JPH11175216A - Hyper text display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce work burden for a user to get the required information by exactly displaying the information required for the user from a hyper text. SOLUTION: The page data of the hyper text are acquired through a network by a page data acquiring means 5, and these page data are held by a page data holding means 6. On the other hand, the operation of the user inputted from a user operation input means 1 is held in a user operation holding means 2 and from this user operation, a limitation extracting means 3 extracts a limitation in the case of expanding the link of the hyper text and holds the extracted limitation in a limitation holding means 4. According to the extracted limitation, a data editing means 7 expands the link and edits the data of the hyper text, and the page data held by the page data holding means 6 and the data edited by the data editing means 7 are displayed by a data display means 8.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an apparatus for displaying hypertext, and more particularly to a technique for browsing hypertext linked via a network.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Advances in the Internet technology have made it possible to connect various computers all over the world via a network. In particular, the World Wide Web (Worl
d A network service based on hypertext technology called WideWeb (WWW) is used to create links between documents by placing links between pages of documents placed on computers on the network and following the links from page to page. It became possible to access various information on the above.

[0003] Hypertext display devices currently widely used in the WWW include NCSA Mosaic (trademark) and Netsc.
ape Navigator ™, Microsoft Internet Explorer
(Trademark). These hypertext display devices notify the user of a link to another page embedded in the hypertext by highlighting the display color by changing the display color or underlining. When following the link, the user gives an instruction by pointing the highlighted portion with an input unit such as a mouse or directly inputting the identifier of the link destination. The hypertext display device reads a page corresponding to the identifier specified by the user, shapes the entire page, and displays the formatted page on the display unit. At this time, the user can instruct the user to create and display a new window in addition to redisplaying the display location of the newly displayed page on the window on which the page has been displayed.

As a technique relating to the creation and editing of hypertext, for example, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-319919, the creation and editing of a document can be efficiently performed by copying hypertext links. Inventions aimed at performing are known.

[0005]

However, in the conventional hypertext display device, in response to a user's instruction to follow a link, the link destination information is read as it is and displayed. Therefore, in order for the user to follow the link to reach the required information, it is necessary to expand each link and display the text to confirm whether or not the desired information is included. In addition, complicated work is required to select a large amount of information.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional circumstances, and hypertext display reduces the work load for the user to obtain necessary information by accurately displaying information necessary for the user from the hypertext. It is intended to provide a device.

[0007]

According to the present invention, there is provided a hypertext display device which extracts information necessary for a user from a user operation as a constraint, and expands a hypertext link to display the hypertext. Only data that complies with the constraints specified by the user from the contents of the linked page can be extracted, formatted, and displayed. That is, in the hypertext display device of the present invention, the user operation input from the user operation input unit is held in the user operation holding unit, and the restriction when displaying the hypertext is extracted from the user operation by the constraint extraction unit. The data editing means edits the hypertext data in accordance with the restriction, and the edited data is displayed by the data display means, whereby the hypertext is stored in accordance with the restriction based on the user operation. Edit and display.

More specifically, the page data of the hypertext is acquired by the page data acquiring means via the network, and is held by the page data holding means.
Constraint extraction means extracts restrictions in expanding the hypertext link from the user's operation, and stores them in the constraint holding means. According to the restrictions, the data editing means expands the link to edit the hypertext data. The data display means displays the page data held by the page data holding means and the data edited by the data editing means.

