JPH06187382A - Electronic publication reader - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Abstract] [Purpose] To provide an electronic publication reader capable of efficiently supporting reading by an electronic publication without impairing the user's willingness to read. [Structure] The current position pointer 4 indicates the current reference location in the contents of the text storage unit 1. The current position updating unit 5 updates the contents of the current position pointer 4 in response to a request from the user. The body output unit 6 is the body storage unit 1.
Of the contents of, the location indicated by the current position pointer 4 is output. The summary instructing means 7 gives an instruction to output a summary in response to a request from the user. Summary range determination unit 8
In response to an instruction from the summary instructing means 7, only the summary sentences up to the chapter or section immediately before the portion pointed by the current position pointer 4 in the contents of the text storage unit 1 are selected from the summary sentence storage unit 2. The summary sentence output unit 9 outputs the summary sentence determined by the summary range determination unit 8. Display 3
Displays the output of the text output unit 6 and the summary output unit 9 in a visible manner.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic publication reader for reproducing book information stored in a portable information recording medium, that is, contents of an electronic publication.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, due to the widespread use of large-capacity recording media such as CD-ROMs and magneto-optical disks, it is possible to publish books that were previously published on paper using these recording media, that is, electronic publishing. Attention has been paid. Early electronic publications were mainly those that made use of the high-speed search function of computers such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, but recently the scope is expanding to general books such as novels.

An electronic publication reader has been developed as a device for a user to actually read these electronic publications provided as packaged media. For example, Sony's "Data Discman" and Matsushita Electric's "CD-
ROM viewer ”. In these electronic publication readers, generally, a large amount of information stored in an information recording medium is taken out of a large amount of information that can be displayed on the screen of the device at one time and displayed, and the pages are scrolled one by one to read one after another. It has become.

That is, the conventional electronic publication reader is, for example, as shown in FIG. 4, a text storage unit 31, a display unit 32, a current position pointer 33, and a current position updating unit 34.
And a text output unit 35. Body memory 31
Is a portable information recording medium such as a CD-ROM or a magneto-optical disk and its drive device, and stores the text of an electronic publication. The display unit 32 includes, for example, a liquid crystal panel, and visually displays the content of the electronic publication. The current position pointer 33 points to the location currently referred to in the text storage unit 31. A part of the semiconductor memory is actually assigned to the current position pointer 33. The current position updating unit 34 includes, for example, a scroll instruction key and a control program, and updates the contents of the current position pointer 33 in response to a request from the user. The body output unit 35 is realized by, for example, an interface circuit and a control program, and outputs the body content of the location designated by the current position pointer 33 in the body storage unit 31 to the display unit 32.

In this conventional electronic publication reader, the current position pointer 33 has a head address "A" of a portion in the text storage unit 31 which the user is about to read.
“Ddr1” is held. The body output unit 35 reads out the content of one screen from the address “Addr1” in the body storage unit 31 and outputs it to the display unit 32. When the user finishes reading the displayed contents of one screen, he / she gives an instruction to switch to the next page.
Updates the contents of the current position pointer 33 to "Addr2" which is advanced by one screen. After that, the text output unit 35 reads out and outputs the contents of one screen from the address "Addr2" and thereafter. By repeating the above operation, the user can sequentially read the contents of the electronic publication.

[0006]

Generally, when a user reads with an electronic publication reader, it is rare to read all at once from the beginning to the end of the book, as in normal reading. When reading is resumed after a while, the content of the read part may not be remembered, and the user may want to summarize only the read part.

However, when the conventional electronic publication reader is to have a function of outputting a summary of the contents of the electronic publication, the summary sentence is also stored in the information recording medium as a part of the body and the body is output. You must use the same output method as the method. If the abstract is created for the entire publication, the abstract of the entire text will be output without distinguishing between the read part and the unread part of the user. In this case, for example, when the content of the electronic publication is something like a detective story, the ending is displayed and the user's willingness to read is impaired. On the other hand, if the summary is created by subdividing it into chapters or sections, the above problem does not occur, but on the contrary, if the user himself / herself decides to what extent the summary is to be output. Moreover, the operation of outputting a subdivided summary sentence must be repeated.

The present invention has been made in view of such circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to provide an electronic publication reader capable of efficiently supporting reading by an electronic publication without impairing the user's willingness to read. .

[0009]

According to the invention of claim 1, a body storing means for storing a body of an electronic publication, and a summary storing a summary for each chapter or section of the electronic publication. An electronic publication reader for reproducing an information recording medium constituting a storage means, and an abstract from a beginning to a chapter or a section immediately before the currently displayed part by an instruction from the user to display the abstract. It is characterized in that a summary sentence output means for selecting only a sentence from the summary sentence storage means and displaying it on the display means is provided.

