View Management Architecture for Multi-Display Layouts

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Solution Overview

Problem

The representation of multiple displays as a unified coordinate space in computing environments faces challenges such as difficulty in managing views as the number increases, limitations in presenting disjoint displays, visual unappealing spanning across multiple displays, and scalability issues with maintaining relationships among views and applications.

Innovation Solution

A view management architecture that organizes displays as disjoint entities, allowing each display to present a distinct subset of views, with a device that generates and manages user interface collections as arrangements of view entries, enabling adaptable representation and layout application across displays.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If displays are represented as a unified coordinate space, then the presentation of applications across multiple displays is enabled, but the difficulty of managing views increases as the number of views and displays increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvepresentation of applications across displaysVSAvoiddifficulty of managing views
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the unified coordinate space into multiple independent display spaces, each with its own coordinate system and view management. This allows views to be independently managed on each display while maintaining the ability to span across displays through explicit spanning mechanisms, thereby reducing the complexity of managing views in a unified space.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

2Adaptability or versatility

If a unified coordinate space is used to represent displays, then views can span multiple displays, but the visual appeal and usability decrease when views span across multiple displays

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveviews spanning multiple displaysVSAvoidvisual appeal and usability
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the display representation into discrete display spaces, where views can be assigned to span specific displays. This segmentation allows for better control over how views are distributed across displays, improving visual appeal by avoiding arbitrary spanning while maintaining the capability for users to explicitly define spanning relationships when desired.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

3Ease of operation

If displays are organized as a unified coordinate space, then the routing of user input can be managed, but limitations arise in presenting disjoint displays with distinct layouts

Engineering Contradiction:
Improverouting of user inputVSAvoidpresentation of disjoint displays
Core Design Contradiction:
Ease of operationVSAdaptability or versatility

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the display system into independent display spaces that can be organized in a hierarchy. This allows disjoint displays with distinct layouts to be presented while maintaining input routing capabilities through the hierarchical structure, where each display space can have its own input focus and layout independent of others.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

4Ease of manufacture

If a unified coordinate space representation is used, then the initial presentation of applications is simplified, but scalability issues arise when handling a large number of displays and views

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveinitial presentation of applicationsVSAvoidscalability to handle large number of displays
Core Design Contradiction:
Ease of manufactureVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the coordinate space into multiple independent display spaces, each capable of independently managing its own views and layouts. This segmentation improves scalability by allowing the system to handle a large number of displays and views through hierarchical organization, where each display space operates semi-independently, reducing the computational burden of managing everything in a single unified space.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentEP3198411B1View management architecture
Publication Date: 2020.09.30 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC
  • EP3198411B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3198411B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP3198411B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

Multi-display computing environments are often represented as a unified coordinate space, where each display presents application views within a coordinate region. Such arrangements may enable features such as application views that span multiple displays, but such features may not appeal to users. Additionally, such representations may complicate the application of layouts to particular displays while maintaining relationships among application views. Instead, a view management architecture may generate a user interface collection comprising, for respective displays, an arrangement of view entries for respective views presented on the display. Entries for new views may be added to the arrangement for a particular display, and may be contained within an application container encapsulating all views of an application on the display. This multi-display representation enables display layouts to be applied to the views within a particular display while preserving relationships among views presented by each of several displays of the computing environment.