In the hypertext display device of the present invention, the restriction includes definition of the display range of the hypertext and character modification, and the data editing means edits the display range and the character modification of the hypertext data according to the restriction. . As a result, the range of the displayed hypertext is specified, and the character modification of the displayed content is changed. In the hypertext display device of the present invention, the constraint holding unit holds a plurality of constraints, and the data editing unit edits the hypertext data by combining the plurality of constraints held in the constraint holding unit. Thereby, a plurality of restrictions based on the user operation can be used in combination.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A hypertext display device according to one embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 1, the hypertext display device according to the present embodiment includes a user operation input unit 1 for inputting a user operation,
A user operation holding unit 2 for holding a user operation input from the user operation input unit 1, a constraint extraction unit 3 for extracting a constraint defining an editing condition from the user operation information held in the user operation holding unit 2, A constraint holding unit 4 for holding the extracted constraints, a page data acquiring unit 5 for acquiring hypertext data via a network (not shown), and a page data holding unit for holding the page data acquired by the page data acquiring unit 5. 6, a data editing unit 7 for editing the page data held in the page data holding unit 6 in accordance with the constraints held in the constraint holding unit 4, and a data display unit 8 for displaying an editing result made by the data editing unit 7 And

The user operation input unit 1 has a keyboard, a pointing device, and the like. The user operation holding unit 2, the constraint holding unit 4, and the page data holding unit 6 have a memory for holding data. The section 3 and the page data acquisition section 5 have hardware resources and a control program for performing predetermined processing, and the data display section 8 has a display device. In this hypertext display device, when the user instructs to read hypertext data from the user operation input unit 1, the page data acquisition unit 5 acquires the page data specified by the user operation input unit 1, and displays the page data. The page data holding unit 6 holds the data. Then, the page data held in the page data holding unit 6 is displayed to the user by the data display unit 8.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a user interface of the user operation input unit 1 and the data display unit 8. The user interface includes a page data display window 11 for displaying page data, an operation window 12 for the user to operate the page data displayed in the page data display window 11, and a constraint for displaying the constraints generated by the user operation. Display window 13,
Result display window 1 displaying the result of applying the constraint displayed in constraint display window 13 to the page data
4. It has a command section 15 for designating a user operation.

FIG. 3 shows operation buttons provided on the command section 15. The command unit 15 includes a page acquisition button 21 for instructing page acquisition, a transcription command button 22 for instructing a transcription operation, an attribute change command button 23 for instructing an attribute modification operation, and a constraint definition start command button for instructing a constraint definition start operation. 24, a constraint definition end command button 25 for instructing a constraint definition end operation. Therefore, when the user instructs acquisition of page data by the page acquisition command button 21 of the command unit 15 and specifies a desired page identifier by key operation of the user operation input unit 1 or the like, the page data acquisition unit 5 is connected via a network or the like. The specified page data is acquired, and the page data is held in the page data holding unit 6. The page data held in the page data holding unit 6 is displayed on the page data display window 11 by the data display unit 8.

When the user specifies necessary information, the user operates the user operation input unit 1 through the operation window 12. First, after performing a constraint definition start operation in accordance with the instruction of the constraint definition start command button 24 of the command section 15, a range of necessary information in the page data displayed in the page data display window 11 is designated, and the command section 15 is executed. The information range is transcribed to the operation window 12 in response to the instruction of the transcript command button 22.

When the user changes the attribute of the data transcribed on the operation window 12 by instructing the attribute change command button 23 of the command section 15, the attribute is changed.
The user operation on the operation window 12 is held in the user operation holding unit 2. For the user operation held in the user operation holding unit 2, a constraint representing necessary information is extracted by the constraint extraction unit 3, and the extracted constraint is held in the constraint holding unit 4. The constraint held in the constraint holding unit 4 is displayed on the constraint display window 13 by the data display unit 8 and applied to the page data held in the page data holding unit 6 by the data editing unit 7. The page data edited by 7 is displayed on the result display window 14 by the data display section 8.

FIG. 4 shows a procedure of a processing operation by the constraint extracting unit 3. First, the constraint extraction unit 3 reads the user operation held in the user operation holding unit 2 (step S1), and determines whether the user operation is the start of constraint definition (step S2). If the user operation is not the start of the constraint definition, the next user operation is read and the determination is made again. When the user operation starts constraint definition,
A new constraint table is created (step S3), and the next user operation is read from the user operation holding unit 2 (step S3).
4), it is determined whether or not the user operation ends the constraint definition (step S5).

