Thomas V Connell

US Patent:

20030035008, Feb 20, 2003

Filed:

Mar 21, 2002

Appl. No.:

10/103391

Inventors:

David Fuller - Austin TX, US
Christopher Cifra - Austin TX, US
Thomas Connell - Austin TX, US

International Classification:

G09G005/00

US Classification:

345/771000

Abstract:

An instrument I/O assistant and the algorithms that may be used to manage instrument responses and that may provide an instrument-centric approach to message-based instrument I/O. The instrument I/O assistant may assist the user in parsing instrument responses by offering an environment to interact with an instrument response without forcing the user to write parsing code. Embodiments may be integrated into instrumentation control programs to make instrument I/O as transparent as possible. The instrument I/O assistant may provide code generation so that the parsing of an instrument response performed in the instrument I/O assistant can be reused. The saved code for one query and response may be referred to as a query block. Two or more query blocks may be saved into a task. A task is a series of executable query blocks. The task may be executed, or alternatively code may be generated to execute the task.

US Patent:

6690390, Feb 10, 2004

Filed:

Oct 24, 2000

Appl. No.:

09/695803

Inventors:

Kristy Walters - Austin TX
Thomas Connell - Austin TX
Christopher Cifra - Cedar Park TX

Assignee:

National Instruments Corporation - Austin TX

International Classification:

G09G 500

US Classification:

345705, 345764

Abstract:

A computer system and method for performing a task within an application from within an on-line help information display. Thus the on-line help information displayed by the computer system may include user selectable elements which enable the user to complete portions or all of a task directly from the on-line help window, e. g. , without requiring the user to search for this functionality in menus or toolbars within the application. The user may launch the application and then select on-line help information associated with performing a task within the application. In response to this user input, the computer may display on-line help information associated with the application. The displayed on-line help information may include various help information that specifies a recipe for performing the task, e. g. , the information may guide the user through a series of steps to perform the task in the application. The displayed on-line help information may include one or more user selectable elements.