JPH01259451A - Electronic mail contents display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To decrease the burden of a user on a work to retrieve the contents of a mail document by equipping an icon data storing means, which stores icon data to express the contents of the electronic mail document, a document contents analyzing means and an icon display means. CONSTITUTION:By the icon data storing means, the image data of an icon to express the contents of the electronic mail document can be stored. By the document contents analyzing means, the contents to be expressed by a character string in the electronic mail are grasped. Then, by coupling these means and the icon display means, the contents of the document are expressed as the icon and displayed on a screen. Thus, the user can visually estimate the contents of the mail document, which corresponds to this icon, with referring the icon on the screen and can efficiently execute the retrieval.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Object of the Invention] (Industrial Application Field) The present invention relates to an e-mail content display device that displays e-mail content in a visually easy-to-understand format.

(Prior Art) In conventional e-mail, a sender can add information consisting of a character string called a title or subject to a single document, and a recipient can read multiple e-mails. When searching for what you wanted to read, you used the method of specifying what you wanted by referring to the title or subject displayed on the screen.

(Problem to be solved by the invention) When the content of an e-mail is expressed as a character string, the user must read and understand the sequentially arranged character string when selecting the desired document from among multiple documents. This required a difficult task, and the efficiency of retrieval decreased especially as the number of sentences increased.

The present invention has been developed in consideration of these circumstances, and its purpose is to reduce the burden on the user in searching the contents of email documents, and to provide email contents that can be searched efficiently. The purpose of this invention is to provide a display device.

[Structure of the Invention] (Means for Solving the Problems) The present invention provides a data receiving means for receiving data of an e-mail document including character strings, figures, etc. transmitted from another location, and a character storage means for storing data;
An icon data storage means for storing image data of an icon representing the content of an e-mail document; a document content analysis means for reading character strings in an e-mail and analyzing the content of the document; icon display means for displaying image data of an icon corresponding to the content on the screen; icon specifying means for causing the user to specify one of the plurality of icons displayed on the screen;
The present invention is characterized by comprising a document content display means for displaying detailed contents such as character strings and figures of an e-mail document corresponding to an icon designated by a user.

(Operation) In the present invention, data of an e-mail document including character strings, graphics, etc. sent from another device can be received by the data receiving means.

The document storage means allows the received data to be stored and recalled later. The icon data storage means can store image data of icons for expressing the contents of the e-mail document. Further, the content represented by the character string in the e-mail is grasped by the document content analysis means, and by combining this with the icon display means, the content of the document is expressed as an icon, and this is displayed on the screen. Here, the user can visually estimate the contents of the corresponding email document by referring to the icons on the screen. Further, the icon specifying means allows the user to specify one of the plurality displayed on the screen, and the document content display means displays character strings, figures, etc. that make up the e-mail document on the specified icon. The user can know the detailed contents of this email document.

(Example) An example of the present invention will be specifically described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the present invention. The input device 11 is located at a position necessary for specifying an icon.

A device for inputting commands, etc., and includes, for example, a keyboard and a mouse. The display device 12 is a device that develops characters, figures, images, etc. into bit images and displays them on a screen. The external storage device 13 is a storage device that stores information regarding character string information, picture/image information, icon image data, etc. constituting an e-mail document, and the receiving device 14 receives information sent from other devices. Receive email document data. The control device 15 performs processing such as controlling the above-mentioned devices and analyzing the contents of documents.

As shown in FIG. 2, the control device 15 includes an initialization section 2a, a command input section 2b, and a document data reception section 2c.

A system management section consisting of a document data storage section 2d, a document content analysis section 2O2, and a document icon display section 2f.

Document icon designation section 2g, document display processing section of document data display section 2h, and document data reception buffer 2ii'
It is composed of each buffer part of the 1E industrial variable buffer 2j.

The initialization unit 2a initializes the buffer unit 21.2j. The command input unit 2b inputs commands from the user through the input device 11 and determines the flow of processing. The document data receiving unit 2c uses the receiving device 14 to receive email document data sent from another device, and stores it in the document data receiving buffer 21. The document data storage section 2d stores the mail document data stored in the document data reception buffer 21 in the external storage device 13. The document content analysis unit 2e reads the character string information contained in each email document stored in the external storage device 13, divides it into word units, and determines what kinds of words appear frequently. By checking 7, it is determined which of a plurality of pre-prepared icons expressing the meaning of the document corresponds to. The document icon display unit 2f reads image data corresponding to the icon assigned to each document by the document content analysis unit 2e from the external storage device 13, sends this image data to the display device 12, and displays the image data corresponding to each email document. display the icon on the screen. The document icon designation unit 2g allows the user to designate one of the icons displayed on the screen by the document icon display unit 2f, obtains its position information using the input device 11, and knows which icon has been designated. . The document data display section 2h displays a character string constituting a mail document in the external storage device 13 corresponding to the icon specified by the user, which is known by the document icon specifying section 2g.
The display device 12 converts figures, images, etc. into image data.
Display it on the screen using .

Specific processing will be described below using each of the above components.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the flow of processing in the embodiment apparatus. First, the initialization section 2a is activated, and the buffer sections 2i and 2j are initialized, and the input device 11 and display device 12 are initialized (step 3a). Next, the command input unit 2b is activated, and a command from the user is input using the input device 11 (step 3b). If no command is input, control is transferred to step 3c in FIG.

