I. Match the following words from the text with their definitions.

 

1. To respond to A. A stationary device related to the

mouse.

2. Input device B. Devices that allow you to use

a computer by touching

the surface of its VD screens.

3. Output device C. To do something in answer; react.

4. Stationary D. Correct or suitable for a particular

situation or occasion.

5.Appropriate E. A small rectangular touch-sensitive

surface usually placed

bellow the keyboard.

6. Trackball F. Standing still, not moving.

7. Pointing Stick G. Machines by which information

is sentto the computer.

8. Touchpad H. A small buttonlike device,

sometimes likened

to the eraser head of a pencil.

9. Touch screens I. Machines by which information is

received from the computer.

 

II. Identify whether the following statements are true or false. Use the model:

Student A: Using the touch screen, you can indicate your selection on a menu display by just touching the screen next to that menu item. – Student B: Yes, you are quite right.

2) S. A: The Esc key is often used to type uppercase rather than lowercase letters. –S. B: No, you are wrong! This key is used to cancel data entries and to terminate the execution of commands and programs.

 

1. Pressing buttons on the mouse activates various activities represented by the icon selected.

2. You can now enter data and commands into a computer system through pointing devices like electronic mice.

3. The enter key is often used to cancel data entries and to terminate the execution of commands and programs.

4. Holding down the shift key causes the letter keys to type lowercase rather than uppercase letters.

5. The trackball, pointing stick, and touch pad are other pointing devices most often used together with the mouse.

6. Touch screens are devices that allow you to easily choose from menu selections and icon displays using point-and-click or point-and-drag methods.

 

III. Complete the following sentences using words and expressions given below.

 

a) The computer senses the point in the grid where the break occurs and... with an appropriate action.

b) A... is a stationary device related to the mouse.

c) Pointing devicesare a better alternative for... commands.

d) Some touch screens emit a grid of infrared beams that is broken when the screen is....

 

trackball issuing touched responds

 

IV. Fill in the prepositions if necessary:

 

Computers are used by more and more people every day for use … home and … the office. Modern desktop computers provide … users with user-input mechanisms that are well suited for the applications that run … these computers. The use of a hand operating pointing device for use with a computer and its display has become almost universal. A computer user manipulates … a pointing device to change the position of a cursor or other object … a computer display, or to select objects … the display. The physical movement … the pointing device results … a similar movement of the cursor and/or object on the display.

 

V. Answer the following questions.

1. What are the major I/O devices?

2. What pointing devices for entering data do you know?

3. What recent developments in input technologies can provide a more natural interface for computer users?

4. Are keyboards still used for entering data?

5. What limitations do the keyboards have?

6. What is the most popular pointing device?

7. What is the function of touch screens?

 

Read and translate the text.

Computer Mouse

 

A computer mouse is a handheld device that a user slides over a suitable surface causing the cursor on a computer screen to move in a direction determined by the motion of the device.

Computer mice are often referred to as cursor positioning devices or cursor control devices, although mice are utilized to perform many other functions, such as to launch applications, re-size and move windows, drag, open and drop documents, select icons, text, menu items in a pull-down menu, and others. The mouse permits a computer user to position and move a cursor on a computer screen without having to use a keyboard. The mouse and mouse button allow the user to move a cursor or other pointing device to a specific area of the computer screen and depress the one or more buttons to activate specific computer program functions.

Computer mice can be found in a variety of physical embodiments. Typically, a mouse comprises a body that serves as a grip for the user's hand and as a structure for mounting a movement sensing system and two or more mouse buttons for selecting computer functions.

A computer mouse is ergonomically designed so that a user's hand fits snugly around the device.

Computer mice are available with electro-mechanical, opto-mechanical, or optical movement sensing systems. The electro- and opto-mechanical systems typically incorporate a ball arranged for rotation in the body and protruding from the bottom of the mouse into contact with the surface on which the mouse is resting. Movement of the mouse causes the ball to rotate. Electrical or optical transducers in the body convert the motion of the ball into electrical signals proportionate to the extent of movement of the mouse in x and y directions.

In addition to mechanical types of pointing devices like a conventional mouse, optical pointing devices have also been developed. The optical mouse has several advantages such as its precise detection of a movement of user's hand and its smooth movement, compared with a conventional ball mouse, thus its use increasing more and more. An optical mouse utilizes optical sensors to detect movement of the mouse relative to a surface. The optical mouse has no mechanical moving parts, and may be used on almost any flat surface. They respond more quickly and precisely than electromechanical mice, and are growing in popularity. An optical mouse overcomes at least the dust problem by generating the movement signal of the mouse by means of detection of reflection light. Generally, an optical mouse is operated by reflecting light emitted from the main body of the optical mouse from a touching object, thus, enabling the movement of the mouse on the pad to be detected and enabling a cursor on a computer monitor to be moved. An optical mouse optically recognizes its movement on the touching object, converts the recognized value to an electric signal, transmits the electric signal to the computer, and thereby the position of the cursor on the monitor can be recognized.

Mechanical mouse devices incorporate moving parts that can wear out. The roller ball mechanism also requires periodic cleaning to remove accumulated dirt and to prevent internal malfunctioning. To overcome those drawbacks, an optical mouse is provided and has a light transmitter such as light emitting diode (LED), light receiver such as a photo diode and associated components.

Since such an optical mouse has advantages of the accuracy of its motion detection, and smoothness in its motion, as compared with the conventional ball-type mouse, its use is gradually increasing.

 

Role Play.

You are a shop assistant at the Computer Store. Describe all the advantages of an optical mouse to the customer.

 

Read the text.

