METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR FACILITATING TEXT INPUT

• US 20120173222A1
• Filed: 01/05/2011
• Published: 07/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/05/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Wang, Yonggang, Xiao, Xiangye, Feng, Hanping, Ou, Henry, Wang, Junyu, Zeng, Jian, Jie, Pan, Zhang, George, Chang, Annie
• Granted Patent: US 9,009,030 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/232 Orthographic correction, e.g. spell checking or vowelisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/274 Converting codes to words; Guess-ahead of partial word inputs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation

Abstract

A method and system for facilitating text input is disclosed. The method comprises: invoking an input assistant from within an application in an operating environment at a client, the input assistant being a standalone input service within the same operating environment as the application, receiving a text string from a user in an input field of the application, providing, by the input assistant, input prediction for completing the text string, selecting an input text of at least one word in the input field of the application, retrieving, by the input assistant, text content related to the input text from one or more text assistance services in communication with the input assistant, presenting the received text content to the user for assistance in the user'"'"'s text input.

Claims

13. A system for facilitating text input, comprising:

an input assistant at a client, configured to be invoked from within an application at the client and process input text received from a user in an input field of the application, the input assistant being a standalone input service within the same operating environment as the application at the client and comprising;

a text parser to parse the input text;

a service communication interface to communicate with two or more different text assistance services and select at least one or more of the different text assistance services, configured to return text content related to the input text to the input assistant as results; and

a presentation handler to present the results received from the input assistant services.

1. A method for facilitating text input, comprising:

invoking an input assistant from within an application in an operating environment at a client, the input assistant being a standalone input service within the same operating environment as the application and operable to be invoked from within a plurality of applications;

receiving a text string from a user in an input field of the application;

providing, by the input assistant, input prediction for completing the text string, the providing comprising;

selecting an input text of at least a portion of one word in the input field of the application;

selecting one or more text assistance services from at least two or more different text assistance services;

receiving, by the input assistant, text content related to the input text from the one or more selected text assistance services in communication with the input assistant; and

presenting the received text content at the client.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the prediction is performed after a predetermined time of inaction by the user since the input of the last character.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the input prediction comprises a list of words or expressions ranked according to their relevance to the input string.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the list is presented to the user in a popup menu within the application.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein a remaining part of the word or expression of highest ranking from the list is filled in the input text in a shaded color, which, upon user confirmation, are committed to the input field.

6. The method of claim 5, further including:

upon a user confirmation of selection of an item in the menu, committing the selected item to the input field to substitute the selected input text.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the confirmation is a press on the space bar or “

return”

key.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the two or more different text assistance services at least include one or more of:

a dictionary service that provides meanings in a first language for a word or phrase in a second language;

a spell checking service that detects erroneous spellings of a word in a language and provides its correct spelling in the same language;

a translation service that provides text translation between at least two languages;

a thesaurus service that provides synonyms and antonyms for a particular word in a language;

an input history service that provides past expressions input by a particular user that are related to a target expression;

a grammar checker that checks the grammar of one or more input sentences;

a template filler that provides predefined document types for including body text of a particular document type;

or a grader that can be used to determine the overall writing quality of an input text.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein:

the text string input by the user is in English;

the bilingual dictionary service is a English-Chinese dictionary service configured to provide meanings in Chinese for a word or phrase in English;

the spell checking service is configured to detect erroneous spellings of an English word and provide its correct spelling;

the translation service is configured to translate between English and Chinese; and

the thesaurus service is configured to return synonyms and antonyms of an English word.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the text assistance services is implemented in a server remote from the client.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of selecting an input text is performed manually by a user.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting an input text is performed automatically by the input assistant.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein at least one of the text assistance services is located at a remote server.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the different text assistance services at least include:

a dictionary service that provides meanings in a first language for a word or phrase in a second language;

a spell checking service that detects erroneous spellings of a word in a language and provides its correct spelling in the same language;

a translation service that provides text translation between at least two languages;

a thesaurus service that provides synonyms and antonyms for a particular word in a language;

or an input history service that provides past expressions input by a particular user that are related to a target expression.

15-1. The system of claim 14, wherein:

the text string input by the user is in English,

the bilingual dictionary service is a English-Chinese dictionary service configured to provide meanings in Chinese for a word or phrase in English;

the spell checking service is configured to detect erroneous spellings of an English word and provide its correct spelling;

the translation service is configured to translate between English and Chinese; and

the thesaurus service is configured to return synonyms and antonyms of an English word.