures on a touchscreen. Users can flip pages by pinching or sliding fingers, rotate books by rotating their hands, and adjust views by pinching zooming. This dimensional change from point-contact buttons to multi-dimensional finger gestures significantly improves ease of operation while maintaining device portability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical button-pressing system with a touchscreen gesture recognition system. Instead of physical buttons that require pressing force, the system detects and interprets finger movements, pinching gestures, and sliding motions. This substitution eliminates the need for dedicated buttons while providing more intuitive and flexible navigation controls.
2Device complexity
If e-book readers provide dedicated buttons for navigation, then device complexity is reduced, but functionality and adaptability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The touchscreen interface serves multiple navigation functions simultaneously. The same touch surface can be used for page flipping, book rotation, zooming, panning, and selecting content. Different gesture patterns (pinch, slide, rotate, tap) correspond to different navigation actions. This multi-functionality greatly enhances adaptability while keeping the physical device structure simple.
Solution Approach 2:
The navigation system dynamically adapts to different user gestures and contexts. The system interprets various touch patterns (single tap, double tap, long press, pinch, slide, rotate) as different commands based on the current viewing state and gesture duration. This dynamic gesture recognition provides versatile navigation functionality without requiring dedicated buttons for each function.
3Loss of information
If e-book readers display e-books in black and white to match physical books, then reading authenticity is improved, but visual quality and information loss increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system preliminarily detects the type of e-book file and its intended display characteristics before rendering. It analyzes the e-book metadata and source material to determine appropriate color, resolution, and layout settings. This preliminary analysis allows the system to optimize display parameters for each specific e-book, preserving visual quality while maintaining compatibility with various display devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent dynamically adjusts display parameters such as color depth, resolution, brightness, and contrast based on the e-book source material and display capabilities. The system can switch between color and grayscale modes, adjust page curvature to simulate physical books, and modify text rendering parameters. These parameter changes enable high visual quality while adapting to different display hardware constraints.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system provides a more immersive and intuitive e-book reading experience by enabling users to interact with e-books using multi-touch gestures, simulating the feel of physical books and improving navigation and manipulation of e-book content.
Implementation Method 1
One such type of multi-touch interactive input system exploits the well-known optical phenomenon of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR). According to the general principles of FTIR, the total internal reflection (TIR) of light traveling through an optical waveguide is frustrated when an object such as a pointer touches the waveguide surface, due to a change in the index of refraction of the waveguide, causing some light to escape from the touch point.
Data Source
AI summary
An interactive input system includes a touch panel; and processing structure displaying on the touch panel at least one graphic object depicting a book having one or more page stacks. The processing structure displays each page stack of the book graphic object with a respective width that is based on a number of pages in the page stack. A method for manipulating a book object, and computer program embodied by a computer readable medium are also disclosed.