Apparatus for reading a plurality of documents and a method thereof

• US 20020052730A1
• Filed: 05/23/2001
• Published: 05/02/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Original Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Inventors: Nakao, Yoshio
• Granted Patent: US 7,813,915 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/20 Natural language analysis semantic analysis of natural language G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/258 Heading extraction; Automatic titling; Numbering

Abstract

For each of a plurality of documents the thematic hierarchies are recognized, and a topic that commonly appears on the plurality of documents is extracted based on the recognized thematic hierarchies. Then, the description parts corresponding to the extracted topics are taken out from each document and the taken-out parts are outputted as related passages.

Claims

1. A document reading apparatus presenting a plurality of documents designated as reading documents by a user, comprising:

a thematic hierarchy recognizing device recognizing a thematic hierarchy of each of the plurality of documents;

a topic extracting device extracting a topic that commonly appears in the plurality of documents based on the recognized thematic hierarchies; and

a topic relation presenting device taking out a description part corresponding to the extracted topic from each of the plurality of documents and outputting the taken-out description parts.

2. The document reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein regarding a topic set that consists of topics of various grading in the recognized thematichierarchies, the topic extracting device calculates a relevance score between topics of the topic set based on lexical similarity of description parts corresponding to each topic of the topic set, and extracts a topic set having a relevance score equal to or more than a threshold that is set based on inclusive relationship of topics.

3. The document reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the topic relation presenting device presents the taken-out description parts side by side.

4. The document reading apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the topic relation presenting device presents the related parts and original documents in two windows, one of the windows including the related parts side by side and the other including the original documents side by side.

5. The document reading apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the topic relation presenting device presents summaries of the related parts.

6. The document reading apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the topic relation presenting device presents summaries of the related parts and original documents in two windows, one of the windows including the summaries side by side and the other including the original documents side by side.

7. The document reading apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the topic relation presenting device presents a plurality of thematic hierarchies corresponding to the plurality of documents and a correspondence relationship between the plurality of thematic hierarchies based on the plurality of common topics in a drawing, and presents a designated part of the plurality of documents in accordance with an instruction from the user given on the drawing.

8. The document reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the topic relation presenting device sets one document among the plurality of documents as a reference document, produces a new integrated document by merging the contents of the reference document with description parts of another document related to the reference document, and outputs the integrated document.

9. A computer-readable storage medium storing a program for a computer that presents a plurality of documents designated as reading documents by a user, the program causes the computer to perform:

recognizing a thematic hierarchy of each of the plurality of documents;

extracting a topic that commonly appears in the plurality of documents based on the recognized thematic hierarchies; and

taking out a description part corresponding to the extracted topic from each of the plurality documents and outputting the taken-out description part.

10. A propagation signal propagating a program to a computer that presents a plurality of documents designated as reading document by a user, the program causes the computer to perform:

recognizing a thematic hierarchy of each of the plurality of documents;

extracting a topic that commonly appears on the plurality of documents based on the recognized thematic hierarchies; and

taking out a description part corresponding to the extracted topic from each of the plurality documents and outputting the taken-out description parts.

11. A document presenting method of presenting a plurality of documents designated as reading documents by a user, comprising:

recognizing a thematic hierarchy of each of the plurality of documents;

extracting a topic that commonly appears in the plurality of documents based on the recognized thematic hierarchies; and

taking out a description part corresponding to the extracted topic from each of the plurality documents and outputting the taken-out description parts.

12. A document reading apparatus presenting a plurality of documents designated as reading documents by a user, comprising:

thematic hierarchy recognizing means for recognizing a thematichierarchy of each of the plurality of documents;

topic extracting means for extracting a topic that commonly appears in the plurality of documents based on the recognized thematic hierarchies; and

topic relation presenting means for taking out a description part corresponding to the extracted topic from each of the plurality documents and outputting the taken-out description parts.