JPH06348756A - Index preparing device and index utilizing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide an index preparing device and index utilizing device which can generate an index for searching a desired item to be recognized for a reader in one document, can constitute and utilize the index so as to hardly refer to a non-suitable part as a related part even when an automatically extracted keyword is indexed as it is. CONSTITUTION:The index preparing device is composed of a keyword extracting means 1 for extracting the keyword from a structured document, keyword storage means 5 for storing this extracted keyword corresponding to the position on the document, position converting means 6 for converting the position on the document to an accessable form, and index generating means 7 for generating the index from the pair of the keyword and the the position on the document in the accessable form.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an index creating device and an index using device for automatically generating an index for searching a corresponding part from a keyword for one document.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the case of technical books, for important keywords, an index is arranged in the order of Iueo or ABC by combining the pages in which related matters are described and the numbers of chapters and sections. It is generally done at the end of the book. With such an index, the reader can quickly open the section corresponding to the item he or she wants to know. The index is generally created by humans, but there are the following problems.

1. Creating keywords is a hassle. 2. There is a possibility of missing important keywords. 3. It is troublesome to associate the keyword with the corresponding part.

[0004]

As a conventional method for saving the time and effort for index creation by humans, there is, for example, the following method.

1. In the book, the keyword to be used as an index is enclosed in "\ index {" and "}" in the document. 2. Layout process the document, "\ index {" and "}"
Make a correspondence table between keywords and page numbers enclosed in. 3. Generate an index from the correspondence table. That is, it is necessary for a human to always perform a method of automatically associating a keyword with a corresponding part and determining a keyword to be used as an index and marking it.

In this case, it is solved that the association between the keyword and the corresponding part is troublesome, but 1. Creating keywords is tedious. 2. There is a risk of missing important keywords. That point has not been resolved. As described above, the conventional automatic keyword extraction technology is to search for a document in which a reader wants to know from multiple documents, and an index for searching the reader in a single document. Cannot be generated.

[0007]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided keyword extraction means for extracting a keyword from a structured document, and keyword storage means for storing the extracted keyword and a position on the document in association with each other. An index creating device is constituted by position converting means for converting a position on a document into an accessible format and index generating means for generating an index from a set of the keyword and the position on the document in the accessible format.

According to a second aspect of the invention, in the first aspect of the invention, extraction rule storage means for converting the keyword extraction rule according to the document element is provided.

According to a third aspect of the invention, in the first aspect of the invention, index element storage means for unconditionally indexing the contents of a specific document element is provided.

According to a fourth aspect of the invention, in the first aspect of the invention, a keyword selecting means is provided for a human to judge whether or not the extracted keyword should be used as an index.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, a keyword extracting means for extracting a keyword and a degree of importance from a structured document, and a keyword for storing the extracted keyword, the degree of importance and a position on the document in association with each other. An index creating device is constituted by a storage means, a position converting means for converting a position on a document into an accessible format, and an index generating means for generating an index from a set of the keyword and the position on the document in the accessible format. did.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document, and an importance as an index.
The index utilization device is composed of the related point presenting means for presenting the position on the document corresponding to the keyword in descending order of importance.

According to the seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from among the documents having the keyword, the position on the document and the importance as an index.
A more important index specification means to specify the lower limit of importance to present related points, and a related part presentation means to present only those with the importance level higher than the minimum importance at the position on the document corresponding to the keyword. Configured the device.

According to the eighth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document, and an importance as an index.
A maximum number of relevant points designating means for designating the upper limit of the number of relevant relevant points for one keyword, and a relation for presenting the position on the document corresponding to the keyword from the most important points up to the maximum number of relevant points. An index utilization device was constructed from the point presentation means.

[0015]

According to the first aspect of the invention, it is possible to automatically generate an index for searching a reader for a desired item in one document.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the keywords are taken broadly from important document elements such as "title" and the keywords are taken from document elements which are not suitable for taking keywords such as "citation" and "example". It becomes possible not to.

