Product information providing apparatus and method

• US 20060184818A1
• Filed: 07/13/2005
• Published: 08/17/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 02/17/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fuji Xerox Company Limited (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Fuji Xerox Company Limited (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Fujinawa, Osamu
• Granted Patent: US 7,673,014 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce

Abstract

A product information providing apparatus for providing, via a network, product information for supporting operations of a product, comprises an electronic product information storage that stores electronic product information which contains a group of hicrarchized files having a file format browsable through a Web browser; a table holder that holds an event table in which an event indicating a change in the state of the product is associated with address information of the product information corresponding to the event; an event detector that detects occurrence of the event; an address information acquisition unit that acquires address information corresponding to the event detected by the event detector by referring to the table holder; an accessing unit that accesses the corresponding electronic product information based on the address information acquired by the address information acquisition unit; and a display that displays the electronic product information accessed by the accessing unit.

Claims

1. A product information providing apparatus for providing, via a network, product information for supporting operations of a product, comprising:

an electronic product information storage that stores electronic product information which contains a group of hierarchized files having a file format browsable through a Web browser, the group of hierarchized files being associated with each other by a link structure formed with the use of address information;

a table holder that holds an event table in which an event indicating a change in the state of the product is associated with address information of the product information corresponding to the event;

an event detector that detects occurrence of the event;

an address information acquisition unit that acquires address information corresponding to the event detected by the event detector by referring to the table holder;

an accessing unit that accesses the corresponding electronic product information based on the address information acquired by the address information acquisition unit; and

a display that displays the electronic product information accessed by the accessing unit.

2. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein each of the files contained in the electronic product information stored by the electronic product information storage is formed by various types of information including animation and voice;

and

the link structure formed with the use of the address information is rewritable as required.

3. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the product is a printer;

and

the product information providing apparatus is provided in any one of the printer, a Web server connected to the printer via a network, and a client terminal, or divided into parts which are separately provided in at least two of the printer, the Web server, and the client terminal.

4. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the table holder, the event detector, the address information acquisition unit, the accessing unit, and the display are provided in a client terminal connected to the product via a network;

and

the event detector detects occurrence of an event by receiving, from the product, the occurrence of the event detected in the product.

5. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a table rewriter that rewrites the event table held by the table holder.

6. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the table rewriter rewrites a relative address forming the link structure into an absolute address.

7. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a Web server address holder that holds a Web server address of a Web server in which the electronic product information is stored,

wherein the table holder holds, as the address information, a relative address to the Web server address held by the Web server address holder.

8. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an address generator that merges the Web server address held by the Web server address holder and the relative address for the electronic product information held by the table holder,

wherein the accessing unit accesses the address merged by the address generator.

9. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the Web server address is an address going to top page of the electronic product information.

10. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 7, further comprising a server address rewriter that rewrites the Web server address held by the Web server address holder.

11. The product information providing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the electronic product information is control data which is used for internal processing of the product.

12. A product information providing method for providing, via a network, product information for supporting operations of a product, comprising:

storing, an electronic product information storage, electronic product information which contains a having a file format browsable through a Web browser, the group of hierarchized files being associated with each other by a link structure formed with the use of address information;

holding, by a table holder, an event table in which an event indicating a change in a state of the product is associated with address information of the product information corresponding to the event;

detecting, by an event detector, occurrence of the event;

acquiring, by an address information acquisition unit, address information corresponding to the event detected by the event detector by referring to the table holder;

accessing, by an accessing unit, the corresponding electronic product information based on the address information acquired by the address information acquisition unit; and

displaying, on a display, the electronic product information accessed by the accessing unit.