International Business Machines Corporation

Jeffrey N Stevens

Michael E Moran

Alan Jay Wecker

Bruce E Naylor

Harrison Scofield

Thomas V Hartrick

Nicholas J Sabia

Kenneth Edward Davies

Walter C Geddes

Alexander T Maluta

Amy S Cohen

Donald R Hyatt

Mark J Kline

Christopher F Gleason

A publisher of a softcopy book includes royalty payment information either within the structured document text of the book or in a royalty payment information file which accompanies the book. To read the book from the storage disk, the user applies a special softcopy book reading program at his workstation. If the user enters a command to copy the book onto a writable storage medium such as a magnetic disk or to print a hardcopy of the book with a printer or to transmit a copy of the book over a modem, a royalty payment program intercepts the copying command and suspends the copying operations. Instead, the royalty payment program presents the user with a display of the royalty payment information stored in the book text or in a file accompanying the book. The user must select the option of paying a royalty to the publisher before the royalty payment program permits a copy of the book to be made.

Data processing system and method to enforce payment of royalties when

A generalized link is provided in a data processing system to enable referencing from a point within an organized hierarchy of an on-line softcopy text, to an arbitrary multimedia object. The multimedia object may be represented by data which is also contained within the softcopy book or alternately which may be separate from the book as a separate file or a separate data base. This enables an author at the time of writing the softcopy book, to specify specific multimedia hardware and software support for the display of multimedia presentations accompanying the text in the book. Provision is made for the author to specify alternate forms of multimedia presentation, where a particular specified multimedia apparatus or supporting software is not present at a workstation. An improved method for dynamically updating a softcopy book to a new edition is also disclosed.

Data processing method to provide a generalized link from a reference

An expert system is provided which can be accessed by other application programs operating within any of the available operating environments in a general purpose computer system. In this architecture, an expert system consultation subsystem provides the means for performing expert consultations. Included within the expert system subsystem is a task manager which initiates and manages a plurality of concurrent consultations. Interface programming provides the capability for the expert system consultation subsystem to communicate and pass data and commands between it and other application programs operating within the computer system. Further, means are provided to allow the expert system subsystem to access data stored on database management systems.

Expert system architecture

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Gaithersburg, MD, United States of America

Jeffrey N Stevens