Abstract: An amorphous silicon hydride thin film is deposited on an insulating body by a plasma CVD method, and is then heated for dehydrogenating the amorphous silicon thin film so that a dehydrogenated amorphous silicon thin film containing hydrogen of 3 atomic % or less is formed. The insulating body may be an insulating substrate (such as a glass substrate) alone, or a combination of an insulating substrate with an intermediate insulating base layer thereon. Impurity ions are injected into the dehydrogenated amorphous silicon hydride thin film to form source and drain regions. Excimer laser beams are applied to the dehydrogenated amorphous silicon thin film, thereby polycrystallizing the amorphous silicon thin film into a polysilicon thin film and activating the injected impurity ions.

Abstract: An apparatus of this invention is designed to output document data including ruled line data upon proportionally arranging the data on one page to prevent the disruption of the relationship between the column and row positions of the ruled line data on the page. A document arranging section sequentially changes the character sizes stored in text and table format memories to develop document data of a designated page in a layout development memory. If the developed document data occupies 3/4 or more of a printable region, the data is printed according to the current format by a printing section. If the character size exceeds a limit value set in a format table before the area of the data becomes 3/4 or more of the printable region, the line spacing and the upper margin are sequentially changed in the same manner. If a ruled line causes overflow when the character size of ruled line data is changed, the character size is decreased by one step to prevent line feed of the ruled line.

Abstract: A display device has first and second substrates, a liquid-crystal layer, pixel electrodes arranged on the first substrate, a plurality of semiconductor active elements connected to the pixel electrodes, signal lines for supplying drive signals to the active elements, and a plurality of opposing electrodes arranged on the second substrate. Each pixel electrode, that portion of each opposing electrode which overlaps the pixel electrode, and that portion of the liquid-crystal layer which is sandwiched between the pixel electrode and said that portion of the opposing electrode form a pixel. A voltage having a positive or negative value according to the image data is applied between the input terminal of the semiconductor active element and said at least one of the opposing electrode, for a selecting period.

Abstract: A TFT panel is manufactured by a process of forming an oxide voltage-apply lines, gate lines, and capacitor lines on an insulating substrate, and a process of forming thin-film transistors, pixel electrodes, data lines, and ground lines. In a state that one end of the gate line and both ends of the capacitor line are connected to the oxide voltage-apply line, oxide films are formed on the surfaces of the gate line and the capacitor line by anodization. After forming the oxide film, the gate line and the capacitor line are electrically separated from the oxide voltage-apply line.

Abstract: An electronic device including a switch member which has a multiplicity of switch contacts provided thereon, a film liquid crystal display unit disposed above the switch member and having openings provided at positions opposite to the respective switch contacts, and operation members disposed in the corresponding openings so as to depress the operation members from above the film liquid crystal display. By the depression of the respective operation members, the corresponding switch contacts are switched. According to this structure, the switching operations are performed on the film liquid crystal display unit, so that the operability of the switches is improved and the device itself is miniaturized.

Abstract: A music apparatus determines a scale suitable for a given melody. The apparatus includes a motion analyzer which analyzes motion in the melody. In an embodiment, a note coupling evaluator evaluates a coupling coefficient of each note in the melody based on a pitch interval pattern of surrounding notes. Using the evaluated results, a tonic and type of a scale for the melody is determined.

Abstract: If it is determined that a current time when a power switch is operated manually is equal to or close to a reservation time indicated by preset reservation time data, a power source automatically starts supplying a power source current to individual circuits of a broadcasting receiving apparatus main body. Otherwise, supply of a power source current to the individual circuits is not performed. This prevents a receiving unit from unnecessarily receiving a broadcasting electric wave. When completion of broadcasting of all broadcasting contents of a broadcasting program is detected, the power source stops supplying the power source current to the individual circuits of the broadcasting receiving apparatus main body. This also prevents the receiving unit from unnecessarily receiving a broadcasting electric wave.

Abstract: An image data compressing apparatus comprises a transform unit, such as a DCT computation unit, a quantization table memory for plural types of quantization tables, a quantizer which selectively uses the quantization tables, a coder for performing coding in accordance with a pre-given predicted value for the amount of generated codes of each block, memories for storing the amounts of codes for DC components and AC components generated for the individual blocks, a computation unit for computing the sum of the amounts of generated codes for DC components and the sum of the amounts of generated codes for AC components for each properly selected quantization table, and memories for storing the computed sums of the amounts of generated codes, wherein the apparatus uses a plurality of quantization tables to predict a change in the amount of generated codes caused by the alteration of the quantization table in the first compression, and compresses image data to the target amount of generated codes in the second comp

Abstract: When a plurality of effects are simultaneously applied to an input audio signal, a plurality of effect-algorithms each for applying solely an effect to the input signal are stored in a memory, and a plurality of combination-algorithms or combination-data which represent combinations of the effects and orders in which effects are applied to the input audio signal are stored in the memory. When one of the combination-algorithms or the combination-data is selected, effect-algorithms included in the selected combination-algorithm or combination-data are selectively read out from the memory. A program for applying effects in a predetermined combination and order is written by CPU based on the read out effect-algorithms and combination-algorithm or combination-data. Receiving the program, DSP successively applies effects to the input audio signal in accordance with the program.

Abstract: In a stopwatch of this invention, when a lap switch is operated after time measurement is started, a lap time from the immediately preceding lap switch operation to the current lap switch operation is stored and compared with a measurement time after the current lap switch operation. Since an alarm tone is generated if the measurement time after the current lap switch operation coincides with the stored lap time, the immediately preceding lap time can be used as a target time of the time measurement. The stopwatch can be conveniently used when a running speed is increased or decreased in each lap in a track race or the like.

Abstract: Sound information is binarized by delta modulation or adaptive delta modulation. The resulting data is subjected to pulse wide modulation and the resulting data is delivered to a reproducing device, which detects a leading edge of a received signal pulse to produce a self operation timing clock to thereby reproduce a sound. When the reproducing device detects the absence of edges for a predetermined interval after the edge detection, it turns off a power source for an analog circuit to suppress power consumption.

Abstract: In an electronic timepiece having a signal receiving function, the present time at a place where a user is located can be displayed without designating a regional name. The quasi-distance data between the satellites and the signal receiving point is calculated based upon the delay times of the signals transmitted from the satellites. The positional information about the signal receiving point is obtained from four quasi-distance data. Subsequently, this positional information is compared with the longitude/latitude data previously stored in ROM, to search a city located nearest this signal receiving point. Furthermore, a judgement is made whether or not the city located nearest the present receiving point is coincident with the city located nearest the preceding receiving point. If these cities are coincident with each other, then the present time of the city stored in the time counting register is directly displayed.