Document generation apparatus and methods

• US 5,043,891 A
• Filed: 09/05/1989
• Issued: 08/27/1991
• Est. Priority Date: 08/16/1985
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Wang Laboratories Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Wang Laboratories Incorporated
• Inventors: Goldstein, Henry, Shannon, David F., Bolling, Richard W., Rustici, Eric
• Primary Examiner(s): MacDonald, Allen R.
• Application Number:
  US07/403,256
• Time in Patent Office: 721 Days
• Field of Search: 364/513, 364/419, 364/200, 364/900, 364/274.5, 364/943.44
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/00 Arrangements for software engineering testing or debugging G06F11/36; administrative, planning or organisation aspects of software project management G06Q10/06
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/022 Knowledge engineering; Knowledge acquisition
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/045 Explanation of inference; Explainable artificial intelligence [XAI]; Interpretable artificial intelligence
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 706/902 Application using ai with detail of the ai system

Abstract

A document generation system which employs a definition-based expert system and an editor to produce an output document from a template document and expert system responses. The knowledge base of the expert system consists of a hierarchy of terms and their definitions. To produce an expert response, an inference engine component of the expert system evaluates a term by evaluating all of the definitions for the terms which are in that term'"'"'s hierarchy of definitions. In the document generation system, the terms include fragment terms which are defined as portions of the template document.

Claims

1. A document generation system for generating an output document comprising:

a template document;

an expert system knowledge base for storing knowledge base items;

editing means for editing the template document and the output document;

expert system knowledge base defining means for defining the knowledge base items in response to first user inputs, the knowledge base defining means including document portion defining means responsive to one of the first user inputs for defining a document portion knowledge base item associated with a portion of the template document by providing the editing means to the user to edit the portion and associating the edited portion with the document portion knowledge base item in the knowledge base; and

expert system inference engine means for providing expert responses in response to second user inputs and the knowledge base items, the inference engine means including output document generation means responsive to a document portion knowledge base item for employing the editing means to provide the document portion associated with the document portion knowledge base item to the output document when the document portion knowledge base item and the second user inputs so require.

2. The document generation system set forth in claim 1 wherein:

the editing means includes means for identifying a text string in a document portion as a term representing a value returned by the expert system inference engine means; and

the output document generation means detects the identified term in the provided document portion, provides the identified term to the inference engine, receives the value of the identified term from the inference engine, and outputs the received value to the output document in place of the identified term

3. A document generation system for generating an output document comprising:

a template document;

editing means for editing the template document and the output document;

a knowledge base including hierarchically defined terms and their definitions, the corresponding definition of each term defining its respective term using the value of one or more terms, each whose definitions is at a lower level of the hierarchy, and/or using one or more term-independent values which do not depend on the value of a term;

knowledge base defining means for defining the terms in response to first user inputs, the knowledge base defining means including document portion term defining means for defining a document portion term of the terms which is associated with a portion of the template document, the document portion term defining means providing the editing means to the user to edit the portion and associating the edited portion with a definition of the document portion term in the knowledge base; and

inference engine means for responding to second user inputs by obtaining the definition of a given term from the knowledge base, computing the value of the given term from its corresponding definition by obtaining the value of any term and any term-independent value in the corresponding definition, the inference engine means including output document generation means for obtaining the value of a document portion term by employing the editing means to provide the document portion associated with the document portion term to the output document when the document portion knowledge base item and the second user inputs so require.

6. The document generation system set forth in claim 3 wherein:

the document portion term defining means includes a condition dependent on the value of another term in the definition of the document portion term; and

the inference engine means computes the value of the other term and causes the output document generation means to obtain the value of the document portion term only if the condition is fulfilled.

7. The document generation system set forth in claim 3 wherein:

the editing means additionally edits the template document independently of the document portion term defining means and employs first identification means to identify a text string in the document portion defining the document portion term as the document portion term; and

the document portion term defining means additionally detects the document portion term in the document portion by means of the first identification means and responds thereto by defining the document portion term in the knowledge base and associating the document portion with the document portion term with the defined document portion term.

8. The document generation system set forth in claim 7 wherein:

the editing means additionally employs second identification means

for identifying a text string in a document portion as a term other than the document portion term defined by the document portion; and

the document portion term defining means detects the identified other term in the document portion by means of the second identification means and provides the detected other term to the knowledge base defining means;

the knowledge base defining means responds to the detected other term by determining whether there is a definition for the detected term in the knowledge base and if there is not, requesting first user inputs from the user and defining the detected other term therefrom; and

the output document generation means detects the identified other term in the provided document portion by means of the second identification means, provides the identified other term to the inference engine, receives the value of the identified other term from the inference engine, and outputs the received value to the output document in place of the identified other term.

4. The document generation system set forth in claim wherein:

the editing means includes means for identifying a text string in a document portion as a term;

the document portion term defining means detects the identified term in the document portion and provides the detected term to the knowledge base defining means;

the knowledge base defining means responds to the detected term by determining whether there is a definition for the detected term in the knowledge base and if there is not, requesting first user inputs from the user and defining the detected term therefrom; and

the output document generation means detects the identified term in the provided document portion, provides the identified term to the inference engine, receives the value of the identified term from the inference engine, and outputs the received value to the output document in place of the identified term.

5. The document generation system set forth in claim 4 wherein:

the identified term is a document portion term referring to another portion of the template document.