JP2550068B2 - How to search and display information - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an electronic document information system,
Particularly, the present invention relates to a system for automatically juxtaposing a document, a sentence, and a chart associated with the sentence on the display terminal.

[Conventional technology]

Items displayed according to the operator's interests, using a device for displaying information such as a CRT display and a device for selecting one of the displayed items, such as a cursor, a mouse, a keyboard, and a tablet. A system in which one of the above items is selected to obtain a more detailed explanation of that item has already been put to practical use in a captain system or the like.

[Problems to be solved by the invention]

In the above-mentioned conventional system, the information to be displayed corresponding to the selected items is programmed in advance, and accordingly, the operator sequentially prepares the information prepared by the system side only for the items which are selected or allowed on the screen. It can be seen by tracing. To do this, the system provider prepares the information to be displayed corresponding to all selection trees, creates data relating to the location of the information corresponding to the selection, and registers it in the system. Will be required.

On the other hand, with regard to the document information that has been digitized and stored in the database, documents are searched for by keyword, but in this case, only the presence or absence of the relationship with the keyword is registered for one document as a whole, Searching for and displaying parts that are related to each other in one document has not been performed yet.

An object of the present invention is to electronically realize retrieval and display of related parts in a document on a terminal or the like, and particularly a chart or its element related to a word or the like designated in a sentence, or a related description. The text is searched for and displayed side by side.

[Means for solving problems]

In order to achieve the above object, in the first invention of the present application,
It has the following configuration. From the document data including text data and chart data stored in the system, in the method of searching and displaying information that displays necessary parts sequentially or side by side according to the operator's request, it is displayed in the chart data. , The position of the indicator word and the indicator word that indicate the chart data or the element of the chart data is determined, and the relation between the determined indicator word and the position is stored as a directive word position relationship table, and the displayed word data is displayed. For text data, the directional words displayed at the double-sided positions specified by the operator are extracted, and the location of the diagram data corresponding to the extracted directional words is determined using the directional data relationship table. It is characterized in that the corresponding chart data is displayed based on the present location.

Further, the second invention of the present application has the following configuration. In the information retrieval / display method of displaying the necessary parts sequentially or side by side according to the operator's request from the document data including the text data and the graphic data stored in the system, the characters of the graphic data are the image data. Is stored at the screen position instructed by the operator with respect to the displayed text data among the text data, and extracted and extracted a directive word indicating the chart data or the element of the chart data. Convert the specified directive into a character image pattern of the font and size of the characters used in the chart data, search for the directive in the chart data, and locate the chart data that corresponds to the retrieved directive. Is displayed, and the corresponding chart data is displayed based on the obtained location.

[Action]

FIG. 2 illustrates a screen of the terminal 6 when the present invention is implemented. The first sentence is displayed in the box of 51. Here, the operator instructs the display 52 of the designated word by the position designation, and the system confirms and specifies the designated word from the position and the text data which is the source of the display.

Next, the chart data is searched for a match with the specified directive. Based on the data of the figure or table that contains the match, display it by arranging it at an appropriate position on the screen. As a result, as shown in FIG. 2, the chart including the designated word or the corresponding element display 54 of the display of 52 is displayed side by side in the frame of 53, and the operator efficiently displays the necessary information. Will get as.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the flow chart of FIG.

Step 101 is for displaying a sentence or a page of a document containing a sentence or a portion of the page.
This is usually displayed based on an instruction from the operator, and scrolling and page turning are performed. In step 102, the operator looks at the displayed contents and extracts the chart related to a certain sentence.Therefore, the number of the chart, the name of the element that should be in the chart,
It detects that an instruction word such as a number is indicated.
Since this is operated by the operator when he / she wants it, the system is on standby. Various tools are used for the operator's instructions. For example, there is a cursor movement and a predetermined key depression, a mouse movement and a button depression, direct indication using a transparent tablet that is superimposed on the display, or a separately placed tablet. Can be carried out.

In step 103, the character string which the operator is going to instruct is specified based on the input value indicating the position on the screen instructed in step 102. Furthermore, it is established as a directive by distinguishing between the number of the chart, the name of the element that should be in the chart, or the number designating the element.

In step 104, the list of charts, the description of the contents of the charts or the images of the charts are searched for the directives obtained in 103, and the location of the matching chart data is obtained.

In step 105, the chart data obtained in step 104 is expanded so that it can be displayed and displayed.

After this, the process returns to step 102 and waits for the next operation. The text display may be changed before the pointing of 102, but at that time, the step of 102 is again performed.

