Systems and methods for freeform annotations
First Claim
1. A method to support freeform annotations, comprising:
- reading and displaying a portion of a digital document on a screen based on one or more display properties of the screen;
accepting one or more freeform annotations on the displayed portion of the digital document via one or more input devices; and
processing the one or more freeform annotations via a completely deterministic state machine.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
Systems and methods in accordance with the present invention provide freeform annotation techniques designed to make freeform annotations on a digital document more flexible, reliable and presentable on a screen of a computing device. They allow users to markup the document, add comments, and link between annotations, while maintaining the freeform nature of these annotations without constraining the kinds of annotations allowed. These freeform annotations are then unequivocally recognized via a state machine into three groups of annotation marks: anchor, comment, and link, each of which is associated with either part of the digital document or with another annotation mark. In addition, these annotation marks can be repositioned and resized to fit within the display area available on the screen based on the display properties of the screen, thus supporting the natural flow of annotating the document in a freeform manner. This description is not intended to be a complete description of, or limit the scope of, the invention. Other features, aspects, and objects of the invention can be obtained from a review of the specification, the figures, and the claims.
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Citations
61 Claims
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1. A method to support freeform annotations, comprising:
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reading and displaying a portion of a digital document on a screen based on one or more display properties of the screen;
accepting one or more freeform annotations on the displayed portion of the digital document via one or more input devices; and
processing the one or more freeform annotations via a completely deterministic state machine. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A system to support freeform annotations, comprising:
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a storage component capable of maintaining a digital document and one or more software components;
a display component capable of;
displaying a portion of the digital document based on one or more display properties of the display component; and
accepting one or more freeform annotations on the displayed portion of the digital document via one or more input devices; and
a processing component capable of processing the one or more freeform annotations via a completely deterministic state machine. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
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41. A machine readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by a processor cause a system to:
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read and display a portion of a digital document on a screen based on one or more display properties of the screen;
accept one or more freeform annotations on the displayed portion of the digital document via one or more input devices; and
process the one or more freeform annotations via a completely deterministic state machine. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59)
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60. A system for managing versions of a software component, comprising:
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means for reading and displaying a portion of a digital document on a screen based on one or more display properties of the screen;
means for accepting one or more freeform annotations on the displayed portion of the digital document via one or more input devices; and
means for processing the one or more freeform annotations via a completely deterministic state machine.
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61. A computer data signal embodied in a transmission medium, comprising:
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a code segment including instructions to read and display a portion of a digital document on a screen based on one or more display properties of the screen;
a code segment including instructions to accept one or more freeform annotations on the displayed portion of the digital document via one or more input devices; and
a code segment including instructions to process the one or more freeform annotations via a completely deterministic state machine.
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Specification