Touch screen monitor

 

Portable electronic devices have been designed to perform a large variety of functions, including cellular phone, personal digital assistants (PDAs), video camcorders, digital cameras, and notebook computers. All of these devices store information and perform tasks under direction of the user of the device, and therefore have a user interface. A typical user interface includes a means for displaying information, a means for inputting information and operation control, and often a means for playing sounds and audio signals. As the size of these communication devices decreases and as the number of functions increase, it has become increasingly important for a user to be able to enter commands and information into the communication device in an efficient manner. With a reduction in size of the device, a keypad input device must also be reduced in size, thereby decreasing the efficiency with which information can be input by reducing the number and size of the keys.

Furthermore, with a reduction in size of the device, the display size must also be reduced. Still furthermore, the use of a mouse with such devices is usually not possible since a mouse requires a flat clean surface to be properly used.

The touch screen display is an alternative to fixed buttons. Touch screens are more convenient than conventional computer screens because the user can directly point to an item of interest on the screen instead of having to use a mouse or other pointer. A touch screen allows the user of a terminal to enter a menu selection or data by placing a finger or other object at a location on the display screen that corresponds to the menu item, function or data numeral to be entered.

The touch screens are manufactured as separate devices and mechanically mated to the viewing surfaces of the displays. Touch screens can be activated by many different types of contacts, including by finger, pen, and stylus. The user touches different areas of the touch screen to activate different functions. Touch screens for computer input permit a user to write or draw information on a computer screen or select among various regions of a computer generated display, typically by the user's finger or by a free or tethered stylus.

The use of a touch screen input device that serves both as a display and as an input device for the communication device allows a larger display in that a large keypad is no longer required since many of the functions have been taken over by the use of the display screen as an input device.

The touch screen is made of transparent material. When the touch screen is placed over a video display device, images from the video display device are visible through the touch screen. A touch screen typically involves a cathode ray tube monitor (CRT) or liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor and a transparent touch-sensitive overlay that is attached to the front face of the monitor.

 

Comprehension questions:

 

What does a typical user interface include?

Why has it become increasingly important for a user to be able to enter commands and information into the communication device in an efficient manner?

What is an alternative to fixed buttons?

How can touch screens be activated?

What material is the touch screen made of?

 

Topic 4.

 

Source Data Automation

 

Source data automation, or source data collection, refers to procedures and equipment designed to make the input process more efficient by eliminating the manual entry of data. Instead of a person entering data using a keyboard, source data automation equipment captures data directly from its original form. The original form is called a source document. In addition to making the input process more efficient, source data automation usually results in a higher input accuracy rate.

An image scanner, sometimes called a page scanner, is an input device that can electronically capture an entire page of text or images such as photographs or art work. The scanner converts the text or images on the original document into digital data that can be stored on a disk and processed by the computer. The digitised data can be printed, displayed separately, or merged into another document for editing.

Optical recognition devices use a light source to read codes, marks, and characters and convert them into digital data that can be processed by a computer.

Optical codes use a pattern or symbols to represent data. The most common optical code is the bar code. Most of us are familiar with the “zebra-striped” Universal Product Code (UPC), which appears on most supermarket products. It consists of a set of vertical lines and spaces of different widths. The bar code reader uses the light pattern from the bar code lines to identify the item. The UPC bar code, used for grocery and retail items, can be translated into a ten-digit number that identifies the product manufacturer and product number.

Optical character recognition ( OCR ) devices are scanners that read typewritten, computer-printed, and in some cases hand-printed characters from ordinary documents.

A number of optical character recognition (OCR) systems are known. Typically, such systems comprise apparatus for scanning a page of printed text and performing a character recognition process on a bit-mapped image of the text, which is a pixel -by-pixel representation of the overall image in a binary form. The recognition system reads characters of a character code line by framing and recognizing the characters within the image data. During the recognition process, the document is analyzed for several key factors such as layout, fonts, text and graphics. The document is then converted into an electronic format that can be edited with application software. The output image is then supplied to a computer or other processing device, which performs an OCR algorithm on the scanned image. The document can be of many different languages, forms and features. The purpose of the OCR algorithm is to produce an electronic document comprising a collection of recognized words that are capable of being edited. In general, electronic reading machines using computer-based optical character recognition (OCR) comprises personal computers outfitted with computer scanners, optical character recognition software, and computerized text-to-voice hardware or software.

The OCR devices scan the shape of a character, compare it with a predefined shape stored in memory, and convert the character into the corresponding computer code. They use a light source to read special characters and convert them into electrical signals to be sent to the CPU. The characters can be read by both humans and machines. They are often found on sales tags in department stores or imprinted on credit card slips.

In large department stores you can see a device called the wand reader. It is capable to read OCR optical characters. After data from a retail tag has been read, the computer system can automatically and quickly pull together the information needed for billing purposes.

Wands are an extremely promising alternative to key input because they eliminate one more intermediate step between “data” and “processing” – that of key entry.

Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) characters use special ink that can be magnetized during processing. MICR is used almost exclusively by the banking industry for processing checks. Blank checks already have the bank code, account number, and check number printed in MICR characters across the bottom. When the check is processed by the bank, the amount of the check is also printed in the lower right corner. Together, this information is read by MICR reader/sorter machines as part of the check-clearing process.

 

Comments:

 

source document початковий документ

 

to capture захоплювати, збирати (дані)

 

recognition розпізнавання

 

pixel елемент зображення, точка растра; мінімальний адресований елемент

двомірного растрового

зображення, колір і яскравість якого

можна задати незалежно

від інших точок

 

bar code штриховий код; спеціальний код,

у якому кожний знак складено

з вертикальних темних

і світлих смуг різної ширини,

який друкують на упаковці

товарів тощо для автоматизованого

вводу даних про них