According to the third aspect of the invention, it is possible to specify a word to be recorded in the index.

According to the fourth aspect of the invention, it is possible for a person to reject a word that is not suitable for the index.

According to the fifth aspect of the invention, it is possible to automatically add a numerical value representing the magnitude of the relationship called "importance" to the correspondence relationship between the keyword and the related part.

According to the sixth aspect of the invention, it is possible to present the positions on the document corresponding to the keywords in descending order of importance.

According to the seventh aspect of the present invention, it is possible to present only those having a degree of importance equal to or higher than the minimum degree of importance designated at the position on the document corresponding to the keyword.

According to the eighth aspect of the invention, it is possible to present the number of positions on the document corresponding to the keyword, which is equal to or less than the maximum number of relevant points.

[0023]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the invention described in claims 1 to 4 will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 1 shows the overall structure of the index creation device. The apparatus is a keyword extracting means 1 for extracting a keyword from a structured document (described later).
An extraction rule storage means 2 for converting a keyword extraction rule according to a document element, a keyword selection means 3 for a human to judge whether or not the extracted keyword should be used as an index, and the contents of a specific document element unconditionally. Index element storage means 4 serving as an index, keyword storage means 5 for storing the extracted keyword and position on the document in association with each other, and position conversion means 6 for converting the position on the document into an accessible format.
And index generating means 7 for generating an index from a set of a keyword and a position on the document in an accessible format.

The "document" targeted by the present invention will now be described. The document here means a “structured document”. The structured document is a document whose content is expressed as a tree structure of document elements.
As an example of this structured document, there are the contents as shown in Table 1.

[0025]

[Table 1]

In this case, a character string sandwiched between "<" and ">" is a mark indicating the start of a document element, and "</" and ">".
The character string enclosed in is a mark indicating the end of the document element. The first character string in this mark is the name of the element, and the second character string is the ID of the element. I
Since D is guaranteed to be unique in the document, ID
If you specify, one document element will be specified.

Next, the specific contents of the above-mentioned means will be described. First, the keyword extracting means 1 will be described. The means 1 is a process of automatically extracting a keyword to be used as an index from a portion other than the mark of the document content. In this case, an example of the processing procedure is as follows.

1. Skip the mark of the document contents. 2. Perform morphological analysis of character strings and extract all nouns. 3. Reject nouns listed in the unnecessary word dictionary created in advance. Note that the conventional keyword automatic extraction technique can be directly applied to such processing.

The extraction rule storage means 2 will be described. This means 2 is for changing the keyword extraction processing according to the document element. For example, there are processing contents as shown in Table 1.

[0030]

[Table 2]

The contents of Table 1 represent the following.

* When extracting a keyword from the content of a document element as a "title", the unnecessary word dictionary is not used. * When extracting a keyword from the content of a document element called "paragraph", normal processing is performed. * Keywords are not extracted from the content of the document element "quote".

The keyword selecting means 3 will be described. Generally, not all keywords extracted automatically are suitable as indexes. The automatic extraction process inevitably picks up noise. It wouldn't hurt if the index contained words that the reader did not use, but it would be a problem if the number of indexes increased and searching was troublesome. Therefore, the present means 3 is provided for rejecting a word that a person thinks is inappropriate as an index from the automatically extracted keywords. The specific processing procedure of the present means 3 is as follows.

1. Keyword is Aiueo or ABC
Display in order. 2. A human looks at the list display and gives instructions to unnecessary keywords.

The index element storage means 4 will be described. Automatically extracted keywords are not always sufficient as an index. In the automatic extraction process, only the keywords that appear as the contents of the document can be picked up. If the index is created by humans, even words that do not appear in the document can be recorded as an index. Therefore, the present means 4 is provided for adding a keyword that a person thinks appropriate. This means 4
The specific processing procedure of is as follows.

1. For each "chapter" or "section", a person is inquired whether or not there are keywords to be added. 2. Ask them to enter any additional keywords. 3. A set of "chapter" or "section" corresponding to the additional keyword is stored.

