Coded data generation or conversion – Digital code to digital code converters – To or from variable length codes
Patent
1990-03-14
1994-12-20
Hoff, Marc S.
Coded data generation or conversion
Digital code to digital code converters
To or from variable length codes
341 51, 341106, H03M 740
Patent
active
053749286
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to a method of processing a text in order to store the text in memory. The invention also relates to a method of processing the stored text in order to retrieve the text from memory and a data processing system comprising means for performing this method.
In the context of this specification the word "text" refers to any body or sequence of "words". Throughout this specification we use the term "word" to refer to any recognisable word (e.g. water, boat, pen, spoon, etc.), symbol (e.g. 3, &, ?, etc.) or special action instruction (e.g. next word starts with a capital letter, end of line, beginning of paragraph, etc.). The term "word", however, throughout the specification, should also be understood to encompass a number of logical alternatives, which may depend on the particular form of the text to be processed. For instance, a word may be defined as being any group of alphanumeric characters and/or instructions which exist in the text between two consecutive spaces. In the case of the text being data, such as that received from a seismic test or a radio telescope, a word may be defined as being any group of alphanumeric characters and/or instructions which exist between two consecutive occurrences of a commonly occurring alphanumeric character or instruction. Hence, prior to processing a text according to the present invention a determination needs to be made as to what will constitute a word for the purposes of processing the text.
In the past it has proved impractical to store the text of most books in the memory of a data processing system because such a text would require approximately several million bytes of binary code to represent the text and the capacity of the available memory chips could not accommodate such a large amount of information without the resulting data processing system becoming cumbersomely large. In recent years, however, the capacity of available memory chips has increased without substantial alterations to their size. In particular, with the advent of the one megabit chip the feasibility of producing a practical and portable data processing system for storing the text of a book has been enhanced.
The other factor which affects the size and practibility of a data processing system for storing text is the economy and efficiency with which the text is stored in the available memory space. It is desirable to have text stored in the smallest possible memory space in order to minimize the number of memory chips required and, hence, minimize the size and power consumption of a data processing system comprising the chips.
Text is normally represented in digital code by allocating an eight bit binary character code to each alphanumeric character and instruction which could appear in the text, an example being the ASCII code. While it is usually necessary to employ such an eight bit character code for display purposes it is desirable to compress this code representation of the text for storage purposes.
In accordance with the present invention there is provided a method of processing a text comprising words represented by binary character code in order to store the text in storage means, said method comprising:
creating a dictionary file which relates the binary character code of each word in said text to a binary word code representative of the word itself;
altering the binary character code representation of said text by replacing the binary character code representation of each word with the corresponding binary word code according to said dictionary file;
creating a phrase table file which relates the binary word code of pairs of words, which are adjacent one another in said text and occur in said text at least three times, to binary phrase code representative of said pairs;
adjusting said phrase table file so as to relate two binary phrase codes, or a binary phrase code and a binary word code, to a single distinct binary phrase code, said two phrase codes, or said phrase and word codes, representing a group of words which comprise a phrase and occur in s
REFERENCES:
patent: 4843389 (1989-06-01), Lisle et al.
patent: 4881075 (1989-11-01), Weng
patent: 4899148 (1990-02-01), Sato et al.
Hilton John
Moore John D.
Purchell Roger B.
Swain Peter G.
Hoff Marc S.
Megaword International Pty. Ltd.
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