Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ronald A Fein

Edward J Fries

William B Dolan

Shawn J Cokus

John Benjamin Messerly

Christopher A Thorpe

Anthony Douglas Krueger

Dean J Hachamovitch

James E Walsh

Kevin Lane Brown

Darrin N Hatakeda

Eric A LeVine

Thomas W Saxton

Dale L Gipson

Ronald Stephen Giesen

Stephen M Hirsch

Michael Walfish

Jason Todd Barnett

Leopoldo Artalejo, Iv

Maria-Nancy A Domini

An author-oriented document summarizer for a word processor is described. The document summarizer performs a statistical analysis to generate a list of ranked sentences for consideration in the summary. The summarizer counts how frequently content words appear in a document and produces a table correlating the content words with their corresponding frequency counts. Phrase compression techniques are used to produce more accurate counts of repeatedly used phrases. A sentence score for each sentence is derived by summing the frequency counts of the content words in a sentence and dividing that tally by the number of the content words in the sentence. The sentences are then ranked in order of their sentence scores. Concurrent with the statistical analysis, during the same pass through the document the summarizer performs a cue-phrase analysis to weed out sentences with words or phrases that have been pre-identified as potential problem phrases. The cue-phrase analysis compares sentence phrases with a pre-compiled list of words and phrases and sets conditions on whether the sentences containing them can be used in the summary. Following the cue-phrase analysis, the summarizer creates a summary containing the higher ranked sentences. The summary may also include a conditioned sentence if the conditions established for inclusion of the sentence have been satisfied. The summarizer then inserts the sentence at the beginning of the document before the start of the text.

Document summarizer for word processors

Providing custom content that supplements static content displayed in an alert message. In response to detecting a predetermined condition, such as an error condition, the alert message is displayed to the user of a software program module. The alert message typically presents the static content and a control object, such as a button or a hyperlink. In response to the user's selection of the control object, an external information source, typically a remote server hosting a Web page, is accessed. The external information source maintains the custom content, which can include supplemental information that is related to the detected predetermined condition.

Method and system for customizing alert messages

A word completion system that can automatically predict unrestricted word completions for data entries in an unstructured portion of a data file. The word completion system applies prediction criteria to avoid annoying the user by displaying an excessive number of wrong suggestions. Suggested word completions, which may change as the user types a partial data entry, are displayed in a non-disruptive manner and selected using traditional acceptance keystrokes, such as the &ldquo;tab&rdquo; key or the &ldquo;enter&rdquo; key. The word completion system may be deployed on an individual application program basis or on a application-independent basis. Because different word suggestion lists may be appropriate for different application programs, and for different data files created with the same application program, the word completion system allows the user to select one or more suggestion lists for use with each data file. A user interface allows the user to customize each suggestion list on an on-going basis. Each suggestion list may contain dynamic word completions that are tied to dynamic parameters maintained by the computer system, such as the time, date, registered user, and so forth. Each suggestion list may also be tied to contextual information, such as structured data fields or context labels assigned manually or by a document-creation aid known as a &ldquo;wizard.&rdquo;

Automatic word completion system for partially entered data

A method and system for defining and applying a style of a paragraph based upon the formatting properties of the paragraph. The paragraph type of the paragraph is identified. A determination is made whether the paragraph type is one which is capable of having a style defined for it. If not, then a determination is made whether the major formatting properties of the paragraph match those of an existing style and, if so, then the matching existing style is applied to the paragraph. If the paragraph type is one which is capable of having a style defined for it, then a determination is made whether the major formatting properties of the paragraph match the those of an existing style with the same paragraph type as the paragraph type of the paragraph. If so, then the matching existing style is applied to the paragraph. If not, then a style is defined with the formatting properties of the paragraph. The defined style is then applied to the paragraph and all direct formatting is removed.

Method and system for defining and applying a style to a paragraph

In an electronic word processing system environment, a system and method for verifying the accuracy of the grammatical composition of a sentence and the spelling of words within the sentence in an electronic document. A sentence is extracted from the electronic document. It is determined whether any of the words in the sentence are misspelled. If any of the words are misspelled, then an indication is displayed in a combined spelling and grammar dialog box. Determination is made whether the sentence is of proper grammatical composition. If the sentence does not have proper grammatical composition, then an indication is displayed in the combined spelling and grammar dialog box. These tasks may be repeated for each sentence in the document until the entire document has been proofed.

