Patent ID: RE39059

Claim:
A remote control development program comprising a set of instructions on a computer-readable medium, the instructions configured to cause a general purpose computer to provide a user with the ability to edit a first screen object; the general purpose computer comprising a processor, an operating system, a short term memory, a long term memory, a graphics display and a user input device, the screen objects each comprising a screen layout definition and at least one key object which is a soft key object or a programmable key object, the screen object providing for a screen display and commands associated therewith, wherein each soft key object comprises a representation of a soft key, a text label for the representation, a location for displaying the graphic soft key object , and a tagname for a command which is to be issued when the soft key is pressed, each programmable key object comprises an identifier of one of plural programmable keys of a programmable remote control unit and a tagname for a command which is to be issued when the identified programmable key is pressed, each command comprises a message which, when received by a given multimedia processing unit, causes the multimedia processing unit to alter a defined setting of the multimedia processing unit in a predictable manner; the remote control development program further comprising instructions for causing a computer to facilitate editing of the first screen object by performing the following steps: (a) displaying a representation of the appearance of the first screen object; (b) simultaneously displaying information regarding the first screen object and the key objects of the first screen object; (c) providing objected object oriented tools for creating and editing soft key objects; (d) providing objected object oriented tools for creating and editing labels; (e) displaying tagnames for commands which may be assigned to soft key objects in the first screen object, programmable key objects in the first screen object, and directly to the first screen object; (f) receiving the user's selections of commands to assign to soft key objects in the first screen object, programmable key objects in the first screen object, and directly to the first screen object.