Xerox Corporation

Palo Alto Research Center Inc.

Microlytics, Inc.

Ronald M Kaplan

Martin Kay

Per-Kristian G Halvorsen

Daniel Gureasko Bobrow

Todd A Cass

John Turner Maxwell, Iii

Daniel P Huttenlocher

M Margaret Withgott

Steven C Bagley

Dan S Bloomberg

Lauri J Karttunen

Atty T Mullins

David L Hecht

Ramana B Rao

Glen W Petrie

Richard Stamford Crouch

Douglass R Cutting

John Maxwell

Colin Luckman

Daniel Davies

Jan O Pedersen

William M Newman

John Seely Brown

Robert Shuchatowitz

Kenneth J Henderson

Michael A McCourt

Ramana R Rao

Michael Tepper

Wayland R Hicks

A method and apparatus is disclosed for generating and distributing multilingual documents. The multilingual documents are comprised of primary information consisting of human-readable text and secondary information consisting of machine-readable data such that a translation of the text is accomplished by converting the human-readable text into a second language through the use of the decoded machine-readable data. The machine-readable data is comprised of a code that describes a set of editing operations that can be applied to the human-readable text to convert it into at least a second language. In a preferred embodiment, the machine-readable data is embedded in the image using an unobtrusive code on the document such as Xerox DATAGLYPH codes.

System and method for distributing multilingual documents

Techniques are provided to construct and use user-interest sensitive indicators of search results. A set of documents is determined based on one or more search terms. Passages within each selected document are identified based on the search terms. Condensation transformations applied to the passages to preferentially retain elements of the passage based on the search terms and user interest information. The resultant indicator is provides a user-interest sensitive signal of the meaning of the passage.

Systems and methods for using and constructing user-interest sensitive indicators of search results

Techniques are presented to determine user-interest sensitive notes. User selected passages, user interest information, condensation transformations and optional meaning distortion constraints are identified. User foci expressed by the selected passages are determined based on the similarity of the elements in the selected passages to elements in the user interest information. User sensitive notes are determined by selectively applying the condensation transformations to the selected passages to preferentially retain user foci while eliding less salient information. Meaning distortions constraints are optionally applied in conjunction with condensation transformations or in creating the condensation transformations in order to reduce the likelihood of distorting the meaning of the passage.

Systems and methods for user-interest sensitive note-taking

Techniques are presented to determine user-interest sensitive condensations of a passage. One or more passages are selected and user interest information, condensation transformations and optional meaning distortion constraints are identified. The foci of user interest within the selected passages are determined based the similarity of the elements in the selected passages to elements in the user interest information. The condensation transformations are applied to the selected passages to preferentially retain user foci while eliding less salient information. The resultant condensate provides signals the user-interest sensitive meaning of the passage. Meaning distortions constraints are optionally applied in conjunction with the condensation transformations or in creating the condensation transformations to reduce the likelihood of distorting the meaning of the passage.

Systems and methods for user-interest sensitive condensation

A compactly stored word list that includes a directed graph data structure is used for word to number (W/N) and number to word (N/W) mapping. Each word accepted by the data structure is mapped to a unique corresponding number within a dense set of numbers ranging from zero to one less than the total number of acceptable words. Some common suffixes are collapsed into shared branches, which is possible because the numbers are not stored within the word list. In addition, some branches of the data structure can be skipped during mapping because of information associated with branch points. That information permits the mapping scan to continue with a next branch or with an alternative branch. That information also indicates the number of suffix endings in the next branch; this number is used to keep a count of the word endings during word to number mapping; it is also used both to determine whether to continue with the next branch and also to reduce the number being mapped during number to word mapping. The branching information includes a full length pointer to the next branch or a shorter length pointer index to a table in which the pointer is stored. In either case, the number of suffix endings in the next branch is annexed to the pointer. The pointers and pointer indexes are assigned iteratively, the shortest pointer indexes first, then longer pointer indexes, and finally the full length pointers. In each case, a pointer or pointer index is assigned only if beneficial, and the assignment of pointers and pointer indexes is cleared and redone if a better assignment can be made.

