1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus having an input device capable of searching for a plurality of designated points, and to a method and storage medium thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, computer devices having touch panels have become widespread. Amongst these kinds of computer devices, there are some that can perform processing having simultaneously detected a plurality of points that a user designated with his or her fingers or the like on the touch panel. Furthermore, amongst these kinds of computer devices, processing for changing an enlargement factor of an image that is being displayed in accordance with a distance between two points, when the two points having been designated by the user, are simultaneously detected, has become common. Amongst these, there exist examples in which when the user touches the touch panel using two fingers (his or her index finger and his or her thumb) simultaneously, and reduces the distance between the two points by performing an operation, with the two fingers, as though he or she were pinching the surface of the touch panel, a display image is reduced, and when the two fingers are spread apart, the display image is enlarged.
This kind of operation in which it is as though two fingers pinch the screen is commonly known as a pinch operation. This pinch operation is a very intuitive and easy to understand interface operation for the user because it is an operation in which an object is magnified by grabbing it with his or her fingers and spreading it apart, or in which an object is reduced by reducing a space between his or her fingers, as though he or she were handling a physical flexible object. Also, because the center point between the two points pinched by the fingers is treated at the center point for the enlargement or reduction, the user can easily and intuitively designate which part of the image on the screen he or she wishes to perform an enlargement or reduction on with the pinch operation. Also, it is possible to change a scaling factor of the screen in real-time in accordance with a movement amount of the movement of the fingers when the pinch operation is performed. For this reason, there is also an advantage in that the user can quickly set his or her desired scaling factor, without switching to a special setting screen for setting the display scaling factor.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H04-222063, though not the pinch operation, a user designating in order two points and an enlargement or reduction being performed on a rectangle image similar to a rectangle that passes through the two points is described as a method for designating a plurality of points in a display screen and performing an enlargement/reduction of the screen.
Normally, with a pinch operation in which a plurality of points are designated on such as screen, an enlargement or reduction of the whole image being displayed is performed. In a case where, due to the enlargement operation, the image cannot be displayed on the screen in its entirety, a part of the image is hidden. In this case, an operation such as a scroll becomes necessary in order to display the image of the part that was hidden.
Also, in a case where displayed characters on the screen are small and difficult to read, when enlargement of an image is performed by a pinch operation, because the whole image is enlarged, there are problems such as the essential character part protruding from the screen. For this reason, in a case where displayed characters on the screen are small and difficult to read, there is a desire to enlarge only the character size and not the whole image. However, because normally an enlargement or reduction of the character size is performed from a separate setting screen, an intuitive and immediate operation, such as the enlargement or reduction of the image with a pinch operation cannot be performed with an operation of enlargement or reduction of the character size using the setting screen. In this case, a method can be considered in which a target of the enlargement or reduction due to the pinch operation is switched in accordance with a mode, for example, between being made to be the whole image and being made to be the character size. However, in this case, there is a problem in that because an operation is necessary to switch the mode and so arrangements of operations increase, operability is worsened.