The keyword storage means 5 will be described. The means 5 is a process of storing a set of a keyword and a position in the document corresponding to the keyword. The position in the document is represented by an element ID uniquely assigned to the document element. The specific processing procedure of the present means 5 corresponding to the above-mentioned structured document is as follows.

[0038]

[Table 3]

The keywords and positions in Table 3 represent the following contents.

* The keyword "information retrieval" is I called T1.
Corresponds to an element attribute with D. * The keyword "information search" corresponds to the element attribute having the ID P1. * Keyword "Keyword" corresponds to an element attribute having an ID of T1.

The position conversion means 6 will be described. This means 6
Performs layout processing to convert the element ID in the keyword storage means 5 into a page number or chapter / section number.

The index generating means 7 will be described. This means 7
Converts the final data into a form that is easy to use. The specific processing procedure of the present means 7 is as follows.

* Create a correspondence table between keywords and page numbers. * Create a correspondence table between keywords and chapter / section numbers. * Create hyperlinks between keywords and corresponding elements.

Next, an example of the operation of the present apparatus equipped with the various means described above will be described based on the flow of FIGS. 2 (a) to 2 (e). First, the keyword extraction unit 1 is used to automatically extract keywords from a document (structured document) (a). At this time, processing according to the contents of the extraction rule storage means 2 is performed. Next, the extracted keywords are presented to the user, and the keywords not required for the index are selected by the keyword selecting means 3. This selected keyword is rejected (b). Next, the user inquires about the presence or absence of a keyword to be added, and if there is the keyword, inquires which chapter or section it corresponds to (c). Next, the position conversion means 6 performs layout processing to convert the element IDs in the keyword storage means 5 into page numbers or chapter / section numbers (d). Next, the index generation means 7 converts the combination of the keyword and the position information into a form that is easy to use, and generates an index (e).

As described above, by constructing the index creating system as shown in FIG. 1, it is possible to automatically create an index for searching a reader for a desired item in one document. This saves authors and editors the hassle of indexing work, and never forgets to index important words. In addition, it is possible to set a wide keyword from important document elements such as "title" and not take a keyword from document elements that are not suitable for taking keywords such as "quote" and "example". Thus, it is possible to prevent an important keyword from being given while suppressing an increase in meaningless index (noise). Furthermore, since the words to be recorded in the index can be specified, important words that do not appear in the content of the document can be recorded in the index. Furthermore, since humans can reject words that are not suitable for the index, meaningless words or unimportant words can be removed from the index.

Next, an embodiment of the invention described in claim 5 will be described with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4. Claims 1 to 4 described above
In the index creating device that operates based on FIG. 2 described in the described invention, the following problems newly arise. That is, if the automatically extracted keywords are indexed as they are, the parts that are not appropriate as related parts are also indexed and recorded. In addition, it is troublesome for a human to select the automatically extracted keyword, and there is a risk that subjectivity will be involved in the selection, and relevant parts that are originally necessary may be dropped.

Therefore, in the present embodiment, the index creating device is constructed as shown in FIG. That is, the present apparatus includes a keyword extracting unit 8 that extracts a keyword and an importance degree from a structured document, a keyword storage unit 9 that stores the extracted keyword, importance degree, and position on the document in association with each other, and a document. It comprises position conversion means 10 for converting the above position into an accessible format, and index generation means 11 for generating an index from a set of a keyword and a position on the document in the accessible format. The specific configuration contents of each of these means will be described below.

First, the keyword extracting means 8 will be described. The means 8 refers to a process of automatically extracting a keyword to be used as an index from a portion other than the mark of the document content. The conventional keyword extraction technique can be directly applied to such processing. The specific processing procedure of the present means 8 is as follows.

1. Skip the mark of the document contents. 2. Perform morphological analysis of character strings and extract all nouns. 3. Reject nouns listed in the unnecessary word dictionary created in advance. 4. Record the number of same keywords that appear in the same document element. The value obtained by dividing the number of each keyword by the maximum of the number is set as the importance for a certain document element having a certain keyword.

