WO2002027547A1

WO2002027547A1 - Method of relaying e-mail, method of restoring shortened mail, and e-mail relay station

Info

Publication number: WO2002027547A1
Application number: PCT/JP2000/006556
Authority: WO
Inventors: Shinya Iwata
Original assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
Priority date: 2000-09-25
Filing date: 2000-09-25
Publication date: 2002-04-04

Abstract

The invention provides an e-mail relay system that adapts e-mail contents for display on the narrow screen of a cellular phone. A method of relaying e-mail comprises the steps of receiving e-mail, shortening the received e-mail, and forwarding the shortened e-mail to the destination address.

Description

Description E-mail relay method, shortened e-mail restoration method, and e-mail relay station

The present invention relates to an e-mail relay method for shortening and transmitting an e-mail transmitted and received using a network, a shortened e-mail restoring method, and an e-mail relay station. Background art

In recent years, it has become possible to send and receive e-mails using mobile phones.

However, because the display screen of the mobile phone is small, it is difficult to see the entire text of the e-mail at once, and it was necessary to scroll and read the contents of the e-mail on the display screen. In many cases, reading the title of the e-mail did not give any specific information. Disclosure of the invention

In view of the above, an object of the present invention is to provide an electronic mail relay system that can easily determine the contents of an electronic mail even on a narrow screen of a mobile phone ₍

(1) In view of the above, an e-mail relay method according to the present invention comprises: a receiving step of receiving an e-mail; a shortening step of shortening the e-mail received in the receiving step; A transfer step of transferring the shortened electronic mail to the destination. Since the e-mail is shortened and forwarded, the contents of the e-mail can be easily identified even on a narrow screen of a mobile phone. (2) The shortened mail restoring method according to the present invention, when receiving restoration request information for requesting restoration of a shortened e-mail, stores an element correspondence table indicating the element relation of the e-mail before and after the shortening. The method is characterized by comprising an element restoration step of restoring an e-mail based on the e-mail, and a restoration e-mail transmission step of transmitting the e-mail restored in the element restoration step.

Since the shortened e-mail is restored, the recipient of the shortened e-mail can view the full-text e-mail before shortening if necessary.

(3) An e-mail relay station according to the present invention includes: a receiving unit that receives an e-mail; a linguistic information acquiring unit that acquires linguistic information relating to language characteristics of the e-mail received by the receiving unit; A shortened mail creating means for creating a shortened mail in which the electronic mail is shortened by extracting an important part of the electronic mail based on the language information obtained by the means; Transmission means for transmitting the shortened mail.

Since the e-mail is shortened and transferred at the relay station, the contents of the e-mail can be easily identified even on a narrow screen of the mobile phone. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram showing the overall configuration of an electronic mail relay system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an outline of a relay procedure in the electronic mail relay system shown in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an example of an e-mail shortening procedure.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing specific processing of the language information extraction processing of FIG. FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing specific processing contents in the shortening processing of FIG. FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a restoration procedure for restoring a shortened mail. BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram showing the overall configuration of an electronic mail relay system according to the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, an e-mail relay station 10 is connected to a personal computer (PC) 30 and a mobile phone 40 having an e-mail function via a communication line 50 such as a wired or wireless communication line. An e-mail relay station 10 is connected to an e-mail DB (database) 20 for storing e-mail.

The PC 30 and the mobile phone 40 can exchange e-mail via the e-mail relay station 10. The electronic mail relay station 10 relays the electronic mail transmitted from the PC 30 to the mobile phone 40, shortens the electronic mail, and transfers it to the mobile phone 40.

Here, one PC 30 and one mobile phone 40 are shown in FIG. 1, but a plurality of these may be provided.

The e-mail relay station 10 includes a language analysis unit 11, a language information extraction unit 12, a shortening processing unit 13, an element restoration unit 14, and a transmission / reception unit 15. The mail DB 20 composed of an auxiliary storage device such as a hard disk contains the full-text mail 21 sent from the PC 30, the shortened shortened mail 22, the full-text mail 21 and the shortened mail 22. An element correspondence table 23 representing the correspondence between elements is stored.

The linguistic analysis unit 11 has a morphological dictionary and a syntax dictionary (not shown), and performs language analysis such as morphological analysis and syntax analysis on the text of the e-mail using these. The linguistic information extracting unit 12 extracts linguistic information, which is information such as important words and inter-word relation information, which will be described later, from the e-mail. The combination of the language analysis unit 11 and the language information extraction unit 12 is referred to as the “linguistic information” of the present invention. Report acquisition unit ”. The shortening processing unit 13 performs mail shortening processing according to the procedure described later. The transmission / reception unit 15 transmits and receives electronic mail between the PC 30 and the mobile phone 40 via the communication line 50.

The mobile phone 40 has a display unit 41 composed of an LCD and the like, and an input unit 42 composed of input keys and the like.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an outline of an electronic mail relay procedure in the electronic mail relay system shown in FIG.

