William C Wyatt

US Patent:

52089100, May 4, 1993

Filed:

May 12, 1992

Appl. No.:

7/883909

Inventors:

Patricia E. Higgins - Gaithersburg MD
Ta-Jen Hu - Rockville MD
Joseph W. Potts - Bethesda MD
William J. Wyatt - Lowell MA

Assignee:

International Business Machines - Armonk NY

International Classification:

G06F 15403

US Classification:

395156

Abstract:

A method of informing a user of a data processing system about which of his previous selections in a current data processing session have disabled, or otherwise "affected", selections which would ordinarily be selectable. Control of the data processing system is managed by listing the selections available to the user on series of menus presented on the display means. A CPU instructs the display means to display the menu which corresponds to that particular point in the program. Following the method of the present invention, the CPU has kept track of the selections made by user. By referring to a special data file which correlates or compares these past selections to the list of actions displayed in the current menu, the CPU determines which of these actions are "affected". These affected actions are then denoted on the menu in some way, e. g. , changing the affected action's color, marking the affected actions with a special symbol, etc.