The invention of claim 2 describes the text of an electronic publication.
Retaining text memory and chapters of the electronic publication or
Configure a summary sentence storage unit that stores summary sentences for each clause
An electronic publication reader for reproducing an information recording medium,
Indicate the current reference location in the contents of the text storage unit
Depending on the current position pointer and the request from the user,
Current position update to update the contents of the current position pointer
The new position and the current position of the contents of the text storage unit
Text output to output the part pointed by the pointer
Section and the instruction to output the summary at the request of the user.
About the instruction means and the instruction from this summary instruction means
To the current position pointer in the contents of the memory
The point up to the chapter or section immediately before the point indicated by
Determining the summary range to select only about sentences from the summary sentence storage unit
Section and the summary sentence determined by this summary range determination section.
Output section of the summary output, the text output section and the summary
A display unit for visually displaying the output of the sentence output unit,
Is characterized by.

[0011]

According to the first aspect of the invention, the body storing means stores the body of the electronic publication. The summary storage means stores a summary of each chapter or section of the electronic publication.
The summary output means selects, from the summary storage means, only the summary from the beginning to the chapter or section immediately before the part currently being displayed on the display means in response to an instruction from the user to display the summary. Display it.

In the invention of claim 2, the text storage unit is
It stores the text of electronic publications. The summary storage unit stores a summary of each chapter or section of the electronic publication.
The current position pointer points to the current reference location in the content of the text storage unit. The current position updating unit updates the contents of the current position pointer in response to a request from the user. The body output unit outputs the portion designated by the current position pointer in the content of the body storage unit. The summary instructing means gives an instruction to output the summary in response to a request from the user. The summary range determination unit selects from the summary sentence storage unit only the summary sentence up to the chapter or section immediately before the portion pointed by the current position pointer in the contents of the body storage unit according to the instruction from the summary instruction unit. The summary output section
The summary sentence determined by the summary range determination unit is output. The display unit visually displays the outputs of the text output unit and the summary output unit.

[0013]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an electronic publication reader according to an embodiment of the present invention. The electronic publication reader includes a main body storage unit 1, a summary sentence storage unit 2, a display unit 3, a current position pointer 4, Current position updating unit 5 and text output unit 6
A summarizing instruction means 7, a summarizing range determining section 8 and a summarizing sentence outputting section 9. The body storage unit 1 is, for example, a CD-
It is composed of a portable information recording medium such as a ROM or a magneto-optical disk and its drive device, and stores the text of an electronic publication. The abstract sentence storage unit 2 is allocated to another area on the same information recording medium as the text storage unit 1, for example, and stores the abstract sentence for each chapter of the electronic publication. Display 3
Is a liquid crystal panel, for example, which visually displays the contents of an electronic publication. The current position pointer 4 is, for example, a partial area of a semiconductor memory shared by the entire device, or a CPU.
Is assigned, and the location currently referred to in the text storage unit 1 is designated. As the contents of the current position pointer 4, the in-disk address of the currently displayed text data is used. The current position updating unit 5
For example, it is composed of a page scroll instruction key to the previous page or the next page, and a control program which detects the input of these keys and increases or decreases the contents of the current position pointer 4 by a predetermined value. The contents of the current position pointer 4 are updated. The text output unit 6 is composed of, for example, a disk drive device, an interface circuit with a liquid crystal panel, a device driver program, and a drawing program, and is designated by the current position pointer 4 in the text storage unit 1. The text content of the location is output to the display unit 3. The summary instructing means 7 is configured as, for example, a summary instructing key or a summary instructing menu on the display unit, and gives an instruction to output a summary according to a request from the user. The summary range determination unit 8 refers to the current position pointer 4 when instructed by the summary instruction unit 7 to output a summary, and selects only the summary sentences up to the immediately preceding chapter from the summary sentence storage unit 2. The summary sentence output unit 9 outputs the summary sentence determined by the summary range determination unit 8 to the display unit 3. The summary output unit 9 has almost the same function as that of the body output unit 6 except that the output content is a summary sentence. Therefore, most of the contents can be shared with the body output unit 6. In addition,
Actually, many components other than the above are required to realize the search function and other functions, but since they are not directly related to the gist of the present invention, description thereof will be omitted.

An outline of the operation of the electronic publication reader will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. When the user wants to know the summary of the part up to that point while reading the text of the electronic publication, the summary instructing means 7 instructs the output of the summary. The summary instructing means 7 monitors the instruction from the user (step S1), and activates the summary range determining unit 8 if there is an instruction from the user. As a result, the summary range determination unit 8 refers to the stored content of the current position pointer 4, and the end address of the corresponding body text of the summary sentences stored in the summary sentence storage unit 2 is less than the value of the current position pointer 4. Only the items are selected (step S2), and then the summary sentence output unit 9 is activated. As a result, the summary sentence output unit 9 reads out the summary sentence in the range determined by the summary range determination unit 8 from the summary sentence storage unit 2 and outputs it to the display unit 3 (step S3). As a result, the display unit 3 displays the summary from the beginning to the chapter immediately before the currently displayed portion (step S4). Note that the operation when the user proceeds to read the text of the electronic publication and the operation of the electronic publication reader in response to this are the same as in the case of the conventional electronic publication reader, and thus the description thereof is omitted.

