System and method for annotating documents using a viewer

• US 8,276,060 B2
• Filed: 08/13/2007
• Issued: 09/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/16/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Hong, Lichan, Chi, Ed H
• Primary Examiner(s): Patel, Manglesh M
• Application Number:
  US11/837,889
• Publication Number:
  US 20080201651A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,870 Days
• Field of Search: 715/230, 715/200, 715/232, 715/255
• US Class Current: 715/230
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/38 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/383 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture therefor, are disclosed for annotating documents in a viewer. In one embodiment, the method includes: associating the document with a user; identifying one or more sub-document elements in the document; augmenting the document by making words within the document selectable; displaying the augmented document in the viewer; and responsive to each user input selecting a word in the document displayed in the viewer, further augmenting the document displayed in the viewer by inserting the selected word following the sub-document element from which the word was selected.

Claims

1. A method for annotating a document in a viewer, comprising:

associating the document with a user;

identifying one or more sub-document elements in the document;

computing a similarity measure from content of the identified one or more sub-document elements in the document;

identifying one or more other sub-document elements in one or more further non-identical documents stored in a database, each of the one or more other sub-document elements associated with one or more annotations, with comparable similarity measures to the one or more sub-document elements in the document;

augmenting the document, comprising;

making words within the document selectable;

responsive to each user input selecting a word in the document, inserting the selected word following the sub-document element from which the word was selected;

inserting the one or more annotations associated with the identified one or more other sub-document elements with comparable similarity measures following the sub-document element in the document; and

storing in a database a record that associates the user with the computed similarity measure of the sub-document element'"'"'s content and the selected words and storing with the record a URL of the document as a URL/USER pair in a bi-graph matrix for generating spreading activation computation profiles; and

displaying the augmented document in the viewer.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein said augmenting further comprises inserting the selected word in a tagging comment field.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein said augmenting further comprises making in a list one or more of frequently and recently used keywords in the document selectable.

4. The method according to claim 2, wherein said augmenting further comprises inserting a user name label of the user associated with the document after the sub-document element and before the tagging comment field.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein each word is made selectable using a bounding box.

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein the bounding box includes a plurality of words.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the document is a web page.

8. The method according to claim 1, further comprising displaying the selected word following the sub-document element with a different appearance from the sub-document element.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the similarity measure is a unique identifier that uniquely identifies sub-document elements.

10. The method according to claim 1, wherein the one or more sub-document elements are a type selected from the group consisting of words, images, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages, sections, and chapters.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the sub-document elements are a plurality of types selected from the group consisting of words, images, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages, sections, and chapters.

12. A method for annotating a document in a viewer, comprising:

associating the document with a user;

identifying one or more sub-document elements in the document;

computing a similarity measure from content of the identified one or more sub-document elements in the document;

identifying one or more other sub-document elements in one or more further non-identical documents stored in a database, each of the one or more other sub-document elements associated with one or more annotations, with comparable similarity measures to the one or more sub-document elements in the document;

augmenting the document, comprising;

inserting a tagging comment field after identified sub-document elements;

responsive to each user input selecting a word in the document, inserting the selected word in the tagging comment field corresponding to the sub-document element from which the word was selected;

inserting the one or more annotations associated with the identified one or more other sub-document elements with comparable similarity measures following the sub-document element in the document; and

storing in a database a record that associates the user with the computed similarity measure of the sub-document element'"'"'s content and the selected words and storing with the record a URL of the document as a URL/USER pair in a bi-graph matrix for generating spreading activation computation profiles; and

displaying the augmented document in the viewer.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein said augmenting further comprises inserting a user name label of the user associated with the document after the sub-document element and before the tagging comment field.

14. The method according to claim 13, wherein the similarity measure is a unique identifier that uniquely identifies sub-document elements.

15. The method according to claim 12, wherein the sub-document element is a paragraph.

16. The method according to claim 12, wherein said augmenting further comprises augmenting the document by making each word within the document selectable using a bounding box.

17. The method according to claim 16, wherein said augmenting further comprises making in a list one or more of frequently and recently used keywords in the document selectable.

18. A method for annotating a document in a viewer, comprising:

identifying one or more sub-document elements in the document;

computing a unique identifier from content of the identified sub-document elements in the document;

identifying one or more other sub-document elements in one or more further non-identical documents stored in a database, each of the one or more other sub-document elements associated with one or more annotations, with comparable unique identifiers to the one or more sub-document elements in the document;

augmenting the located sub-document elements of the document, comprising;

responsive to each user input selecting a word in the document, inserting the selected word following the sub-document element from which the word was selected; and

inserting the one or more annotations associated with the identified one or more other sub-document elements with comparable similarity measures following the sub-document element in the document; and

storing in a database a record that associates the user with the computed similarity measure of the sub-document element'"'"'s content and the selected words and storing with the record a URL of the document as a URL/USER pair in a bi-graph matrix for generating spreading activation computation profiles;

displaying the augmented document in the viewer; and

recording in the database the selected word and the computed unique identifier of the sub-document element from which the word was selected.