Abstract: A system and method integrate a spreadsheet and an externally implemented program. The system includes a set of input cells in the spreadsheet, which contain input data for the external program; a set of transmission functions which reference the input cells; and a set of retrieval functions, which reference the transmission functions. A spreadsheet evaluation sequencer, which is part of the spreadsheet program, schedules execution of the transmission functions whenever input data changes, and schedules execution of the retrieval functions after the transmission functions have been executed, thereby effecting a seamless, two-way link between the spreadsheet and external program.

Abstract: When a type of a target document is selected by an input unit from selection items displayed in a window of a display device based upon a type table, a word group of an image corresponding to the type of the document is displayed based upon an image table. When a word of the target image is selected from the word group, a color arrangement and a typeface corresponding to the image are determined based upon an image color arrangement conversion table. As a result, target color representation can be automatically displayed by an easy operation which does not require special technique and knowledge.

Abstract: A method for rewriting document references such as URLs located in an included document, when an include operation is performed. The include operation may be performed by the server at any time, for example, when the including and included documents are stored on the server. One aspect of the invention is a process for inserting a second document into a first document, where the second document has a reference to a third document. The reference may be a link to the third document or may be an instruction to insert the third document. In this process, the second document is parsed to identify a relative reference to the third document with respect to the second document. An effective base reference for the second document is determined. In an HTML document, the effective base reference is the effective base URL. The relative reference to the third document is converted to an absolute reference using the determined effective base reference of the second document.

Abstract: A specific manual for configurable electronic equipment is produced by providing at least one generic manual; obtaining configuration information relating to the equipment (23); selecting parts of the generic manual applicable to the configuration (28); assembling the selected parts of the generic manual and at least some of the configuration information (24,30,31); and outputting the assembly as the specific manual (25).

Abstract: A graphic processing apparatus is described which is capable of controlling the highlighting states of regions of an image by providing differences in color and hatching densities and the like to the regions in accordance with the area and the degree of importance of the region. This allows high quality coloring and hatching to be easily performed. The graphic processing apparatus has a memory for temporarily storing the image; a region extractor that extracts a plurality of regions to be painted with a color from the stored image; a region color determiner that determines region colors to be applied to the extracted regions; and an output image generator that generates an image having the color attributes applied to the extracted regions of the stored image. The region colors are differentiated from each other by differences in color attributes from among the regions in accordance with the areas of the individual regions each to be painted with a color.

Abstract: A character and symbol pattern generator includes a skeleton data storage device for storing beforehand, for every skeleton pattern. Skeleton data includes coordinate data of each skeleton point at which changes occur at least in the stroke direction of skeleton pattern for forming characters and symbols, two thickness data which represent lengths of two thickness segments of a stroke on the start and end points of the skeleton pattern, and two angle data which represent angles of the two thickness segments with respect to the stroke direction or the horizontal direction. An input device is used to designate the kind and size of the character and symbol. A thickness data calculating device calculates thickness data of each skeleton point from the two thickness data of the start and end points and the coordinate data of each skeleton point.

Abstract: A display system (10) displays alphanumeric data in a three dimensional grid (58). The grid (58) may include data entries (72), planes (72, 74, 76), labels (90, 92, 94), and various graphics (102, 106, 110) that visually represent the data entries (70). A user of display system (10) can modify, orient, or otherwise manipulate the grid (58) to visualize alphanumeric data in three dimensions.

Abstract: A graphics display system includes a host processor calculating graphic data and providing the graphic data to a graphics processor, and frame memories which store the graphic pixel data and supply display data to display devices. The graphics display system also includes a first register group which stores the graphics data, a second register group which converts and/or stores the data in the first register group, a pixel generator which generates pixels according to the graphic data in the second register group, and a plotter which writes the pixel data generated in the pixel generator in the frame memories. The second register group fetches the data from the first register group when the host processor issues a command for plotting, holds the data previously written by the host processor. At the same time, when the host processor issues a command for plotting, the specified graphic type is written in the graphic processor as well as data calculated based on the first and second register groups.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described for automatically converting documents from a first hypertext format that supports multi-layered backgrounds to a second hypertext format that does not support multi-layered backgrounds, such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML). According to the method, a target file is generated that stores all non-background elements of the document in the second hypertext format. A mechanism that reads the first hypertext format is used to display a current page of the document. A screen dump is made of the displayed page after removing or hiding the non-background elements. This process is repeated for all of the pages of the document. References to the graphics files generated by the screen dumps are embedded in the target file. The references cause the background elements of a page to be displayed behind non-background elements of the page when the document is displayed based upon the target file by a mechanism that reads the second hypertext format.