Yong Zeng

US Patent:

60887125, Jul 11, 2000

Filed:

Dec 19, 1997

Appl. No.:

8/994996

Inventors:

Kuang-Hua Ken Huang - Cupertino CA
Yong Zeng - Sunnyvale CA
Yu Zhang - Cupertino CA

Assignee:

Knights Technology, Inc. - Sunnyvale CA

International Classification:

G06F 1730

US Classification:

707526

Abstract:

An intelligent, state-based macro facility is provided (as opposed to the unintelligent keystroke macro facilities typical of the prior art). Instead of a record time and an end time, an intelligent, state-based macro, or "smart macro," has only a single "capture" time, determined by the user pressing a single "smart macro" key. The state of the application, including objects displayed and various properties or attributes of those objects, is then captured and stored under a name supplied by the user. That same state may then be applied to different data to produce the same kinds of results. The smart macro may be applied interactively by the user to different data, or different data sets. Even more advantageously, a batch job may be scheduled, in which the smart macro is scheduled to run on specified data at a specified time with the results being saved to disk under a user-specified name. Batch jobs may be scheduled as one-time jobs or recurring jobs.