Word/number and number/word mapping

A method of unifying edge data structures using a processor. The method begins with creation of a first edge data structure and unifying it with a second edge data structure. If during unification any of the contexted lazy copy links associated with the second graph data structure are activated, then second graph data structure is expanded. Expansion involves first selecting a contexted lazy copy link from among the contexted lazy copy links associated with the second graph data, selecting a selected attribute from the subtree feature structure pointed to by the selected contexted lazy copy link, making a copy of the selected attribute and storing the copy of the selected attribute in the second graph data structure as a second attribute, and adding a contexted lazy copy link from the second attribute to the selected attribute value.

Method for creating a disjunctive edge graph from subtrees during

A method of using a processor to conjoin a first clause and a second clause as part of a unification of a first graph. If the first clause is not associated with the first graph, then a third clause is created that is opaque and has a pointer to the first clause. Afterward, the third clause is conjoined with the second clause.

Method of conjoining clauses during unification using opaque clauses

Method of lazy contexted copying during unification

A computerized multilingual translation dictionary includes a set of word and phrases for each of the languages it contains, plus a mapping that indicates for each word or phrase in one language what the corresponding translations in the other languages are. The set of words and phrases for each language are divided up among corresponding concept groups based on an abstract pivot language. The words and phrases are encoded as token numbers assigned by a word-number mapper laid out in sequence that can be searched fairly rapidly with a simple linear scan. The complex associations of words and phrases to particular pivot language senses are represented by including a list of pivot-language sense numbers with each word or phrase. The preferred coding of these sense numbers is by means of a bit vector for each word, where each bit corresponds to a particular pivot element in the abstract language, and the bit is ON if the given word is a translation of that pivot element. Then, to determine whether a word in language 1 translates to a word in language 2 only requires a bit-wise intersection of their associated bit-vectors. Each word or phrase is prefixed by its bit-vector token number, so the bit-vector tokens do double duty: they also act as separators between the tokens of one phrase and those of another. A pseudo-Huffman compression scheme is used to reduce the size of the token stream. Because of the frequency skew for the bit-vector tokens, this produces a very compact encoding.

Compact encoding of multi-lingual translation dictionaries

A method and apparatus for applying morphological image criteria that identify image units in an undecoded document image having significant information content, and for retrieving related data that supplements the document either from elsewhere within the document or a source external to the document. The retrieved data can result from character code recognition or template matching of the identified significant image units, or the retrieved data can result directly from an analysis of the morphological image characteristics of the identified significant image units. A reading machine can allow a user to browse and select documents or segments thereof, and to obtain interactive retrieval of documents and supplemental data.

Method and apparatus for supplementing significant portions of a

Valid positions for hyphens in input strings are determined by reading in and processing the symbols of the input string through a finite state transducer which has a state-transition data structure determined by a compilation of a set of hyphenation rules. The output of the encoding system can include a hyphenated string, or can accept a hyphenated string and output an indication of whether the input hyphenation is proper according to the set of hyphenation rules.

Finite-state encoding system for hyphenation rules

An efficient method and apparatus for tokenizing natural language text minimizes required data storage and produces guaranteed incremental output. Id (text) is composed with a tokenizer to create a finite state machine representing tokenization paths. The tokenizer itself is in the form of a finite state transducer. The process is carried out in a breadth-first manner so that all possibilities are explored at each character position before progressing. Output is produced incrementally and occurs only when all paths collapse into one. Output may be delayed until a token boundary is reached. In this manner, the output is guaranteed and will not be retracted unless the text is globally ill-formed. Each time output is produced, storage space is freed for subsequent text processing.

Method and apparatus for tokenizing text

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Ronald M Kaplan