If the user operation is not the end of the constraint definition, it is determined whether the user operation is in the operation correspondence table (FIG. 9 described later) (step S6), and the user operation is an operation existing in the operation correspondence table. Sometimes we move on to constraint generation. That is, a process corresponding to the user operation is specified from the operation correspondence table (step S7), and the corresponding process is executed (step S8). After execution of this processing, or when the user operation is an operation that does not exist in the operation correspondence table, the process returns to the step of reading the next user operation (step S4), and it is determined again whether the user operation is the end of the constraint definition (step S4). Step S5). Here, when the user operation is the end of the constraint definition, the constraint registered in the constraint table is registered in the constraint holding unit 4 (step S9), the constraint table is cleared, and the process of extracting the constraint ends (step S10). ).

FIG. 5 shows a procedure of a processing operation by the data editing unit 7. First, the data editing unit 7 reads the constraint held in the constraint holding unit 4 (step S1).
1) Scan the page data held in the page data holding unit 6 to search for a portion satisfying the constraint read from the constraint holding unit 4 (step S12). When a location that satisfies the constraint is found (step S14), the location is passed to the data display unit 8 and displayed (step S14).
15). Such processing is repeatedly performed, and when the end of the page data held in the page data holding unit 6 is reached, the editing processing ends (step S13).

Next, a more specific example of extracting a constraint from a user operation and executing a process in the hypertext display device having the above configuration will be described below. First, in the user interface shown in FIGS. 2 and 3, the user instructs to acquire page data by using the page data acquisition button 21 of the command section 15. FIG. 6 shows an example of the acquired page data, and FIG. 7 shows a result of displaying the page data in the page data display window 11 by the data display unit 8. Here, the page data of this example is HTML (HyperText), which is a hypertext description language widely used in WWW.
Markup Language).

Next, the user performs an operation for specifying necessary information from the page data displayed in the page data display window 11. The user operation is performed by specifying a range for data displayed on the page data display window 11 or the operation window 12 and by specifying a command of the command unit 15. 2 is held.

FIG. 8 shows an example of a user operation. In this example, the user first instructs the start of constraint definition using the constraint definition start button 24 of the command section 15 (operation 1), and then selects a range of a part of the data on the page data display window 11 (operation 2). The transfer button 22 is designated to transfer the data to the operation window 12 (operation 3), the attribute change button 23 is designated to change the character modification of the transferred data (operation 4), and then the page data display window 11
The upper new area is selected (operation 5), the transfer button 22 is specified in the same manner as above, the data is transcribed on the operation window 12 (operation 6), and the attribute change button 23 is specified to transfer the data. The decoration is changed (operation 7), and finally the restriction definition end button 25 is instructed to end the restriction definition (operation 8).

The user operation as described above is held in the user operation holding unit 2 through the user operation input unit 1, and the user operation held in the user operation holding unit 2 is converted from the user operation held in the user operation holding unit 2 according to the flowchart shown in FIG. 3 extracts the constraint. In the case of the operation example shown in FIG. 8, when operation 1 is first read, since operation 1 is a “constraint definition start” operation, a new constraint table is created, the next operation is read, and operation 2 is “range selection”. Since the operation is an operation, an extraction process is performed to determine whether or not the operation is registered in the operation correspondence table.

FIG. 9 shows an example of the operation correspondence table included in the constraint extraction unit 3. The operation correspondence table stores correspondences between types of user operations and processes executed for the types of user operations. In this example, a range selection operation, a transcription operation, and a character modification operation are registered as user operations, and a selection process, a transcription process, and a character modification process are registered as processes. In the present example shown in FIG. 8, since the “range selection” operation which is operation 2 is registered in the operation correspondence table, the corresponding process (that is, “selection process”) is executed.