The keyword storage means 9 will be described. The present means 9 stores a set of the position in the document corresponding to the keyword and the degree of importance. The position in the document is expressed by the element ID uniquely assigned to the document element. The specific processing procedure of the present means 9 corresponding to the above-mentioned structured document is as follows.

[0051]

[Table 4]

The keywords, positions, and degrees of importance in Table 4 represent the following contents.

* The keyword "information retrieval" is I called T1.
An element attribute having D corresponds with an importance of 0.1. * The keyword "information search" corresponds to the element attribute having the ID P1 with the degree of importance of 0.3. * Keyword "Keyword" corresponds to an element attribute having an ID of T1 with an importance level of 0.2.

The position conversion means 10 will be described. This means 10 converts the element ID in the keyword storage means 9 into a page number or a chapter / section number.

The index generating means 11 will be described. The present means 11 is a process for converting the final data into a form that is easy to use. The specific processing procedure is as follows.

* Create a correspondence table of keywords, page numbers, and degrees of importance. * Create a correspondence table between keywords, chapter / section numbers, and importance. * Create hyperlinks of keywords, corresponding elements and importance.

Next, an example of the operation of the present apparatus provided with the various means as described above will be described based on the flow of FIGS. 4 (a) to 4 (c). First, the keyword extraction unit 8 is used to automatically extract a keyword from a document (a). The set of the position in the document and the degree of importance corresponding to this keyword is stored in the keyword storage means 9. Next, the position conversion means 10 is used to perform layout processing to convert the element IDs in the keyword storage means 9 into page numbers or chapter / section numbers (b). Next, the index generation means 11 converts the combination of the keyword, position information, and importance into a form that is easy to use, and generates an index (c).

As described above, when automatically extracting a keyword, a numerical value called "importance" expressing the importance of the keyword is automatically added, and the numerical value is used to associate with one keyword. An order relation is set between a plurality of related parts, and the presentation order and the number of presentations to the user are adjusted based on the order relation. Therefore, from such a thing,
Even if the automatically extracted keywords are indexed as they are, it is possible to configure an index in which it is difficult to refer to a part that is not appropriate as a related part.

Next, an embodiment of the invention described in claims 6 to 8 will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 5 shows the configuration of the index utilization apparatus. This apparatus presents a keyword designating means 12 for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document and an importance as an index, and a position on the document corresponding to the keyword in descending order of importance. Or show only the keywords in the corresponding document position that have a degree of importance greater than or equal to the minimum importance, or show the keyword corresponding positions in the document that are as high as the maximum number of relevant points or less. From the related point presenting means 13, the minimum importance degree specifying means 14 that specifies the lower limit of the importance degree of presenting the related point, and the maximum number of related points that specifies the upper limit of the number of presented related points for one keyword. It comprises a designating means 15. Less than,
The specific configuration contents of each of these means will be described.

First, the keyword specifying means 12 will be described. The present means 12 is a process of designating a keyword corresponding to a matter that the reader wants to find. The processing procedure of the specific designation method is as follows.

* Input a keyword that came to mind from the keyboard. * Post a list of keyboards and mark the keywords you want to find.

The minimum importance degree designating means 14 will be described.
The present means 14 designates the lowest importance degree to be presented among the relevant parts corresponding to the inputted keyword. Relevant parts with lower importance than this value will not be presented.

The maximum related point number designating means 15 will be described. The present means 15 specifies the maximum number of relevant points to be presented for one keyword.

The related point presenting means 13 will be described. The present means 13 presents the relevant part corresponding to one keyword. Specific presentation methods include, for example, the following three presentation methods. As the first presentation method, there is a sequential presentation method (corresponding to the invention of claim 6).

1. Present the relevant parts with the highest importance. 2. When the user gives an instruction to display the next related part, the next most important related part is presented. 3. This procedure is repeated until the user gives an instruction to end.