In step 3c, the document data receiving section 2C is activated. First, the receiving device 14 is used to determine whether mail document data is being sent from another device. If no data is being sent, control returns to step 3b. When data is being sent, the sent data is received and stored in the document data reception buffer 21 (step 3d). Thereafter, the document data storage section 2d is activated and stores the mail document data stored in the document data reception buffer 21 in the external storage device 13 (step 3e). Control then returns to step 3b.

If the user inputs a "mail document display command" in step 3b, control moves to step 3f in FIG. 3. In step 3f, the document content analysis section 2e is activated. Here, character string information included in each document data stored in the external storage device 13 is read and the content of the document is determined. Several types of icons are prepared in advance to represent the contents of the document. An example of an icon image is shown in FIG.

(a) represents a computer-related document, (b) represents a general office-related document, and (C) represents an academic-related document. The document content analysis section 2e performs a process of associating each mail document in the external storage device 13 with one of these icons.

In this embodiment, ten keywords are determined for each icon expressing one content, and this information is stored in the external storage device 13 in advance. For example, for the icon representing a computer-related document in Figure 4 (a), "Display" is used.

Words such as ``rcPUJ'', ``keyboard'', and ``network'' are included, while documents related to general affairs in (b) include words such as ``meeting'', ``notification'', ``report'', and ``expense j'' (
Words such as "energy,""reaction,""molecule," and "solid" correspond to C) academic documents.

Next, the flow of specific processing in the document content analysis section 2e will be explained using FIG. First, the words in the document are cut using the morphological analysis method and the word dictionary in the external storage device 13 (step 5a). Next, the jth (1≦j≦10) keyword of the i-th (1≦i≦number of icons stored) icon stored in the external storage device 13:
The number of times the keyword ij appears in this document is counted (step 5b). Next, calculate the score i (expressed by the following formula) for each icon (step 5c
).

Furthermore, by comparing the scores i, it is determined which icon has the highest score.Step 5d)
, which is regarded as an icon representing the content of the document. The document content analysis unit 2e performs steps 5a to 5d above.
The above processes are performed for the second document stored in the external storage device 13 (1≦≦number of documents stored).

After the processing by the document content analysis section 2e, the document icon display section 2f is activated (step 3g). Here step 3
The external storage device 13 obtained by the document content analysis unit 2e in C
The image data of the icon corresponding to the second document in the middle is read from the external storage device 13, and these data are displayed on the display device 1.
2 and display it on the screen in the format shown in Figure 6. As shown in the figure, the minimum information regarding the corresponding document, such as the name of the sender, is displayed in the vicinity of each icon as a character string. Information regarding the position on the screen of the icon corresponding to the second document displayed here is stored in the second ``variable for storing the position of the icon'' in the working variable buffer 2j.

Next, the document icon designation unit 2g is activated (step 3h).
). Here, the user uses the input device 11 to specify the position of one of the icons displayed on the screen as shown in FIG. 6 using the document icon display section 2f. After that, in step 3g, the document icon display section 2f displays the number of email documents stored in the external storage device 13 to which the icon corresponding to the position specified by the user corresponds. The contents stored in each of the "variables for storing the icon position" are checked and the obtained number is stored in the working variable buffer 2j. Thereafter, control is transferred to the document data display section 2h (step 3i).

Here, in step 3h, the mail document in the external storage device 13 corresponding to the number stored in the working variable buffer 2j is displayed. Here, the encoded and stored data is converted into image data representing characters, figures, and images, and sent to the display device 12 to display them on the screen. After this, it is checked whether the user manually inputs an "end display" command using the input device 11 (step 3j).
, if this has been input, control returns to step 3b.

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments.

For example, a tablet and a stylus pen integrated with a display device may be used as the input device, and not only image data but also code data representing characters may be added as the icon data. In addition, the present invention can be implemented with various modifications without departing from the spirit thereof.

[Effects of the Invention] According to the present invention, the user can refer to the icons added by the device when grasping the contents of the e-mail document, so that the user can easily grasp the contents of the e-mail document stored in the storage device. You can visually select what you want to read from among them, making this task faster and with less effort than when referring to text strings such as titles that represent the content of the document. It can be done with Furthermore, the practical effects of this system are enormous, as it eliminates the need for the sender of an e-mail document to think about the title, etc. to be added to the document.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a block diagram of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a configuration diagram of the control device, Fig. 3 is a diagram showing the processing flow of this system, and Fig. 4 is a block diagram of the present invention.
The figure shows the correspondence between icons and document content expressions, and Figure 5 shows the flow of processing in the document content analysis section.
FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of how icons are displayed on the screen. 11... Input device, 12... Display device,
13... External storage device, 14... Receiving device,
15... Control device, 2a... Initialization section, 2b... Instruction manual section, 2c... Document data receiving section, 2d... Document data storage section, 2e... Document content analysis section, 2r...Document icon display section, 2g...Document icon designation section, 2h...Document data display section, 21...Document data reception buffer, 2j.
・Working variable buffer

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) A data receiving means for receiving data of an e-mail document, a document storage means for storing a plurality of received e-mail document data, and an icon data storage means for storing icon data representing the contents of the e-mail document. , a document content analysis means for reading an e-mail document and analyzing its contents; an icon display means for displaying on a screen icon data in the icon data storage means corresponding to the analyzed contents; and displayed icon data. 1. An electronic mail content display device comprising: icon designating means for designating one of the designated icons; and document content display means for displaying the content of an electronic mail document corresponding to the designated icon. (2) The e-mail content display device according to claim 1, wherein the frequency of a certain word and its similar words in the document is referred to when analyzing the content of the document.