FIG. 10 shows the procedure of the selection process.
In this selection processing, the range selection buffer is cleared (step S21), and the selection range specified by the range selection operation is registered in the range selection buffer (step S22). In this example, as a result of the execution of the selection process, the contents of the selection range specified by the range selection operation ("<
H1><I> Up-to-Date Information </ I></H1> ”) is registered, and the process for operation 2 ends.

Next, operation 3 is read. Since this operation 3 is a “transfer” operation, it is determined whether or not the operation is registered in the operation correspondence table. Since the “transfer” operation is registered in the operation correspondence table, a corresponding process is executed. In this example, the corresponding “transfer process” is executed. FIG. 11 shows the procedure of the transfer process. In this transfer process, the contents of the selection range buffer are scanned (step S31), and
It is determined whether or not the element is a TML tag element (step S32). If the element is a tag element, the tag type is registered as a constraint in the constraint table (step S3).
3). In this example, as a result of scanning the content of the range selection buffer, it is determined that the content is an element of the H1 tag, and the constraint that the tag type is the “H1” tag (here, “tag = H”)
1 ") is registered in the constraint table, and the processing for operation 3 is completed.

Next, operation 4 is read. Since this operation 4 is a “character modification” operation, it is determined whether or not the operation is registered in the operation correspondence table. Since the “character modification” operation is registered in the operation correspondence table, a corresponding process is executed.
In this example, the corresponding “character modification processing” is executed. FIG.
2 shows the procedure of the character modification processing. In this character modification processing, it is determined whether or not the content changed by the character modification operation is a change in the type of tag (step S).
41) If the tag type is changed, the tag types before and after the change are registered as constraints in the constraint table (step S42). On the other hand, if the change is not a change of the tag type, it is determined whether the change is a change of the character style (step S43). If the change is a change of the character style, the restriction using the contents of the selection buffer as a keyword is restricted. Register it in the table (step S44). In this example, it is determined that the content changed by the character modification operation is a change from the H1 tag to the H2 tag, and the “H1” tag is used as the tag type before the change and the “H2” tag is used as the tag type after the change. "Constraints to be tags (here" form (H1) = H2 "
Is written in the constraint table, and the process for operation 4 is completed.

Hereinafter, the processing for operations 5 to 7 is similarly performed. FIG. 13 shows an example of the state of the constraint table at the time when the processing up to operation 7 is completed. Next, operation 8 is read. Since the operation 8 is a "constraint definition end" operation, the contents of the constraint table are registered in the constraint holding unit 4, the constraint table is cleared, and the process is terminated. FIG. 14 shows an example of the constraint held in the constraint holding unit 4. In the constraint holding unit 4, an identifier ("header 1" in the example of FIG. 14) for identifying the registered constraint is added. Will be retained. Then, the constraint held in the constraint holding unit 4 is read out by the data editing unit 7 and applied to the page data held in the page data holding unit 6. FIG. 15 shows data edited by applying the restrictions shown in FIG. 14 to the page data shown in FIG.
5 shows an example in which the data shown in FIG. 15 is displayed on the result display window 14 by the data display unit 8.

The constraints extracted in this way can be applied to other page data. FIG. 17 shows an example of the content of another page data indicated by one of the link identifiers included in the page data shown in FIG. 6, and FIG. 18 shows the page data shown in FIG. A display example when displayed through the unit 8 is shown.
Here, the user can display only the data represented by the constraint by designating the constraint held in the constraint holding unit 4 and instructing the display of the page data. FIG.
Is an example in which the result of applying the constraint shown in FIG. 14 to the page data shown in FIG. 17 is displayed. In this example, a new window is displayed in a corresponding location on the page data display window 11 displaying the page data including the link identifier indicating the page data to which the constraint has been applied. Is created and displayed.

In the present invention, a plurality of constraints held in the constraint holding unit 4 can be combined and applied to certain page data. FIG. 20 shows a constraint indicating a tag indicating a link to page data. FIG. 21 shows a combination of the constraint shown in FIG. 14 and the constraint shown in FIG. FIG. 22 shows an example in which the data shown in FIG. 21 is displayed on the data display unit 8. Here, the data editing unit 7 realizes the above-described editing processing by regarding the plurality of restrictions as one restriction and applying the restriction to page data.

