1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an input unit available for a character input device and in an input technology and, more particularly, to a screen display key input unit for inputting characters and symbols indicated within key area displayed on a screen of an electric tool, for example electric notebook, small word processor or personal computer, by directly touching the keys with a pen or fingers, or by shifting a pointer on the screen with a mouse or a tablet.
2. Discussion of the Background
A personal computer, a word processor or the like is known well in the art as a general information processing unit and has been miniaturized wile keeping their high performance. A size of a computer has been shifted from a relatively large desk type general purpose computer to a laptop type small computer and further to a notebook type small-sized computer. But, such miniaturization recently makes no progress. Because, there is obviously a limit of miniaturization of keyboard when considering its handling.
Accordingly, it is remarkable for general companies which have utilized portable personal computers, electric notebooks, and portable remote terminals as their business portable tools to use a screen touch input system in which an input procedure is done by touching the screen with pen or fingers as hopeless.
Recently, as operating systems and software improved, a desktop computer and a note-size computer shift to utilize GUI (Graphic User Interface) in inputting operation without using a keyboard, wherein several icons displayed on a screen are selected by mouse.
But the present input system using a mouse and a pen on its screen is only appropriate for select inputting procedure of "MENU" and "COMMAND". They are not suitable to input characters when writing a composition.
A freehand input system as one of pen input system is convenient for persons that are hard to deal with keyboard. But, the freehand input system does not assure enough recognition rate and needs much time for converting characters into Kanji-character, Katakana-character, Hiragana-character and the like. The character conversion in freehand input system is carried out stepwise though "freehand input".fwdarw."recognition".fwdarw."conversion".
There is also known so-called "character input board" in which keys are arranged(displayed) on a screen (Soft Key) just like a general keyboard (Hard Key) so that the displayed respective keys are selected and inputted by an electric pen and a mouse.
These soft keys on the character input board are nothing but hard keys shown on a screen and are condensed within a narrow screen, which leads an operator into a bad operational environment.
One of the popular conventional character input board is so-called "QWERTY" keyboard as shown in FIG. 55 or "Japanese syllabary" keyboard to smoothly input Japanese characters as shown in FIG. 56. Both of keyboards are organized with 10 files, a moving area for pen and mouse is relatively large and size of each soft key is so small that the operator does not comfortably operate the keyboards.