Method and system for verifying accuracy of spelling and grammatical

Automatically detecting a misspelled word and replacing the misspelled word with a correctly spelled word. Words are automatically spell checked as delimited. If a word is detected as a misspelled word then a correctly spelled alternate word is generated. The misspelled word and the correctly spelled alternate word are compared according to a set of difference criteria. The difference criteria correspond to common types of misspellings. If the misspelled word and the correctly spelled alternate word differ according to a difference criterion then the correctly spelled alternate word is identified as a replacement candidate word. The results of the difference criteria comparisons are reviewed using a set of selection criteria. If the results of the difference criteria comparisons satisfy the selection criteria then one of the replacement candidate words is correctly spelled as a replacement word and the misspelled word is replaced by the replacement word.

System and method for automatically correcting a misspelled word

In an electronic word processing system environment, a system and method for verifying the accuracy of the grammatical composition of a sentence in the background. While the word processor is in edit mode, i.e., the user is entering data or commands, it is determined when there is an idle period. An idle period is when the user is not entering data or commands. During an idle period, a sentence is extracted from the electronic document. It is determined whether the sentence is of proper grammatical composition. If the sentence does not have proper grammatical composition, then an error indication is displayed to the user in the context of the electronic document. These tasks may be repeated for each sentence in the document until the entire document has been proofed or the idle period ends. When the user selects the error indication in the document, a pop-up menu is displayed beneath the sentence containing the error. The pop-up menu includes the top three suggestions for correcting the error, a command to ignore the error, and a tunnel to the foreground grammar checker dialog. The pop-up menu may also include a full sentence rewrite that replaces all of the errors in the sentence with the suggestion that will most likely correct each error.

Method and system for background grammar checking an electronic document

A method and system for preserving document integrity between potentially partially incompatible versions of a program module by maintaining forwards compatibility and backwards compatibility. Version (n') of the program module is released after version (n). A 'saved by version (n)' bit may be activated any time that version (n) saves a file. The 'saved by version (n)' bit indicates to subsequently-released versions, such as version (n'), that the file has been saved by version (n) and, based upon this information, appropriate action should be taken by the subsequently-released version. A 'warning from future version' bit may be activated to indicate that a feature or features of the subsequently-released version is not supported by version (n). Based upon receiving this bit, version (n) may open the file with these features disabled or may take some other appropriate action.

Method and system for preserving document integrity

An editing system operable for automatically detecting and correcting multi-word data entry errors. A standard list including a plurality of source-target pairs is provided as an integral part of an editing program suitable of operation on a conventional personal computer. Each source term is a common multi word data entry error, and each target term is a correction for a corresponding source term. Each user may create a customized substitution list by adding user-defined source-target pairs to the list, and deleting source-target pairs from the list. In addition to correcting common multi-word spelling and grammatical errors, the substitution list may be used to perform other functions such as substituting a symbol for a multi-word alias typed with a standard keyboard. The substitution list may optionally be implemented in connection with an 'AUTOCORRECT' engine that implements multi word substitutions as they are typed by a user. In this case, automatically substitutions arc highlighted in the document displayed to the user. The user my easily reverse an undesired automatic substitution by selecting an 'undo' menu item from a tool bar. A convenient user interface is also provided for accessing the substitution list. Convenient tool bars and menu items for activating the user interface.

System and method for automatically correcting multi-word data entry

A morphological find and replace editing tool for a word processor replaces inflected forms of a user-specified find word in a text document with inflected forms of a user-specified replacement word having matching parts of speech. The tool retrieves sets of word forms having a same root word as the find and replacement words, respectively, from a word forms database. The tool selects a single set of word forms with a common root word for each of the find and replacement words such that the find and replacement words are matching parts of speech. Where word forms in the find word's set are found in the text document, they are replaced with a word form from the replacement word's set with a best matching part of speech.

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Ronald A Fein