Patent ID: 8719724

Claim:
A method for enlarging a plurality of selectable characters displayed on a plurality of buttons on an adaptive touch screen key pad within an aircraft during an entry of a plurality of desired characters, comprising: detecting a touch of a button displaying at least one of the selectable characters, the buttons being provided in a sequence respective to the at least one character displayed thereon; determining by a processor coupled to the key pad the size and position of the selectable characters to be displayed including: creating at least one character substring, one for each of the at least one selectable characters displayed on the touched button; comparing the at least one character substring with a plurality of character strings; identifying the character strings as invalid that do not contain the at least one character substring; and deterministically and permanently removing, during the entry of the desired characters the selectable characters on the touch screen included in the invalid character strings that are not contained in the at least one character substring; and displaying in an enlarged format at least some of the buttons remaining on the touch screen, wherein the buttons remaining are provided in the sequence and are configured to maximize space utilization, wherein X is the total width of the key pad, Y is the width of inter-button space, L is the width of individual buttons, H is the height of individual buttons, and T is the height of the key pad, and wherein the enlarging step comprises determining sizes to which the format of the remaining buttons are enlarged by the steps comprising: (a) if no buttons are removed from any rows, go to (c), otherwise go to step (b); (b) if at least one button is removed from any row, let L=(X−((number of remaining buttons−1)Y))/number of remaining buttons, and increase the width of the remaining buttons in each row to a new value L for that row; (c) if not all buttons are removed from at least one row, go to step (e); (d) if all buttons are removed from at least one row, for each remaining row, let H=(T−((number of remaining rows−1)Y))/number of remaining rows, and increase the height of the remaining individual buttons to the new value H; and (e) repeating from the detecting step.