CONTENT-BASED REVISION HISTORY TIMELINES

• US 20160012082A1
• Filed: 07/09/2014
• Published: 01/14/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/09/2014
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Choudhury, Rajorshi Ghosh
• Application Number:
  US14/326,902
• Publication Number:
  US 20160012082A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/215 Improving data quality; Data cleansing, e.g. de-duplication, removing invalid entries or correcting typographical errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/447 Temporal browsing, e.g. timeline
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71

Abstract

A document management system associates content provided within a managed document with a content-based revision history timeline. Multiple documents may be associated with the timeline, wherein each of the documents contains content that is nearly duplicative with respect to content contained in at least one other associated document. Content items can be considered to be nearly duplicative based on an evaluation of resemblance and containment of a set of shingles derived from each content items. If no nearly duplicative content is detected, a new revision history timeline is created. The resulting revision history timelines can be rendered in response to certain user commands, such as document check-out from the document management system, thereby providing users with a visual understanding of how content contained within a given document relates to content contained in other documents managed by the document management system.

Claims

1. A method for tracking content revision history, the method comprising:

receiving a first document D₁;

parsing the first document into a first set of shingles based on a shingle size w, the first set of shingles being represented by S(D₁, w);

retrieving a second set of shingles corresponding to a second document D₂, wherein the second set of shingles, which is also based on the shingle size w, is represented by S(D₂, w);

making a determination with respect to whether the first document is nearly duplicative of the second document, wherein the determination is based on a comparison of S(D₁, w) and S(D₂, w); and

adding a data pair {S(D₁, w), T} to a timeline repository, wherein T represents a revision history timeline that includes the first document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first document is received in conjunction with a command to check the first document into a document repository.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein, in response to making a determination that the first document is nearly duplicative of the second document, the method further comprises causing the data pair {S(D₁, w), T₁₂} to be added to the timeline repository, wherein T₁₂ represents a revision history timeline that includes the first and second documents.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the timeline repository includes data pairs that collectively correlate a plurality of documents with a particular revision history timeline.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the timeline repository includes a particular set of shingles which is correlated with a plurality of different revision history timelines.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the first document is received in conjunction with a command originating from a user to check the first document into a document repository; and

the method further comprises;

generating a graphical representation of the revision history timeline based on data extracted from the timeline repository, and

sending the graphical representation of the revision history timeline to the user.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a command to remove a third document D₃ from a document repository; and

removing a data pair {S(D₃, T), w} from the timeline repository, wherein S(D₃, T) represents a third set of shingles that are generated from the third document, and wherein T represents a timeline that included the third document upon receipt of the command.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a graphical representation of the revision history timeline based on data extracted from the timeline repository, wherein the revision history timeline includes a plurality of documents, each of which is nearly duplicative of another one of the plurality of documents.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the first document is considered to be nearly duplicative of the second document where a resemblance parameter

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the first document is considered to be nearly duplicative of the second document where at least one of the containment parameters

11. A system for content revision history tracking, the system comprising:

a timeline repository stored in a memory device, the timeline repository including a plurality of data pairs {S(D, w), T}, wherein D represents a document, T represents a revision history timeline that includes D, and S(D, w) represents a set of shingles that is derived from D and that is based on a shingle size w;

a document administration module configured to receive a first document D₁ and a user command with respect to the first document;

a content comparison module configured to evaluate a similarity measure between S(D₁, w) and S(D₂, w), wherein D₂ represents a second document that is retrieved from a document repository; and

a timeline administration module configured to store a data pair {S(D₁, w), T₁₂} in the timeline repository in response to determining that the similarity measure exceeds a predetermined threshold similarity, wherein T₁₂ represents a revision history timeline that includes the first and second documents.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the user command is a command to add the first document to the document repository.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein determining that the similarity measure exceeds the predetermined threshold similarity indicates that the first and second documents are nearly duplicative based on a comparison of at least one of resemblance and containment.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the shingle size w ranges from about 20 words to about 40 words.

15. The system of claim 11, further comprising a timeline generation module configured to generate a graphical representation of the revision history timeline T₁₂.

16. The system of claim 11, further comprising a timeline generation module configured to send a graphical representation of the revision history timeline T₁₂ to a user that originated the user command.

17. A computer program product encoded with instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, causes a process for tracking content revision history to be carried out, the process comprising:

receiving a first document containing first content;

retrieving a second document containing second content, wherein the second document is not an older version of the first document;

making a determination whether the first document is nearly duplicative of the second document based on a comparison of the first and second content; and

where the determination indicates that the first and second documents are nearly duplicative of each other, adding a representation of the first document to a timeline repository that already contains a representation of the second document.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein:

the determination is based on evaluating a similarity measure for the first and second documents; and

the similarity measure is selected from a group consisting of resemblance and containment.

19. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein:

the second document is retrieved from a document repository managed by a document management system; and

the first document is received from a first document source external to the document management system.

20. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein the process further comprises generating a graphical representation of the revision history timeline based on data extracted from the timeline repository, wherein the revision history timeline includes a plurality of documents, each of which is nearly duplicative of another one of the plurality of documents.