Abstract: A printer is provided with a small scanner located upstream along a paper path from a printing device such as a print head. A form is loaded into the printer and is advanced incrementally along the paper path. A segment of the form is scanned by the scanner. The scanned segment is displayed on a user interface. A user may provide information in selected blank spaces of the displayed segment with a keyboard. The user may then command the printer to print, wherein the information is printed in the selected blank spaces of the segment by the print head. The next segment of the form is scanned and displayed to the user.

Abstract: A security enhancement for laptop computers comprises the use of a moving visible area and an obscured area for the laptop screen. The visible area may be defined by the user to comprise a single word, a single line, or a plurality of lines of data. The obscured area may comprise all remaining space on the laptop screen not defined as the visible area, A user may specify that the obscured area be completely hidden from view (i.e.., such as by blackening or whiting out the area) or difficult to view by others. The present invention is particularly useful with a laptop computer in a crowded environment such as while travelling on an airplane. The present invention will reduce the likelihood of unauthorized viewing of possibly sensitive computer data by others.

Abstract: An object having several components, such as functions, is located on a data processing system. Every time a user uses any of the components, the use of the component is measured. Information about the use of the components is provided to a user of the system. Selected components and constituents of these components are deleted from the system based on the user's command. Each component may have one or more constituents, which are either used exclusively by the component or are shared by several components. These constituents that are related to the deleted components are either deleted or updated to reflect deletion of the components from the system.

Abstract: Multi-bit SP-Vectors (Shrikant Parikh Vectors) are created to record the history of each page of a process. Each time an ager scans an accessed/not accessed bit flag of page table entries, the SP-Vectors are updated to reflect whether or not the corresponding page was accessed. A table is also created to provide ready update and interpretation information for each vector depending upon whether or not the last scan indicated an accessed or not accessed status. An SP-List is created to order a predetermined number of entries from the least recently used end of an idle list. The SP-Vectors are checked for the number of accesses and a representation corresponding to the page thereof is placed into the SP-List in the order of least number of accesses to the most number of accesses. When it is necessary to remove a page from physical memory, the ager goes to the page indicated as the least number of accesses in the SP-List and swaps out that page.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for subdividing a thread's processing cycles among a set of threadlets or regions within a thread or process. This is achieved through instructions in the application code which are interpreted by the operating system. The beginning and ending of a threadlet is through the "Begin Threadlet" and "End Threadlet" instructions. A segmented stack is utilized to separately hold that part of the stack belonging to each threadlet. The programmer must know within the application code places where the data contents of the registers do not merit saving or is saved in memory. This provides the user with an opportunity to switch to a different activity without saving registers. The user identifies this to the operating system by a special instruction called "SWITCHIR". The SWITCHIR instruction tells the operating system not to save registers. Therefore, within the same thread, the operating system will keep on executing a threadlet until it encounters this instruction.

Abstract: A visual trace of the dominant computer activities conducted during execution of a computer program is displayed for review by an analyst. A time line scale is predefined by the analyst to relate the trace to actual execution time. The trace is displayed as a line with various optional formats for visually distinguishing the dominant computer activity, for example, various line styles, different colors, and/or icons. If an area of the trace appears to need further review, the analyst can select, by any appropriate method, a point on the trace. The trace is linked to the actual code and details of the program so that such a selection will display the program details/code for greater review.

Abstract: A multi-media footnote control links a reference and a video. During the viewing of a video by an author/editor thereof, a footnote may be added to properly credit another source and to aid in study of the subject presented on the video. At the appropriate place in the video, the author/editor stops the video and displays a create footnote window. The author will then enter the appropriate data into the window. The footnote data will then be automatically passed to the video in the predetermined position. The footnote will be displayed in a footnote area during the running of the video. If a user/author of the video wishes to review the footnoted reference, the video may be stopped and by indicating the footnote such as with a mouse, the reference will be displayed in a separate window.

Abstract: A multi-bit SP-Vector is created to record the history of each page of a process. Each time an ager scans the accessed/not accessed bit flag of the page tables entires, the SP-Vector is updated to reflect whether or not the corresponding page was accessed. A table is created to provide ready update and interpretation information for each SP-Vector depending upon whether or not the last scan indicated an accessed or not accessed status. The table further contains a running total of the number of accesses for each SP-Vector which allows a rapid determination of which pages have been accessed the least. The least accessed pages may then be selected for swapping out of physical memory.

Abstract: Four classes are created herein for classifying all the processes on a computer system which utilizes an ager and a paging based memory management. A first class will include all processes which have received repeated central processing unit (CPU) time slices after the last servicing by the ager. A second class will include all processes which have received some CPU time slices, less than a certain preselected threshold value, since the last servicing by the ager. A third class will include all processes which have not received any CPU time slices since the last servicing by the ager. A fourth class will include all processes which have received no CPU time slices for a certain predefined number of services by the ager. Once the processes are all classified, the ager will service the processes in the order of: Class 4, Class 1, and then Class 2. The processes in Class 3 will not be serviced.

Abstract: The present invention divides a video frame into a series of smaller and smaller quadrants until reaching a single pixel size. By issuing a series of commands, a logical cursor moves within the quadrants to evaluate the frame for changes from the previous frame. Upon detecting a color change, the exact location (identified by a level and a quadrant thereof) is encoded along with a value for the change. As a result of the novel approach disclosed herein, there may be significant storage savings over the prior art.

Abstract: The present invention improves the comprehensibility of a document being read on a computer system. Rather than requiring a reader to stop and look up the meaning of a word, either on-line or with a printed copy, the present invention will automatically translate unknown words into words known to the reader. By checking each word in a document against a known word list maintained on the computer, the present invention improves the readers comprehension of a document as well as simplifies the reading thereof.

Abstract: A system is provided for enhancing a compiler with the capability to install a fastpath within a compiled program. The enhanced compiler allows a program to use the benefits of a fastpath without requiring the addition of new code to the source code. Any type of program, including multi-media, can benefit from the enhanced compiler. A program need only be evaluated to see if there are functions/procedures which can utilize a fastpath. A programmer may turn the enhancement on or off depending upon whether or not there are recurring calculations with results that do not change over time from the same input.