Method for enhancing text by applying sets of folding and horizontal displacement rules

• US 7,765,471 B2
• Filed: 01/31/2006
• Issued: 07/27/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/07/1996
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Walker Reading Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Walker Reading Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Walker, Randall C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Paula; Cesar B
• Application Number:
  US11/343,522
• Publication Number:
  US 20060129922A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,638 Days
• Field of Search: 715/200, 715243-247, 715/251, 715255-256, 715/275
• US Class Current: 715/245
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 17/04 for increasing the rate of reading; Reading rate control
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/065 Combinations of audio and video presentations, e.g. videotapes, videodiscs, television systems

Abstract

Reading product fabrication methods and devices are provided. Characteristic of the methods is the extraction of text specific attributes from machine readable text, and varying the text presentation in accordance with the attributes. Parts of speech and punctuation of a sentence are identified, with folding rules, which use the parts of speech to determine folding points, applied. The sentence is divided into text segments based upon the folding points, and horizontal displacement rules applied to create displayed text characterized by a cascading appearance.

Claims

1. A method for enhancing text presentation from a machine readable natural language text based on reader specific parameters including at least the viewing field dimensions comprising:

a. parsing said text into punctuation and parts of speech for extracting text specific attributes;

b. storing said text specific attributes in relation to the parts of speech to produce an enriched text;

c. applying primary folding rules followed by secondary folding rules to said enriched text, applied in order of a folding rule rank thereby dividing said text into text segments, said folding rules having at least said punctuation attributes and parts of speech attributes as inputs and visual attributes as outputs, said visual attributes including the displaying of the text segments in new lines;

d. applying secondary folding rules until a limit is reached, this limit preferably being the minimum line length;

e. applying text segment horizontal displacement rules to said text segments to determine a horizontal displacement for each text segment, said horizontal displacement rules including parts of speech as inputs and visual attributes of horizontal displacement as outputs to produce an enhanced text; and

f. displaying said enhanced text by cascading the text segments in lines down and across a display.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said text specific attributes include text location within a text body, said text presentation includes background color and said text processing includes varying said background color in accordance within said text location.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said text specific attributes include a text difficulty measure, and said text presentation includes an automatic text advancement rate, and said text processing includes varying said text presentation rate in accordance within said text difficulty measure.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein said text difficulty measure includes an estimated pronunciation time of said text and/or an estimated educational level of said text and/or the number of syllables in said text.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein applying primary and secondary folding rules comprises

providing a minimum text segment length;

providing a maximum text segment length;

determining primary folding point locations in said text by applying the primary folding rules, thereby dividing said text into super-phrases;

determining secondary folding point locations in the super-phrases by applying the secondary folding rules, thereby dividing the super-phrases into text segments;

repeating said previous step until all text segments are no greater than the maximum text segment length, and no less than the minimum text length.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising

accepting user edits of the displayed text folding points;

and

storing the user edits in machine readable form; and

/or

accepting user edits of the displayed text parts of speech; and

storing the user edits in machine readable form; and

/or

accepting user annotations to the displayed text parts of speech; and

storing the user annotations in machine readable form.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising

accepting user edits of the displayed text folding points;

and

storing the user edits in machine readable form; and

/or

accepting user edits of the displayed text parts of speech; and

storing the user edits in machine readable form; and

/or

accepting user annotations to the displayed text parts of speech; and

storing the user annotations in machine readable form.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein said visual attributes include the displaying of said text segments in a color depending on said parts of speech and/or the displaying of said text segments on new lines.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein said primary rules include punctuation as inputs;

said secondary rules include parts of speech as inputs.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein said folding rules further include a microgrammar for disambiguating said parts of speech.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein applying primary and secondary folding rules comprises

providing a minimum text segment length;

providing a maximum text segment length;

determining primary folding point locations in said text by applying the primary folding rules, thereby dividing said text into super-phrases;

determining secondary folding point locations in the super-phrases by applying the secondary folding rules, thereby dividing the super-phrases into text segments;

repeating said previous step until all text segments are no greater than the maximum text segment length, and no less than the minimum text length.

12. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining the likely parts of speech of said words from said parsing step.

13. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

providing color display rules, wherein said color display rules include said likely parts of speech as inputs and text color as an output; and

displaying said text according to said text color output.

14. A device for enhancing text presentation from a machine readable natural language text an enhanced text presentation based on reader specific parameters including at least text viewing field dimensions comprising:

parsing means for parsing said text into punctuation and parts of speech for extracting text specific attributes;

storing means for storing said text specific attributes in relation to the parts of speech to produce an enriched text;

means for applying primary folding rules followed by secondary folding rules to said enriched text, applied in order of a folding rule rank thereby dividing said text into text segments said folding rules having at least said punctuation attributes and parts of speech attributes as inputs and visual attributes as outputs;

means for applying secondary folding rules until a limit is reached, this limit preferably being the minimum line length; and

wherein the visual attributes include the displaying of the text segments in new lines;

means for applying text segment horizontal displacement rules to said text segments to determine a horizontal displacement descent angle including attributes of the text in the line above for each text segment, said horizontal displacement rules including parts of speech as inputs and visual attributes of horizontal displacement as outputs to produce an enhanced text; and

means for displaying said enhanced text by cascading the text segments in lines down and across a display.

15. The device of claim 14 wherein said means for applying primary and secondary folding rules comprise:

minimum text segment length input means for inputting a minimum text segment length;

maximum text segment length input means for inputting a maximum text segment length;

primary determining means for determining primary folding point locations in said text by applying the primary folding rules, thereby dividing said text into super-phrases;

secondary determining means for determining secondary folding point locations in the super-phrases by applying the secondary folding rules, thereby dividing the super-phrases into text segments;

means for repeating said step for determining secondary folding point locations until all text segments are no greater than the maximum text segment length, and no less than the minimum text length.

16. The device of claim 15 wherein the enriched text includes words and phrases and is implemented as a linked list of nodes, each node having the word and phrase attributes.

17. The device of claim 14 wherein said folding rules include primary rules and secondary rules, said primary rules include punctuation as inputs and said secondary rules include parts of speech as inputs;

comprising a table containing word sets establishing a hierarchy of secondary folding points.