Method and system for providing restricted actions for recognized semantic categories

• US 20020087591A1
• Filed: 07/16/2001
• Published: 07/04/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Wang, Ziyi, Reynar, Jeff, Ammerlaan, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 7,788,602 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/500
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

A method for semantically labeling strings in an electronic document and providing actions in association with those recognized strings is disclosed. Strings are recognized and annotated, or labeled, with a type label by a recognizer plug-in. After the strings are annotated with a type label, application program modules may use the type label and other metadata to provide users with a choice of electronic commerce actions. If the user'"'"'s computer does not have any actions associated with that type label, the user may be provided with the option to surf to a download Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and download action plug-ins for that type label. An ActionGUID may be used to specify the class ids (CLSIDs) of the action plug-ins that may be used to provide actions for a particular semantic category type label. Each DLL has a class id (CLSID), which is a GUID. The ActionGUID is a GUID that is specified by the recognizer plug-in and which corresponds to the CLSID(s) of the only action plug-ins that should be permitted to provide actions for the semantic category type label provided by the recognizer plug-in.

Claims

1. For an electronic system for creating and editing an electronic document, a computer-implemented method for providing a plurality of actions in association with a string in the electronic document, the method comprising the steps of:

recognizing the string as a semantic category;

determining an action ID associated with the semantic category;

determining a plurality of action plug-ins associated with the semantic category; and

for each of the plurality of action plug-ins, determining whether a class ID matches the action ID and, if so, then displaying an action for the matching action plug-in in a semantic category menu.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:

determining that the action has been selected and performing the action defined by the action plug-in on the electronic document.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the semantic category menu is displayed in response to a user selecting the semantic category.

4. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the steps recited in claim 1.

5. A method in a computer system for displaying on a display device a semantic category action menu, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving an indication from a user that the semantic category action menu for a semantic category is to be displayed;

determining a plurality of actions to be displayed in the semantic category action menu; and

displaying on the display device the semantic category action menu.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the step of determining a plurality of actions to be displayed in the semantic category action menu comprises:

determining an action ID for the semantic category;

determining a class ID for an action plug-in associated with the semantic category; and

if the action ID matches the class ID, then determining that an action defined by the action plug-in is to be displayed in the semantic category action menu.

7. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the steps recited in claim 6.

8. The method of claim 6 further comprising the steps of:

receiving an indication that the action has been selected by the user; and

performing the action defined by the action plug-in.

9. The method of claim 6 wherein the step of determining an action ID for the semantic category comprises receiving an action ID from a recognizer plug-in associated with the semantic category.

10. The method of claim 6 wherein the step of determining an action ID for the semantic category comprises searching a database for the action ID associated with the semantic category.

11. A computer system for displaying on a display device a semantic category action menu in an electronic document of an application program module, the system comprising:

a recognizer plug-in for recognizing the semantic category for a string in the electronic document; and

an action plug-in for providing an action in association with the semantic category, wherein the action plug-in comprises a class ID, wherein the class ID identifies the action plug-in as an authorized action plug-in for the semantic category.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the recognizer plug-in further comprises an action ID and wherein the class ID matches the action ID to identify the action plug-in as an authorized action plug-in for the semantic category.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the recognizer plug-in sends the action ID to the application program module so that the application program module determine whether the action plug-in is an authorized action plug-in by comparing the action ID to the class ID to determine whether they match.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein an action ID associated with the semantic category is stored in a database and wherein the class ID is matched with the action ID to identify the action plug-in as an authorized action plug-in for the semantic category.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising the steps of:

disabling any action plug-in and any recognizer plug-in that is not identified by the tag while the electronic document is being viewed.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the electronic document is a webpage.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the tag is an HTML tag.

15. For an electronic system for creating and editing an electronic document, a computer-implemented method for providing a plurality of actions in association with a string in the electronic document, the method comprising the steps of:

determining that the electronic document has a tag identifying a recognizer plug-in and an action plug-in associated with the electronic document;

activating the recognizer plug-in and action plug-in identified by the tag;

recognizing semantic categories using the activated recognizer plug-in; and

providing actions for the recognized semantic categories using the activated action plug-in.