Next, the specific operation of the electronic publication reader will be described. FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing an example of the storage state of the summary sentence storage unit 2, and it is assumed that the content of the electronic publication read by the user is a detective novel having four chapters. As shown in FIG. 3, the summary sentence storage unit 2 stores the start address and end address of each chapter in the text storage unit 1, the chapter number of each chapter, and the summary sentence for each chapter. Now, it is assumed that the stored content of the current position pointer 4 is "3000". At this time, the display section 3 displays the beginning of the fourth chapter of the electronic publication. At this point, when the user operates the summary instructing means 7 to instruct to output the summary, the summary range determining unit 8 is activated. The summary range determination unit 8 first takes out “3000” which is the stored content of the current position pointer 4. Next, each end address of each chapter is sequentially compared with "3000", and the one less than "3000" is selected. In this example, up to Chapter 3 having the end address "2999" is applicable. After that, the summary output unit 9 is activated. The summary output unit 9 is the summary of the first chapter, "When the man A came home, his wife B was dead." And the summary of the second chapter, "C detective is B's mistress. I doubted D. ", which is the summary of Chapter 3." D. had an alibi on the day of the incident. "
And are read from the summary sentence storage unit 2 and output to the display unit 3. As a result, the display section 3 is a summary from the beginning to Chapter 3. “When A man came home, his wife B child died. C detective suspected D man who was B's mistress. "There was an alibi on the day of the incident." Is displayed, and the user can know the outline up to that point.

As described above, even if the user tries to start reading again from Chapter 4 after a certain period of time after reading up to Chapter 3, the user can operate the summary instructing means 7 to check the already-read portion. You can easily get a summary. Further, since the unread portion, that is, the summary sentence of Chapter 4, "The true criminal was C Detective." Is not displayed, the user's willingness to read is not impaired.

In the above embodiment, the summary sentence is stored in the summary sentence storage unit 2 for each chapter. However, the summary sentence may be stored in a hierarchical structure such as chapters and sections.
By doing so, it is possible to more finely respond to the position indicated by the current position pointer 4, and it is also possible to change the level of detail of the summary. Further, in the above embodiment, the text storage unit 1 and the summary sentence storage unit 2 are provided,
Although the main text and the abstract are completely separated and stored, it is not always necessary to configure in this way, and other storage forms may be adopted as long as they can be logically matched.

[0018]

As described above, according to the present invention, a text storage means for storing the text of an electronic publication and a summary text storage for storing a summary of each chapter or section of the electronic publication. An electronic publication reader that reproduces the information recording medium that constitutes the means, and the summary text from the beginning to the chapter or section immediately before the currently displayed part by an instruction from the user to display the summary. Since only the summary output means for selecting only the summary storage means and displaying it on the display means is provided, based on the position in the text that the user is currently referring to,
Before that, that is, since the summary can be collectively output by limiting the range to only the read portion, it is possible to efficiently support the reading by the electronic publication without impairing the user's willingness to read. In other words, the user can easily remind the user of the synopsis of the already read part, and since the summary is not output for the unread part, it does not impair the user's willingness to read, so that the user can read the book after a long interruption. You can favorably support restarting.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of an electronic publication reader according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart outlining an operation of an electronic publication reader according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing an example of a storage state of a summary sentence storage unit installed in an electronic publication reader according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a conventional electronic publication reader.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Body storage unit 2 Summary sentence storage unit 3 Display unit 4 Current position pointer 5 Current position update unit 6 Body output unit 7 Summary instruction means 8 Summary range determination unit 9 Summary sentence output unit

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An information recording medium which constitutes a body storing means for storing a body of an electronic publication and a summary storing means for storing a summary of each chapter or section of the electronic publication. In the electronic publication reader, the user selects the summary from the beginning to the chapter or section immediately before the currently displayed section from the summary storage by means of an instruction from the user to display the summary. An electronic publication reader characterized in that the electronic publication reader is provided with a summary output means for displaying on a display means. 2. An information recording medium constituting a text storage unit for storing a text of an electronic publication and a summary text storage unit for storing an abstract text for each chapter or section of the electronic publication. An electronic publication reader for performing, a current position pointer that indicates a current reference location among the contents of the body storage unit, a current position updating unit that updates the contents of the current position pointer according to a request from a user, A body output unit for outputting a portion designated by the current position pointer in the contents of the body storage unit, a summary instructing unit for instructing output of a summary in response to a user request, and an instruction from the summary instructing unit Thus, only the summary sentences up to the chapter or section immediately before the portion pointed to by the current position pointer in the contents of the body storage unit are stored in the summary sentence storage unit. A summary range determining unit for selecting, a summary sentence output unit for outputting the summary sentence determined by the summary range determining unit, and a display unit for visually displaying outputs of the body text output unit and the summary sentence output unit. An electronic publication reader characterized by that.