An e-mail (full-text mail 21 before the shortening process) is transmitted from the PC 30 to the mobile phone 40 (step S 1). The transmitted mail is relayed and shortened by the electronic mail relay station 10 (step S2). The shortened e-mail (abbreviated mail 22) is transmitted from the e-mail relay station 10 to the mobile phone 40 (step S3) and received by the mobile phone 40 (step S4). .

Since the entire shortened e-mail is contained in the small display section 41 of the mobile phone 40, the owner of the mobile phone 40 can quickly understand the contents of the e-mail.

In the e-mail shortening procedure in step S2, a method of creating a summary sentence in a document can be applied. Various methods for summarizing a document have been proposed in, for example, JP-A-2000-29882, JP-A-200-1111267, and the like.

Here, an example of the e-mail shortening procedure in step S2 will be described with reference to FIGS.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an example of the procedure for shortening the e-mail, FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the specific processing of the linguistic information extraction processing of FIG. 3, and FIG. 5 is the shortening processing of FIG. FIG. 7 is a front view showing the specific processing contents in (Creating a shortened mail). First, the e-mail (full-text mail) received by the e-mail relay station 10 is subjected to linguistic analysis by the linguistic analysis unit 11 (step S10). Specifically, the linguistic analysis unit 11 cuts out the e-mail one sentence at a time, and performs linguistic analysis such as morphological analysis and syntax analysis for each sentence.

Next, the linguistic information extraction unit 13 performs linguistic information extraction processing using the analysis result obtained in step S10 (step S20).

In step S20, important words and inter-word relation information are extracted as linguistic information.

Specifically, key words are extracted from the e-mail (Fig. 4: Step S21). More specifically, after counting the frequency of occurrence of each word based on the results of language analysis, key word catchers are extracted, and the words of these key word candidates are attached to each of them with the frequency of occurrence information FI. Register as Keyword List IL. Then, among the registered important word candidate words, except for common words such as "he" and "me", all the important word candidates are arranged in descending order of appearance frequency. The important words up to the rank are set as important words, and they are saved again in the important word list I again.

Next, from the linguistic analysis results of the e-mail, the inter-word relation information, which is the information indicating the relation between the words, is extracted from the sentence structure information I3 (FIG. 4: step S22).

More specifically, first extract verbs and adjectives such as verbs, adjectives, and adjective verbs that are the core of sentences. Then, the role of other clauses in the sentence, the modification of the clauses, and the relations to be modified, etc. are examined by examining the surface case information SI of words and phrases and the information of adjuncts in other clauses in the sentence, etc. Register as the relationship information file WR.

Returning to FIG. 3, the shortening processing unit 13 shortens the full-text mail using the obtained linguistic information (step S30). Specifically, first, important points are determined (Fig. 5 _: step S31). Next, a portion determined as an unnecessary portion in the above determination is removed (FIG. 5: step S32). Furthermore, if there is a redundant part, it is rewritten to another simple expression (FIG. 5: step S33). The specific judgment is as follows.

First, when determining important parts, we determine whether words in the list of important words are included or not, and determine whether they are important parts or unnecessary parts in sentence units based on the notation at the beginning of the sentence.

For example, in the example of judgment based on the notation at the beginning of the sentence, the notation "for example" at the beginning of the sentence indicates an example, so it is judged as an unnecessary part and is not included in the shortened sentence.

Also, even if the sentence does not include a word in the important word list, if the notation at the beginning of the sentence is a notation such as "ie" or "ie", the sentence is determined to be an important part .

The determination of the redundant portion is performed by paying attention to the relationship between the words to be modified based on the information in the inter-word relationship information file WR. Clauses other than those that have a direct role in the declinable word or phrase in the sentence are judged to be redundant and are deleted.c Based on the degree of the modification, it is judged whether or not it is a redundant part, and whether it is deleted or rewritten to another concise expression.

Thus, the shortening process for the electronic mail is completed, and the shortened mail 22 is created based on the full-text mail 21. In the mail DB20, an element correspondence table 23 indicating the correspondence between the components of the full-text mail 21, the shortened mail 22, and the constituent elements of the full-text mail 21 and the shortened mail 22 is stored.

The above shortening of e-mail assumes that the contents of the shortened mail 22 are expressed in sentences.

A simpler way of shortening is to cut out a certain number of key words, The shortened mail 22 can be composed of only the words of In this case, the shortening process is practically completed up to step S21 described above. In this case, arranging the words in the order of importance is more accurate for judging the contents of the mail. In addition, the shortened e-mail can be read easily by appropriately inserting spaces, line breaks, etc. between words.

Here, it is possible to classify important words into elements such as time, place, person, object, and action (verb), and determine the importance for each of these categories. In this way, when, where, where, who, what, why, and how, in a form similar to what is called 5W1H (Wh en, Wh ere, Wh o, W hat, W y y, H ow) It is easy to express.