[0030]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Extract the information necessary for the user when expanding the hypertext link from the user's operation as a constraint, extract only the data according to the constraint specified by the user from the contents of the linked page, and format it Since the information can be displayed and a plurality of restrictions can be used in combination, it is possible to quickly and easily obtain information necessary for the user from the hypertext data. Therefore, in order to obtain necessary information for the user, it is possible to omit the work of checking whether the desired information is included by expanding the links one by one by the user as in the related art. Necessary information can be acquired very easily from a large amount of hypertext data.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a hypertext display device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user interface of a user operation input unit.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user interface of a command unit in a user operation input unit.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an operation procedure of a constraint extraction unit.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an operation procedure of a data editing unit.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a description example of hypertext data.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a display example of hypertext data.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating an example of a user operation.

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example of an operation correspondence table in a constraint extraction unit.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart illustrating an operation procedure of a range selection process in a constraint extraction unit.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart illustrating an operation procedure of a transcription process in a constraint extraction unit.

FIG. 12 is a flowchart illustrating an operation procedure of a character modification process in a constraint extraction unit.

FIG. 13 is a diagram illustrating an example of a constraint table in a constraint extraction unit.

FIG. 14 is a diagram illustrating an example of extracted constraints.

FIG. 15 is a diagram illustrating an example of application of a constraint by a data editing unit.

FIG. 16 is a diagram illustrating a display example of data by a data display unit.

FIG. 17 is a diagram illustrating another description example of the hypertext data.

FIG. 18 is a diagram showing another display example of the hypertext data.

FIG. 19 is a diagram illustrating a display example by a data display unit.

FIG. 20 is a diagram illustrating another example of the extracted constraints.

FIG. 21 is a diagram illustrating an application example of a combination of a plurality of constraints by a data editing unit.

FIG. 22 is a diagram illustrating an example of data display by a data display unit.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... User operation input unit, 2 ... User operation holding unit, 3 ... Constraint extraction unit, 4 ... Constraint holding unit, 5 ...
..Page data acquisition unit, 6: Page data holding unit, 7: Data editing unit, 8: Data display unit,

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A hypertext display device for editing a hypertext according to a constraint based on a user operation and displaying and outputting the same, wherein a user operation input means for inputting a user operation, and a user holding the input user operation Operation holding means, constraint extraction means for extracting restrictions when displaying hypertext from a user operation, constraint holding means for holding the extracted constraints, and data editing for editing hypertext data according to the extracted constraints Means, and data display means for displaying data edited by the data editing means. 2. A hypertext display device which edits hypertext according to a restriction based on a user operation, and outputs and displays the hypertext. 2. A page data acquisition means for acquiring hypertext page data via a network, and the acquired page data. Page data holding means for holding a user operation, user operation input means for inputting a user operation, user operation holding means for holding an input user operation, and restrictions when a hypertext link is developed from the user operation , A constraint holding unit that holds the extracted constraints, a data editing unit that expands links according to the extracted constraints to edit hypertext data, and a page held by the page data holding unit. Data that displays data and data edited by the data editing means. Hypertext display apparatus characterized by comprising a data display means. 3. The hypertext display device according to claim 1, wherein the restriction includes a definition of a display range of the hypertext, and the data editing unit edits the display range of the hypertext data according to the restriction. A hypertext display device. 4. The hypertext display device according to claim 1, wherein the restriction includes a definition of character modification of the hypertext, and the data editing unit edits the character modification of the hypertext data according to the restriction. A hypertext display device. 5. The hypertext display device according to claim 1, wherein the constraint holding unit holds a plurality of constraints, and the data editing unit holds a plurality of constraints held by the constraint holding unit. And a hypertext data editing device for editing hypertext data.