As the second presentation method, there is a footbrush presentation method (corresponding to the invention according to claim 7).

1. Present the relevant parts with the highest importance. 2. When the user gives an instruction to display the next related part, the next most important related part is presented. 3. This procedure is repeated until there is no relevant portion having the importance level equal to or higher than the minimum importance level specified by the minimum importance level specifying means 14 or the user instructs the end.

As the third presentation method, there is a simultaneous presentation method (corresponding to the invention of claim 8).

1. As many as the number designated by the maximum number of relevant points designating means 15 are taken out in order from the highest importance, and are simultaneously displayed in separate windows.

Next, an example of the operation of the present apparatus equipped with the various means described above will be described based on the flow of FIGS. 6 (a) to 6 (e). First, the keyword specifying means 12 inputs a search keyword (a). Next, the related part presenting means 13 presents the related part corresponding to the input keyword (b). In this case, the presentation mode includes sequential presentation, footbill presentation, and simultaneous presentation.

When the presentation mode is the sequential presentation, the following processing is performed (c). 1. Present the relevant parts with the highest importance. 2. When the user gives an instruction to display the next related part, the next most important related part is presented. 3. This procedure is repeated until the user gives an instruction to end.

In the case where the presentation mode is the unsatisfactory presentation, the following processing is performed (d). 1. Present the relevant parts with the highest importance. 2. When the user gives an instruction to display the next related part, the next most important related part is presented. 3. This procedure is repeated until there is no relevant portion having the importance level equal to or higher than the minimum importance level specified by the minimum importance level specifying means 14 or the user instructs the end.

When the presentation modes are simultaneous presentation, the following processing is performed (e). 1. As many as the number designated by the maximum number of associated points designating means 15,
Relevant parts are taken out in order from the most important one and displayed in separate windows at the same time.

As described above, the positions on the document corresponding to the keywords can be presented in the descending order of importance, so that the desired information can be quickly accessed without repeatedly looking at different places in the document. You can Also, since only keywords with the minimum importance or higher specified at the position on the document corresponding to the keyword can be presented,
You can get rid of access to irrelevant parts. Furthermore, since the number of positions on the document corresponding to the keyword can be shown up to the maximum number of related places, simultaneous display of related places on a narrow screen and efficient display even when accessing through a slow communication path are possible. It can be carried out.

[0075]

According to the present invention, the keyword extracting means for extracting the keyword from the structured document, the keyword storing means for storing the extracted keyword and the position on the document in association with each other, and the keyword on the document Since the index creating device is constituted by the position converting means for converting the position into the accessible format and the index creating means for creating the index from the set of the keyword and the position on the document in the accessible format, An index can be automatically generated to search for items that the reader wants to know, which saves authors and editors from troublesome indexing work and forgets to put important words in the index. You can get rid of things.

According to the second aspect of the invention, in the first aspect of the invention, the extraction rule storing means for converting the keyword extraction rule by the document element is provided, so that the keyword is extracted from important document elements such as "title". Widely, it is possible to prevent keywords from being taken from document elements that are not suitable for taking keywords such as "quote" and "example", thereby suppressing the increase of meaningless index (noise), It is possible to prevent leakage of important keywords.

According to the third aspect of the invention, in the first aspect of the invention, since the index element storage means for unconditionally indexing the content of the specific document element is provided, the words to be recorded in the index are designated. The important words that do not appear in the content of the document can be recorded in the index.

According to the invention of claim 4, in the invention of claim 1, a keyword selecting means is provided for a human to judge whether or not the extracted keyword should be used as an index. Can be rejected, which allows meaningless or insignificant words to be removed from the index.

