METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CUSTOMIZING THE DISPLAY OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA

• US 20080072145A1
• Filed: 09/19/2006
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/19/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Blanchard, John A., Martin, Jennifer
• Granted Patent: US 7,752,534 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/273
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities

Abstract

A Tag Cloud Customizer (TCC) provides an interactive legend and a tag cloud generator that allows a user to customize a tag cloud. The interactive legend allows users to map custom display characteristics to a plurality of tag attributes. The tag cloud generator creates a custom tag cloud using the custom display characteristics. The user can also sort the order of tags in the tag cloud by any of the plurality of tag attributes. In one embodiment of TCC, the user can define a custom tag attribute.

Claims

1. A computer implemented process for customizing the display of a tag cloud, the computer implemented process comprising:

displaying an interactive legend, wherein a user can map display characteristics to a plurality of tag attributes; and

generating a tag cloud, wherein each tag is displayed using the mapped display characteristics.

2. The computer implemented process of claim 1 wherein the display characteristics comprise:

font color, font size, transparency, opacity, background color, borders, motion, underlines, italics, strikethroughs, three dimensional representation of depth, shadowing and no display.

3. The computer implemented process of claim 1 wherein the plurality of tag attributes comprise:

popularity of an item, last update of an item, frequency of updates to an item, age of an item, size of an item, and whether there have been comments or replies related to an item.

4. The computer implemented process of claim 3 where the plurality of tag attributes further comprise:

a custom, user defined tag attribute.

5. The computer implemented process of claim 1 further comprising:

setting a sort criteria using one of the plurality of tag attributes and displaying the tag cloud with the tags ordered based upon the sort criteria.

6. The computer implemented process of claim 1 wherein the user can rearrange, add or remove tag attributes from the interactive legend.

7. The computer implemented process of claim 1 further comprising:

displaying tag attribute details whenever a mouse cursor hovers over a tag in the tag cloud.

8. An apparatus for customizing the display of a tag cloud, the apparatus comprising:

a processor;

a memory connected to the processor;

an indexing application running in the memory, operable to extract tags from a collection of items and collect usage statistics related to each item;

a tag table file in the memory containing the indexed tags and statistics; and

a tag cloud customizer program in the memory operable to display an interactive legend, wherein a user can map display characteristics to a plurality of tag attributes and generate a tag cloud, wherein each tag is displayed using the mapped display characteristics.

9. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the display characteristics comprise:

font color, font size, transparency, opacity, background color, borders, motion, underlines, italics, strikethroughs, three dimensional representation of depth, shadowing and no display.

10. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the plurality of tag attributes comprise:

popularity of an item, last update of an item, frequency of updates to an item, age of an item, size of an item, and whether there have been comments or replies related to an item.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 where the plurality of tag attributes further comprise:

a custom, user defined tag attribute.

12. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the tag cloud customizer program in the memory is further operable to set a sort criteria using one of the plurality of tag attributes and display the tag cloud with the tags ordered based upon the sort criteria.

13. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the user can rearrange, add or remove tag attributes from the interactive legend.

14. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the tag cloud customizer program in the memory is further operable to save the mapped display characteristics to a style sheet file in the memory, and generate the tag cloud based upon the tag table file and the style sheet file.

15. A computer readable memory containing a plurality of instructions to cause a computer to customize the display of a tag cloud, the plurality of instructions comprising:

a first instruction to display an interactive legend containing a list of display characteristics and a list of tag attributes;

a second instruction to read a user defined mapping of display characteristics to a plurality of tag attributes; and

a third instruction to generate a tag cloud, wherein each tag is displayed using the mapped display characteristics.

16. The computer readable memory of claim 15 wherein the display characteristics comprise:

font color, font size, transparency, opacity, background color, borders, motion, underlines, italics, strikethroughs, three dimensional representation of depth, shadowing and no display.

17. The computer readable memory of claim 15 wherein the plurality of tag attributes comprise:

popularity of an item, frequency of updates to an item, how recently an item was accessed, age of an item, size of an item, and whether there have been comments or replies related to an item.

18. The computer readable memory of claim 17 where the plurality of tag attributes further comprise:

a custom, user defined tag attribute.

19. The computer readable memory of claim 15 further comprising:

an instruction to set a sort criteria using one of the plurality of tag attributes and an instruction to display the tag cloud with the tags ordered based upon the sort criteria.

20. The computer readable memory of claim 15 further comprising:

an instruction to allow the user to rearrange, add or remove tag attributes from the interactive legend.