The method shown in FIG. 3 described above does not require preparation processing in advance and can immediately process the document retrieved from the database. Also, no separate storage area is required. However, the search step 104 requires a considerable amount of processing time in the case of designating an element inside the chart, and tends to delay the response to the operator.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing another embodiment for shortening the response time.

In step 110 of this figure, when a certain document is selected, it is first processed as a preparation step. In addition to the figure numbers, titles, terms appearing in the figures, instruction numbers / symbols, etc. are obtained together with the predetermined position of the data, and recorded in the instruction word position relationship table.
If necessary, sort the directives as well.

The steps 101 to 103 and 105 are the same as those in the process shown in FIG.

The step 114 is to be replaced with the step 104 in FIG. 3, and the location of the figure data corresponding to the directive specified by the operator is determined using the directive data positional relationship table created in step 110. I can know. Therefore, the processing time required is very short. That is, the embodiment of FIG. 4 is characterized by a short response time.

Here, a specific method of implementing step 103 will be described. It is easy to convert the input information from an indicator such as a mouse or tablet into a coordinate system in which a pixel for display is a unit. Next, in order to extract the directive, there are two indexing methods according to the display method. That is, the first method is to generate a display image from a character code string, and the second method is to reproduce the data originally input as an image based on the data.

In the first method, information about the text format,
For example, if the character spacing, the line spacing, the vertical and horizontal framing, etc. are known, the position in the text code corresponding to the designated point can be calculated from the position on the screen. FIG. 1 shows the configuration of one embodiment according to this method. There is diagram data 2 of sentence data 3 of a certain document read from the document database 1. The format data and code string data of the page with the text are sent to the drawing processing unit 4, and the text is written in the frame memory 5 based on the data. The contents of the frame memory 5 are immediately displayed on the CRT 6. A transparent tablet 7 is set on top of the display surface 6 of FIG. When the operator designates a word in a sentence displayed by touch, the tablet input circuit 8 causes
The screen coordinates 81 are determined, and the control unit is notified of the touch operation.

Here, the character indexing unit 10 indexes the directional word, so based on the sentence format data and the screen coordinates 81, the line number and the column position of the directional word are calculated, and then the position in the code data is calculated. The position data is used as the read instruction word. Here, when the operator indicates the range from the previous application to the end of the instruction word, the character string in the corresponding code data may be picked up. If the operator gives only one point, the word is estimated.
For this purpose, for example, if the indicated character is a number, the number that is connected before and after it, and if there is a letter such as "figure", "table" or "first" connected to it, one instruction Let it be a word. If the designated character in another example is an alphabetic character, katakana, or kanji, the same type of character connected before and after the character may be combined into one directive word. Although these methods are not perfect, the operator's confirmation may be obtained by highlighting the estimated directive (blinking, black / white inversion, underline, brightness level change, etc.).

In the method of inputting and reproducing a sentence as an image as the method of FIG. 2, there is an arrangement of FIG. 5 as one embodiment.

Read one document data from the document database 1,
The image data can be stored in the text image data storage 3 and the graphic image data storage 2. In this case, the text and the figure may not be separated as image data.

At least the text image data is developed and written in the frame memory 5 by the drawing processing unit 4. The contents of the frame memory are immediately displayed on the CRT6. The transparent tablet 7 is set on the display surface of the CRT 6, and when the operator touches a word, the tablet input circuit 8 obtains the screen coordinates 81. The character cutout unit 21 cuts out the area near the coordinates 81 from the frame memory 5. Further, the nearest character is obtained, and only one line and the designated character are cut out.

This character image data is sent to the character recognition unit 22 and converted into a character code by a recognition process. The control unit 9 controls the delivery of this processing. Since there are already many methods for character recognition, they are omitted here.

Next, from the 104 steps, that is, the chart data, 1
A specific method for searching for the demonstrative word obtained in step 03 will be described.

First, when the indicator is a figure number, there is no need to search if there is data that associates the figure number with the location of the data.

When the directive is embedded in the chart, there are a first case where the chart data has a character as a code and a second case where the chart data has only an image.

In the first case, the character code data is selected and the directive word is searched from among the character code data. Matching search unit in Fig. 1
11 performs this processing.