The invention according to claim 5 is a keyword extracting means for extracting a keyword and an importance degree from a structured document,
A keyword storage unit that stores the extracted keyword, the degree of importance, and the position on the document in association with each other, a position conversion unit that converts the position on the document into an accessible format, and the keyword and the accessible format. Since the index creation device is composed of an index creation unit that creates an index from a set of a position on a document, a numerical value that expresses the magnitude of the relationship called "importance" is automatically added to the correspondence relationship between the keyword and the related part. By using this numerical value, an order relation is set between multiple related points associated with one keyword, and the number of presentations to the user is based on the order relation. Is something that can be adjusted.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, a keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from among documents having keywords, a position on the document and an importance as an index, and a position on the document corresponding to the keyword. Since the index use device is composed of the related part presenting means for presenting in the order of importance, the position on the document corresponding to the keyword can be presented in the order of importance. You can quickly access the desired information without even looking at it.

According to the seventh aspect of the present invention, a keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document, and a degree of importance as an index, and a lower limit of the degree of importance for presenting relevant points. Since the index utilization device is configured by the minimum importance level designating means for designating the keyword and the relevant point presentation means for presenting only those having the importance level of the minimum importance level or higher at the position on the document corresponding to the keyword It is possible to present only those having an importance degree equal to or higher than the minimum importance degree specified in the position on the document to be displayed, and thereby it is possible to eliminate the need to access an irrelevant portion.

The invention according to claim 8 is a keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document, and an importance as an index, and a presentation related part for one keyword. The maximum number of relevant points to specify the maximum number of relevant points, the related point presenting means for presenting the position on the document corresponding to the keyword from the most important points up to the maximum number of relevant points, and the index utilization device. Since it is configured, it is possible to present the number of positions on the document corresponding to the keyword in the number less than the maximum number of related points, which makes it possible to efficiently display the related points on a narrow screen simultaneously or access through a slow communication path. Various displays can be performed.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an index creating device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an operation process of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an index creating device according to an embodiment of the invention as set forth in claim 5;

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an operation process of FIG.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an index utilizing device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the operation processing of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 keyword extraction means 2 extraction rule storage means 3 keyword selection means 4 index element storage means 5 keyword storage means 6 position conversion means 7 index generation means 8 keyword extraction means 9 keyword storage means 10 position conversion means 11 index generation means 12 keyword designation means 13 Related point presenting means 14 Minimum importance degree specifying means 15 Maximum related point number specifying means

Claims (8)

[Claims] 1. A keyword extracting means for extracting a keyword from a structured document, and a keyword storing means for storing the extracted keyword and a position on the document in association with each other.
An index creating device comprising position converting means for converting a position on a document into an accessible format and index generating means for generating an index from a set of the keyword and the position on the document in the accessible format. . 2. The index creating apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising extraction rule storage means for converting a keyword extraction rule according to a document element. 3. The index creating apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an index element storage unit for unconditionally indexing the content of a specific document element. 4. The index creating apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising keyword selecting means for a human to judge whether or not the extracted keyword should be used as an index. 5. A keyword extracting means for extracting a keyword and a degree of importance from a structured document, a keyword storing means for storing the extracted keyword, the degree of importance and a position on the document in association with each other, and on the document. 1. An index creating device comprising: a position converting means for converting the position of [1] into an accessible format and an index generating means for generating an index from a set of the keyword and the position of the accessible format on the document. 6. A keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document and an importance as an index, and a position on the document corresponding to the keyword is presented in descending order of importance. An index utilization device comprising: a relevant point presenting means for 7. A keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document and an importance as an index, and a minimum importance for designating a lower limit of the importance for presenting a relevant part. An index utilizing apparatus comprising: a specifying means and a related point presenting means for presenting only those having a degree of importance higher than the minimum degree of importance at the position on the document corresponding to the keyword. 8. A keyword designating means for designating a keyword of interest from a document having a keyword, a position on the document, and a degree of importance as an index, and an upper limit of the number of presentation related parts for one keyword. An index utilization apparatus comprising: a maximum number of relevant points specifying means for performing the relevant keyword; and a relevant point presenting means for presenting the position on the document corresponding to the keyword in order of importance from the maximum number of the relevant points.