Electronic publishing system

Details Electronic publishing system Electronic publishing system

1999-03-29

2003-07-08

Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2178)

Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator i

Presentation processing of document

Layout

Reexamination Certificate

active

06589292

ABSTRACT:

FIELD
The present invention relates to electronic and printed publishing and provides a mechanism by which text and images for publishing can be prepared and/or edited.
Particularly, but not exclusively, the present invention is directed at the layout of newsholes.
The present invention has application in electronic and printed media, for example newspapers, magazines and computer text systems.
BACKGROUND
The design of a newspaper provides a particular style and flavour discernible by the reader.
As used in this context, ‘design’ refers to the graphical rules or guidelines that govern how elements (such as headlines, pictures and text) should be used to construct newsholes, including the number and type of elements which may or may not be used in certain circumstances, the size and position of those elements in each case, direction on suitable typography, and usage of other graphic devices such as borders and colour.
The design style of a newspaper is often considered critical, for a number of reasons. For example, it has great bearing on the newspaper's “appeal” to different readers (such as, large heavy headlines in a tabloid, or smaller “dignified” headlines in a “quality” broadsheet). The readers are attracted to buy the paper and this obviously helps to determine that paper's market. Designs also serve the purpose of giving the newspaper a unique or distinct look so that they are distinguished from their competitors. For these reasons, very often newspapers spend considerable time, effort and money on determining their design “style”.
Currently, in many publishing environments, the design of a newspaper is controlled by only a few people and is communicated—often verbally—from one person to another. These people may or may not also be responsible for laying out the newspaper (that is, implementing their own design) but, typically, layout is performed by people who did not determine the design style but who must learn it and implement it as faithfully as possible.
As a result, a number of problems and issues may and do arise with newspaper layout:
1. It is possible for the design to be implemented incorrectly in some cases, due to a misunderstanding or ignorance of its requirements, or pressure of workload, or lack of skill by the layout operator. This may result in a glaring and undesirable deviation from “style”.
2. It is possible under the existing arrangements for the design and style of a newspaper to change over a period of time, due to changing interpretation of how it should be applied, and/or a build-up of a series of minor “styles” inaccuracies. Although this change may be subtle and may occur over a period of a number of years, any change is often noticed by readers of the newspaper, with possible negative effects on the readership of the newspaper.
3. A layout, although it may be creatively faithful to the design guidelines, may be inefficient in its usage of space, resulting in expensive wastage of space and/or less news being put in the paper.
4. Computer systems are available with electronic tools that facilitate the building of layouts. However, these systems will require the layout to be constructed manually using those tools, which is labour-intensive and time-consuming. In addition, these systems provide little or no guidance on the paper's style and do not assist the layout operator in determining how layouts should be designed. They merely permit the layout operator to build the layout, once the operator has personally determined what should be built.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,354 and GB 2,246,102 disclose how newsholes can be arranged to fill a given area (such as a page). However, they could not be used to generate the newsholes themselves.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,470, U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,443, U.S. Pat. No. 5,113,488, U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,955 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,079,724 all relate to different aspects of manipulating type and/or images to fit a given shape. These disclosures do not reach the concept of publication design rules, and they would not assist in any way in actually helping to build or determine the newshole design. These inventions address mechanical problems that may arise once it becomes necessary to pour text and/or images into those shapes to fill them up.
TERMINOLOGY
The publishing industry suffers from a lack of standard terms to describe common features of the trade: jargon varies widely not just from country to country, but even between publishing houses. To clarify the present disclosure, this brief glossary notes what we have used certain key terms to mean.
Page: This term is standard but may sometimes be confused with “newshole”, described next. A page refers to the physical, printed page or some representation of it, such as a paper or electronic “dummy” page which is used for planning and preparing the printed version.
Design: Refers to the graphical rules or guidelines that govern how elements (such as headlines, pictures and text) should be used to construct newsholes, including the number and type of elements which may or may not be used in certain circumstances, the size and position of those elements in each case, direction on suitable typography, and usage of other graphic devices such as borders and colour.
Newshole: We have used this term to describe a component of a page, such as a story or advertisement (typically, we use it to mean “story” as in editorial reference, but conceptually, “advertisement” also fits). A newshole refers to a portion of a page, which portion has been used for a common purpose or means (such a presenting a story). A page may contain one or many newsholes which are usually discrete from each other. A newshole may itself be comprised of several elements: a story may contain headlines, pictures and text, which together make up the newshole for that story.
Layout: Refers to the way these design guidelines are implemented and actually put into practice in any particular instance.
Layout (or newshole) Element: This refers to the individual elements within a newshole, such as headlines, pictures, graphics, text, captions and so on.
Thus, pages contain newsholes, newsholes contain elements, and Design is the rules and Layout is the implementation of the design.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
The present invention seeks to alleviate, at least, one problem associated with the prior art.
The present invention provides a system, apparatus and/or method of preparing or editing text for publishing in which:
a newshole is filled in accordance with a design, and
resizing of the newshole takes place if the fit is not in accordance with predetermined criteria.
Advantageously, if the newshole is resized, any number of the layout element(s) may also be resized.
In another form, the present invention enables the various elements of a newshole to be arranged (sized and positioned) and formatted (styles, using devices such as typography, colour and borders) in a manner that:
I. suits or matches the particular newshole design (presentation) rules of a publication, and or
II. allows the particular size and area of the newshole to be automatically fitted (or filled up) consistent with those design rules, by:
A. allowing the user to predefine relationships between the various components of the newshole, which relationships determine each component's size and position relative to the others', and/or
B. permits automatic recalculation of each component's size and position so that the newshole can be filled.
The present invention determines the shapes that comprise a newshole and/or what those shapes are (what they represent), and/or how big each one is, and/or where each is placed within the newshole.
For simplification purposes, the present invention is called NAILS, an acronym which stands for “Newspaper Automated Intelligent Layout System”. (However, the present invention is not limited in application to newspapers, but can be used for any electronic or printed media where material is laid out or presented according to a certain style.) NAILS refers to the way the various elements of a newshole may be arrang

Affiliated with

Also associated with

Rating

Electronic publishing system does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Electronic publishing system, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Electronic publishing system will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3098545