In the second case, image processing is required. An embodiment thereof is shown in FIG. In this case, in the character generator 23,
Although a method of generating a character image pattern according to the font and size of the character used in the figure is shown, there is another method in which the pattern of the character portion obtained by the character cutout portion is used as it is. In any case, the character pattern is supplied to the pattern search unit 24, the image data of the chart is searched, and the portion matching the character pattern is searched. In order to reduce the processing amount, even when the directive word is composed of a plurality of characters, only one character may be searched first, and if there is a matching portion, the next character may be matched with its vicinity.

The choice between the two methods for 103 steps and the two cases for 104 steps depends on the type of data supplied. The embodiment shown in FIG. 1 corresponds to the case where both are in the form of a code, and the embodiment shown in FIG. 5 corresponds to the case where both are in the form of an image. It is considered that there are many cases, and in this case, they can be configured in combination.

It is necessary to embody the step 110 for creating the vocabulary word data positional relationship table shown in FIG. In the case of a patent document, it is sufficient to create only the figure number and the designation word by the number. Even if there are only image data, it is useful to recognize only the numbers or the alphanumerics attached to them. For general documents, it is useful to prepare only the figure numbers.

The display of the step chart of step 105 may be performed as follows. If there is a screen space for displaying the entire diagram including the directives, display it. At this time, at least the vicinity of the designated portion of the original sentence remains. When the whole sentence cannot be displayed with the text left, it is only necessary to select the reduced display or only the region including the part including the directive.

Also, when a grammar is embedded in a chart,
The highlighted words (blinking, black-and-white inversion, brightness / color change, etc.) can be easily found by the operator.

〔The invention's effect〕

According to the present invention, by simply indicating a word in a sentence, it is possible to automatically search for a corresponding figure and display it side by side,
It is not necessary for the operator to perform operations such as searching the display page and scrolling the position. Therefore, it can provide new functions that were not possible with conventional paper-based document viewing methods.
Understanding can be promoted without interruption of thinking, and efficiency can be improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of one embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a display example for explaining the function of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a diagram showing one method of the present invention. FIG. 4 shows another method of the present invention, and FIG. 5 is different from FIG. 1 of the present invention.
It is a figure which shows the structure of an Example. 1 ... Document database, 2 ... Chart data storage, 3 ...
… Sentence data, 5 …… Frame memory, 7 …… Transparent tablet, 10 …… Character indexing section, 11 …… Match search section, 21
…… Character cutout part, 24 …… Pattern search part.

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Masakazu Ejiri 1-280, Higashi Koigakubo, Kokubunji City Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd. (56) Reference JP-A-60-114967 (JP, A) JP-A-61- 151890 (JP, A) JP 62-66378 (JP, A) JP 62-263575 (JP, A)

Claims (5)

(57) [Claims] 1. Retrieval of information for displaying necessary parts sequentially or juxtaposed according to a request from an operator from document data including text data and chart data stored in a system.
In the display method, it is displayed in the above-mentioned chart data, and a directional word indicating the above-mentioned chart data or an element of the above-mentioned chart data and the position of the above-mentioned directional word are obtained, and the obtained directional word and the relation of the position are designated as directional word data. It is stored as a positional relationship table, and for the displayed sentence data of the above sentence data,
Extract the directional words displayed at the double-sided position specified by the operator, find the location of the diagram data corresponding to the extracted directional words using the above vocabulary data positional relationship table, and find the location A method for searching and displaying information, which is characterized by displaying the corresponding chart data based on the above. 2. The information search / display method according to claim 1, wherein when the screen position instructed by the operator is one point, the character corresponding to the instructed one point, or the character A method for retrieving / displaying information, which comprises extracting connected characters of the same kind, and a character corresponding to the one point or a predetermined character related to chart data connected to the same kind of characters, as an indicator. 3. The information search / display method according to claim 2, wherein the extracted directive is highlighted. 4. In the information retrieval / display method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, when the entire chart data to be displayed cannot be displayed,
Retrieval of information characterized by allowing the operator to select whether to display the chart data reduced from a predetermined display magnification or to display at least an area including a directive in the chart data. Display method. 5. Retrieval of information for displaying necessary parts sequentially or juxtaposed according to an operator's request from document data including text data and chart data stored in a system.
In the display method, the characters of the chart data are stored as image data, and for the displayed text data of the text data,
It is displayed at the screen position instructed by the operator, extracts the directive words that indicate the above-mentioned chart data or the elements of the above chart data, and extracts the extracted directive words from the font of the characters used in the above chart data and Convert to a character image pattern of the size, search the above-mentioned directives from the above-mentioned chart data, find the location of the chart data that corresponds to the searched directive, and find the corresponding chart based on the found location. Information retrieval / display method characterized by displaying data.