Next, a processing procedure when the mobile phone 40 receiving the shortened e-mail desires to know the details of the e-mail will be described.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a restoration procedure for restoring a shortened mail. Restoration request information indicating that restoration of the shortened mail 22 is desired is input to the mobile phone 40 (step S5). This can be done, for example, by clicking the "Restore" button 43 on the display screen 41.

As a result, the original full-text mail 21 is restored (step S6) and displayed on the display screen 41 of the mobile phone 40. Full-text mail 21 can be restored by sending full-text mail 21 from the email relay station 10. In addition, send both shortened mail 2 2 and full text mail 2 1 to mobile phone 40,

There is a way to correlate the “Restore” button 4 3 click with the display of the full-text mail 21.

The restoration of the e-mail may be performed on a part of the e-mail. For example, in the state where one or more of the display screens 41 to ① to の in FIG. 1 are selected, the “Restore” button 43 is clicked. Then, the part of the full-text mail 21 corresponding to the selected ① to ⑤ is displayed on the display screen 41. In this case, the electronic mail relay station 10 uses the element correspondence table 23 showing the correspondence between the elements of the full-text mail 21 and the shortened mail 22 to select from the display screen 4 1 from ① to ⑤. Created e-mail and send it to mobile phone 40. Prior to this transmission, the information of the selected element selected from the display screen 41 is transmitted from the mobile phone 40 to the electronic mail relay station 10 together with the restoration request information indicating that restoration is desired. Is done.

If the shortened mail 22 can be partially restored, only the important parts can be selected and restored, so that the narrow display screen 41 of the mobile phone 40 can be used more efficiently.

As described above, the e-mail relay station 10 can shorten the e-mail as a service, and can improve the utility value of the e-mail relay station. Furthermore, if the e-mail is shortened and sent, unnecessary full-text e-mails 22 need not be transferred from the e-mail relay station 10 to the mobile phone 40, so the communication line 50 is used efficiently. it can. Furthermore, the owner of the mobile phone 40 can reduce communication costs by reducing the amount of information required for communication.

This shortening service can be a contract with the owner of the mobile phone 40, for example, a monthly fee.

The above embodiments can be extended and changed within the scope of the present invention, and the contents of the extended changes can also be included in the technical scope of the present invention.

Industrial applicability

In the e-mail abbreviated transfer method according to the present invention, the content of the e-mail sent from the PC to the mobile phone can be discriminated on a narrow display screen of the mobile phone by shortening the e-mail when the e-mail is transferred to the mobile phone. Also, there is no need to transfer unnecessary full-text mail, so the communication line can be used efficiently.

The present invention can provide an email relay stations constituting an email relay system and the system can be transferred to shorten the e-mail ₍

Claims

The scope of the claims

1. A receiving step of receiving an email;

A shortening step for shortening the e-mail received in the receiving step;

A transfer step of transferring the electronic mail shortened in the shortening step to its destination.

2. The electronic mail relay method according to claim 1, wherein the shortening step includes a table creation step of creating an element correspondence table representing a correspondence relationship between components of the electronic mail before and after the shortening.

3. The shortening step is

An important word candidate extraction process for extracting important word candidates for each sentence of the e-mail sentence;

An important word selecting step of selecting a predetermined number of important words from the important word candidates extracted in the important word candidate extracting step.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein:

4. Upon receiving restoration request information for requesting restoration of shortened e-mail, an element restoration step of restoring e-mail based on an element correspondence table showing element relations of e-mail before and after shortening,

A restoring email sending step of sending the email restored in the element restoring step;

A method for restoring a shortened mail, comprising:

5. A receiving unit for receiving the e-mail,

Linguistic information acquiring means for acquiring linguistic information relating to language features of the e-mail received by the receiving unit;

Based on the language information acquired by the language information acquiring means, A shortened mail creating means for creating a shortened mail in which the electronic mail is shortened by extracting an important part of the mail;

Transmitting means for transmitting the shortened mail created by the shortened mail creating means;

An electronic mail relay station, comprising:

6. The linguistic information obtaining means includes a linguistic analysis means for linguistically analyzing the electronic mail, and linguistic information extracting means for extracting linguistic information in the electronic mail from a linguistic analysis result obtained by the linguistic analysis means.

The electronic mail relay station according to claim 5, wherein:

7. The linguistic information extracting means has means for extracting an important word as linguistic information from the linguistic analysis result, and the shortened mail creating means extracts a portion including the extracted important word from the electronic mail. 7. The e-mail relay station according to claim 6, further comprising means for creating the shortened e-mail.

8. When the restoration request information for requesting the restoration of the shortened mail created by the shortened mail creating means is received, the electronic mail is restored based on the element correspondence table indicating the correspondence between the elements of the email before and after the shortening. Element restoration unit

The electronic mail relay station according to claim 5, further comprising: