Method and System of Annotation for Electronic Documents

• US 20050132281A1
• Filed: 10/21/2004
• Published: 06/16/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 10/21/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ServiceNow Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Zhang, Li, Pan, Yue
• Granted Patent: US 7,392,466 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/230
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

The present invention provides a method of annotation for electronic document, a method for creating, modifying and browsing an annotation in an electronic document, and an apparatus and system for editing, browsing annotations in electronic document. The method of annotation for electronic document includes: storing annotation contents for one or more electronic documents into a shared dictionary; and when a reader browses an electronic document, providing the reader with annotations for the electronic document based on the shared dictionary.

Claims

1. A method of annotation for electronic documents, comprising:

storing annotation contents for one or more electronic documents in a shared dictionary; and

providing the reader with annotations for the electronic document based on the shared dictionary, wherein the annotations are provided in response to the reader browsing the electronic document.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein a plurality of versions of the shared dictionary are included.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the electronic document contains an annotation policy for specifying a version requirement for the shared dictionary to be utilized by the electronic document.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein providing the reader with annotations comprises providing the reader with a corresponding annotation content in the shared dictionary.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the electronic document relates to a plurality of shared dictionaries including different annotation contents respectively, and the annotation policy is set for the plurality of shared dictionaries respectively.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprises providing the reader with corresponding annotation contents associated with the plurality of shared dictionaries.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein a plurality of serial versions of the shared dictionary are saved in an incremental manner on a shared server.

8. The method of claim 3 wherein the annotation policy comprises restrict version, non restrict version, above version and latest version.

9. The method of claim 3 wherein the electronic document contains at least one tag associating an annotated portion in the electronic document with an annotation content in the shared dictionary.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the tag includes an entry ID.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein the tag includes a dictionary ID and version information.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the electronic document is in markup language format.

13. A method for creating an annotation in an electronic document, comprising:

selecting a portion to be annotated in the electronic document;

looking up a corresponding annotation content in a shared dictionary, wherein the shared dictionary contains annotation contents for one or more electronic documents; and

associating the portion to be annotated in the electronic document with the corresponding annotation content in the shared dictionary.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprises adding an entry into the shared dictionary to input annotation content if the corresponding annotation content is not found in the shared dictionary.

15. The method of claim 13 further comprises modifying the annotation content in the shared dictionary.

16. The method of claim 13 further comprises saving a modified version of the shared dictionary onto a shared server, as a new version of the shared dictionary.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein a plurality of serial versions of the shared dictionary are saved in incremental manner on the shared server.

18. The method of claim 13 further comprises setting an annotation policy for the electronic document, wherein the annotation policy is used to specify a version requirement for the shared dictionary used by the electronic document.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the electronic document relates to a plurality of shared dictionaries, and the setting the annotation policy comprises setting an annotation policy for each of the plurality of shared dictionaries.

20. The method of claim 13 wherein the selecting of a portion to be annotated comprises automatically selecting a portion to be annotated in the electronic document according to existing contents in the shared dictionary.

21. A method for browsing an annotation in an electronic document, wherein a plurality of annotation contents for one or more electronic documents are stored in a shared dictionary, the method comprising:

selecting an annotated portion in the electronic document;

looking up an annotation content corresponding to the annotated portion in the shared dictionary; and

displaying the corresponding annotation content in the shared dictionary.

22. A system for editing annotations in an electronic document, comprising:

an electronic document editor for browsing and editing an electronic document, and selecting a portion to be annotated in the electronic document;

a dictionary lookup unit for looking up content corresponding to the portion in the electronic document to be annotated, wherein the shared dictionary contains annotation contents for one or more electronic documents; and

a dictionary editor for adding and modifying the annotation contents in the shared dictionary.

23. The system of claim 22, further comprises:

an annotation policy setting unit for setting an annotation policy for the electronic document.

24. The system of claim 22 further comprises:

a disambiguating unit for selecting one annotation content when the dictionary lookup unit finds more than one corresponding annotation contents in the plurality of shared dictionary.

25. The system of claim 22 further comprises:

a dictionary buffer for storing the shared dictionary locally; and

a dictionary replicating unit for replicating the shared dictionary stored on a server to the dictionary buffer, and replicating the shared dictionary in the dictionary buffer that has been changed to the shared server, whereby the dictionary lookup unit and the dictionary editor operate the shared dictionary in the dictionary buffer.

26. The system of claim 25 wherein the dictionary replicating unit saves the shared dictionary that has been changed as a new version when replicating the shared dictionary in the dictionary buffer that has been changed to the shared server.

27. The system of claim 26 wherein the dictionary replicating unit, when saving the shared dictionary that has been changed as a new version, saves it in an incremental manner.

28. A system for browsing annotations in an electronic document, comprising:

an electronic document browser for browsing an electronic document and selecting an annotated portion in an electronic document; and

dictionary lookup unit for looking up an annotation content corresponding to the annotated portion in a shared dictionary, wherein the shared dictionary contains annotation contents for one or more electronic documents, whereby, when the dictionary lookup unit finds the annotation contents corresponding to the annotated portions, the electronic document browser displays the annotation content.