Automatic reference note generator

• US 7,340,685 B2
• Filed: 01/12/2004
• Issued: 03/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/12/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Dunsmoir, John W., Chen, Yen-Fu
• Primary Examiner(s): Luu, Sy D.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Kumar, Anil N
• Application Number:
  US10/755,834
• Publication Number:
  US 20050154993A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,513 Days
• Field of Search: 715/770, 715/769, 715/512
• US Class Current: 715/770
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0486 Drag-and-drop
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1454 involving copying of the display data of a local workstation or window to a remote workstation or window so that an actual copy of the data is displayed simultaneously on two or more displays, e.g. teledisplay
• 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 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/543 User-generated data transfer, e.g. clipboards, dynamic data exchange [DDE], object linking and embedding [OLE]

Abstract

Content is transferred from one computer resource to another computer resource by receiving a first insertion point or replacement area from a first user interface to a destination computer resource, receiving an enablement to perform automatic paste operation, switching to a user interface to a source computer resource, receiving a user selection of content from said source user interface, and automatically copying the selected content to a transfer buffer and to the designated insertion point(s) in the destination computer resource. Each time source content is selected, a number of source reference data items such as author, publication date, and source file name or network address are captured and stored. The stored source reference identifies may then be used to automatically generate footnotes, end notes, and bibliographical entries.

Claims

1. A method for generating a reference note in an electronic document when directly quoting information from another electronic document, comprising the steps of:

receiving a first user-selected insertion point or replacement area from a first user interface to a destination electronic document;

subsequent to receiving said first insertion point, providing a source user interface to a user-selected source electronic document;

subsequent to providing said source user interface, receiving a user selection of text content to be transferred from said source user interface to said first insertion point or replacement area;

subsequent to receiving said user selection of content, automatically copying said selected content to a transfer buffer without requiring said user to return to said first user interface;

automatically capturing and recording one or more source reference data items corresponding to said selected content simultaneously with or subsequent to said automatic copying; and

automatically generating in said destination electronic document at least one reference note selected from the group of a footnote, an endnote, a table of references entry, and a bibliographical entry containing said recorded source reference data items.

2. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of recording one or more source reference data items comprises capturing a source identifier selected from the group of a file name, a path name, a folder name, a server name, a Uniform Resource Locator, and a network address.

3. The method sa set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of recording one or more source reference data items comprises capturing a system time, a system date, or both a system time and date.

4. The method sa set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of recording one or more source reference data items comprises capturing an author identifier for said source information.

5. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of recording one or more source reference data items comprises capturing a user identifier.

6. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein said step of recording one or more source reference data items comprises capturing a publication date for said source information.