Data processing apparatus and method for rendering a tree structure

摘要

An apparatus (20) and method (10) for rendering a tree structure in a GUI depending on a position of a pointing cursor relative to the rendered tree use the cursor position with respect to the tree to control which tree branches to expand/collapse automatically. They reconfigure the tree view for compact presentation without need for explicit expand/collapse operations. A tree view is generated (11). A cursor position relative to the view is determined (14), consisting of first and second position values according to first and second directions. The branch the cursor position is aligned with according to the first direction is automatically selected as active branch (15). Sub-levels of that branch to be expanded are determined (16), depending on the second position value relative to indentations of the sub-levels, and the tree view is automatically updated by expanding the determined sub-levels of the active branch and collapsing other branches (17).