Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jason Eric Black

Sean D Kelly

Tim A Toyoshima

Ashwini Kumar Varma

Keith A Burnard

Systems and methods for providing context sensitive help on an electronic device. The system include a processor, an application attributes discovery module which provides one or more attributes associated with an application running on the electronic device, a system state discovery module which provides system information associated with components of the electronic device, a help infrastructure module which uses the system information and application attributes to determine a help context at the time a user invokes a request for help, a help context mapping module which includes one or more help contexts including a context node that best matches the system state information and which contains one or more help topic identifiers that are mapped to help topics, a help topic collection module that provides one or more help topics corresponding to the help topic identifiers and a help viewer that displays the help topics.

Context sensitive help

A method for indicating changes in a structured document includes identifying a new topic or a modified topic in an updated version of a structured document having one or more topics, generating a table of contents having one or more topic entries associated with the one or more topics, marking a topic entry associated with the new topic or the modified topic with a marker indicating that the associated topic is new or modified. A system includes an unmarked table of contents having an entry associated with a unit of updated topic content, and a marking module marking the entry if the unit of updated topic content has changed or the unit of updated topic content comprises a new topic.

Automated identification and marking of new and changed content in a structured document

Real-time, on-demand dynamic document generation is disclosed. A merging logic integrates one or more auxiliary files with a main file to dynamically generate a displayed document. The merging logic determines the number and the locations of the auxiliary files. The logic validates each auxiliary file against a schema that defines how the auxiliary files can modify the main file. After validation, the merging logic merges the auxiliary files with the main file in accordance with the schema to generate the document.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Jason Eric Black