Data processing: presentation processing of document – operator i – Presentation processing of document – Layout
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-20
2004-10-05
Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2178)
Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator i
Presentation processing of document
Layout
C715S252000, C715S252000, C345S215000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06802041
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Students, journalists, secretaries and others often attend lectures, meetings and other events and need to remember the information presented. Usually they take notes by hand. They may use these notes as they are, or enter them into a word processor later. Unfortunately, because a speaker, teacher or lecturer can present information much faster than it can be written, notes taken during a lecture or meeting are typically incomplete and often contain inaccuracies.
Another disadvantage of taking notes is that it conflicts with full participation and interaction with other people present. It can be difficult to make comments and ask or answer questions while taking notes.
Also, the information that is presented is better received when the listener gives undivided thought. The need to take notes competes with concentration on the material itself. When the material is complex, taking notes can interfere with the depth of concentration required to comprehend what is being presented. The material will then have to be learned later, often from the incomplete or inaccurate notes.
In an attempt to overcome these problems, some people make an audio recording for later reference. An audio recording can solve the problems of omissions and inaccuracies. But an audio recording is accessed sequentially. It is most suited for listening to the entire event or a large portion of it a second time. The recording can not provide a summary of the event, and it is difficult to pick out its most important parts. It can not be reviewed as quickly and readily as some notes on a few sheets of paper can be reviewed. If there is a question about the accuracy of a particular point in the notes, or an omission in the notes, it is difficult to verify or fill in the omission without a timeconsuming search of the recording. Correcting several such questions or omissions easily takes as long as a second listening of the entire recording. Thus, the recording introduces new problems of accessing the recorded material in a reasonable time.
Another way some people try to take better notes is to use a personal portable computer in the field. The person can enter notes directly into a portable computer as an event occurs. The computer software used for this purpose may be a word processor, text editor, memo field or the like. For users who can type fast enough, this can be an improvement over handwritten notes. The new notes can be added to a file in the computer that containing all the notes of a similar topic, such as previous class meetings of a college course. Using a computer, it is easy to make the notes more coherent and presentable. Thus, using a computer in this manner can be beneficial.
However, using a portable computer to take notes of an event as it occurs does not eliminate the problem of omissions and inaccuracies in the notes. For instance, although experienced typists can type text faster than it can be written in longhand, they can not type exact quotations spoken at normal speed. Taking notes becomes even harder when the subject matter is unfamiliar, complex or spoken quickly. Important information or exact wording can be lost or mistranscribed. Further, under most circumstances it is difficult to operate the computer keyboard under such intense circumstances and at the same time pay attention to, respond to, or otherwise interact with the speaker. Additionally, intense keyboard clatter can annoy other people who are present.
Most portable computers have multimedia hardware that enables them to make and play back an audio recording. Such portable multimedia computers can record events lasting from minutes to many hours, depending on the amount of computer storage available (typically a hard disk drive or RAM). Software to help in this task is available. Typically, such software is modeled after a tape recorder paradigm. It presents buttons to the user such as “Play,” “Stop,” “Pause,” “Fast Forward,” “Rewind,” and “Record.” Some additionally have a slider for immediate access to any part of the recording without the need to fast forward or rewind. The slider is moved using a pointing device such as a mouse, track ball or track pad, touch screen, or by keystrokes.
However, regardless of whether a tape recorder or the computer itself is used to record the audio event, there remains the problem of having to later locate on the tape, or the computer's recording (typically a file on the computer hard disk), the pertinent recorded portions. As is well known, such a process is usually done by trial and error: Usually the user fast forwards and rewinds the recording until the needed portion is located. On some multimedia computers, the search may be done by using a pointing device (such as a mouse) to move a slider control back and forth until the desired part is found.
One of the difficulties of a trial and error search is that upon hearing a portion of the recording, it is often difficult to determine whether it is before or after the desired portion, and by how much. Thus, it is necessary to listen to each portion long enough to determine the subject matter at that point and to remember or guess where the portion fits in relative to the desired portion. This is difficult to do when the lecture or other audio event is unfamiliar, which is usually the case. The whole process discourages people from recording something unless they esteem it important enough to invest considerable time into listening to all of it or at least much of it again. Often recordings made with good intentions are never listened to at all.
Sometimes an exact transcript of an event is important enough to hire a stenographer to create it. U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,571 to Henderson et al discloses a stenotype machine and computer system for use by people skilled in stenotype, such as court reporters. A stenotype operator transcribes spoken words into their phonetic representations by entering phonetic keystrokes on a stenotype machine. According to Henderson, as the stenotype operator does this, the stenotype machine makes a digital audio recording and establishes links (pointers) between the phonetic keystrokes and the digital audio recording. Later, these data are transferred to a computer. The computer attempts to look up the phonetic keystrokes in dictionaries of such keystrokes to transcribe the phonetic keystrokes into text. Phonetic keystrokes that are not found in the dictionary are known as “untranslates.” The court reporter can resolve the untranslates and anything else that might be mistranslated by directing the computer to play back the relevant audio portion. The computer finds the link between the untranslated (or any phonetic keystroke) and the audio recording. It uses this link as a pointer into the audio recording to play back the particular audio recorded proximate to those phonetic keystrokes.
While this stenotype system may be useful for its intended purpose, where phonetic keystrokes are entered in step with each syllable spoken, it does not meet the needs of students and others who merely want to take notes on a word processor. One reason is that most people have not acquired the skill of operating a stenotype machine. Operating a stenotype machine requires extensive training and enough skill to keep pace with the speaker. On the other hand, virtually everyone can operate an ordinary typewriter or computer keyboard at some speed, fast or slow, even without training.
Another reason a stenotype system does not meet the needs of people who want to take notes is that they usually do not need an entire transcript. The person taking notes on paper or into a word processor is free to summarize, insert personal comments or otherwise change the information presented. Taking notes into a word processor is usually at least partially a creative endeavor. Nevertheless, the information often comes too fast to handle in such a creative endeavor and important facts are missed. Even when there is adequate time to enter the notes, the notes are not entered in sync with a speaker.
Therefore, there is need
Hong Stephen S.
Ludwig Matthew
PerfectNotes Corporation
Rehm Peter H.
LandOfFree
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