Patent ID: 6944818

Claim:
A computing system for generating display specifications for displaying tree-structured information having a multiplicity of nodes connected by directed edges wherein any node has at most one incoming edge, a node with no incoming edges is a root node, a node with no outgoing edges is a leaf node and a path is a series of nodes starting from any node and at each point proceeding along a directed edge in that direction to another node, a subtree is a portion of the nodes starting at any node and including all the nodes on all possible paths therefrom, wherein each node has associated information, on a display, said computing system comprising: a) input means for receiving user input, and b) computing means responsive to said input means capable of generating display specifications for producing an image of the tree structured information when received by a display processor, the image comprising a two-dimensional row and column arrangement of cells having a display area, wherein each node is associated with a cell, said arrangement having a number of rows equal to the number of nodes in the longest path and a number of columns equal to the number of leaf nodes wherein: i) a root node associated cell is placed in a first row, ii) node associated cells along a path from the root to a leaf are placed in series in consecutive rows from the first row wherein each node associated cell spans the greater of one column or the number of columns equal to the number of leaf nodes which are located on paths from the node associated with the node associated cell, iii) each column represents a path from the root to a leaf, and all such paths are represented, and iv) each node associated cell contains at least one selection element, and c) output means responsive to said computing means for sending the display specifications to a display processor.