TEXT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

• US 20100100817A1
• Filed: 02/27/2008
• Published: 04/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Author-It Labs Limited
• Original Assignee: Optical Systems Corporation Limited
• Inventors: Trotter, Paul Stewart
• Granted Patent: US 8,205,155 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/261
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces

Abstract

Text management software system which stores and retrieves text as paragraph size Text Fragments. Each fragment is stored in a separate record in a text store. As text is created and is to be saved to a text store, the system is adapted to break the text into paragraph size text fragments. As or before text is stored the system runs statistical comparisons between text fragments and builds a matrix of similarity between the text fragments stored in the separate records and presents these to the author for substitution.

Claims

1. A method of substituting alternative text in the electronic input of an authors work wherein text currently being entered by an author is compared to text fragments of previously stored texts and, where the entered text is substantially similar on one of at least two differing bases to previous text fragments displaying to the author substitute text fragments for the entered text and subsequently optionally substituting a chosen text fragment for the entered text.

2. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 1 wherein the first similarity basis is solely an edit distance basis, and the second distance basis combines a word occurrence algorithm, a word difference algorithm and an edit distance algorithm, and the two bases may contribute differently to the final similarity basis.

3. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 1 wherein at storage of text fragments any in-line text attributes in a text fragment are separated before determining if a similar text fragment already exists in text storage.

4. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 1 wherein at storage any “

related words”

are optionally resolvable to a single normalized word form.

5. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 1 wherein the text store is a database capable of storing paragraph size text fragments as separate records, each identical text fragment being represented as a single record.

6. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 1 wherein a single text fragment may have multiple differing equivalents and the document may be recreated in alternative differing forms from the differing equivalents.

7. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 6 wherein the document may be recreated in a different language.

8. A method of substituting alternative text as claimed in claim 1 wherein differences in in-line tagging can be stored as a separate layer linked to the context of the re-use.

9. A document authoring system which stores text as text fragments of one or more words, compares text typed into a document with known stored text fragments, and where text typed is similar to known text fragments concurrently displays the known text fragments as alternatives for insertion in the document in place of the text typed, the system additionally further processing typed text to determine further the variations from other stored text and subsequently presenting similar text found as optional substitutes for text fragments of the typed text.

10. A document authoring system as claimed in claim 9 wherein the stored text fragments contain no text formatting.

11. A document authoring system as claimed in claim 9 wherein the text fragments are compared initially for word similarity and latterly for similarity on an edit distance basis.

12. A document authoring system as claimed in claim 9 wherein while text is being typed the text as typed is compared both for similarity with text fragments on a word comparison basis and with similarity on an edit distance basis, and the results of the two comparisons are combined on a percentage basis.

13. A document authoring system as claimed in claim 9 wherein the system runs statistical comparisons between previously stored text fragments on an edit distance basis and builds a matrix of similarity between the text fragments.

14. A document authoring system as claimed in claim 9 wherein once a text fragment is complete a further comparison for similarity is made using an edit distance comparison on a normalised form of the text fragment.

15. A text substitution apparatus having a store storing text fragments and a viewer presenting text fragments appearing in an electronic document, a comparer comparing presented text fragments with stored text fragments and a choice means offering stored text fragments to an apparatus user where presented text fragments differ from stored text fragments by less than a definable quantity and a substitution means which substitutes a stored text fragment for a presented text fragment when the stored text fragment is chosen by the apparatus user characterized in that the choice means presents stored text fragments in order of similarity to the presented text fragments.

16. A text substitution apparatus as claimed in claim 15 wherein the definable quantity is defined by the edit distance of the text fragments.

17. A text substitution apparatus as claimed in claim 16 wherein the definable quantity is presented as a percentage of similarity in terms of edit distance of the presented text fragments to the stored text fragments.

18. A text substitution apparatus as claimed in claim 15 wherein the definable quantity is presented as a percentage of similarity in terms of relevance of the presented text fragments to the stored text fragments.

19. A text substitution apparatus as claimed in claim 15 wherein the similarity is indicated by presentation color.

20. A method of comparing and substituting text at text entry to a document comprising providing a store of text fragments each of one or more words, entering text to the document, concurrently comparing text fragments in the entered text to the stored text fragments, concurrently presenting to the text enterer a list of those stored text fragments closely approximating the entered text fragments for immediate substitution with an entered text fragment, preparing the amended text for storage by resolving each entered text fragment to a normalized form, comparing the normalized text fragments to the stored text fragments and presenting a list of those stored text fragments approximating the normalized text fragments for optional immediate substitution prior to storage.