Patent Application
20120137200
The present invention generally relates to electronic readers, e-readers, and more particularly to electronic readers for displaying digital publications.
The present generation of digital periodical readers typically displays only page-replica versions of digital periodicals, including, but not limited to, digital versions of magazines like Time™, newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal™, or academic publications such as Nature™. In this page replica representation, the pages displayed on the reader look and behave very similarly to the hard copy representations, and fail to take advantage of the flexibility of such presentations in the digital domain. Although some readers allow for interaction with certain portions of the content on a replica page, e.g., graphics or video, none of them allow for presentation and navigation of the textual content of articles contained on the replica pages. When an article is clicked on, tapped, touched in the digital replica of the periodical or in the Table of Contents, a replica version of the article is presented to the user.
The present invention overcomes the limitations of traditional readers by taking advantage of elements in the electronic publication that hold document elements, which may include but are not limited to videos, images, graphics, audio clips, etc., a description of the replica page in terms of its constituent elements and the geometric relationships between these elements as they are laid out on the page. Significantly, the present invention utilizes text-only files in the electronic publication for all document elements that contain any text, e.g., articles in a magazine. These text-only descriptive files are generally referred to as meta-information or meta-data file, and can be instantiated in a multiplicity of ways.
The present invention is a system and method for deploying a digital periodical reader user interface that can present a primary text-only view that is overlaid in the foreground on top of a page replica view of the article as it appears in its hard-copy version. The system and method of the present invention is dynamic in the sense that it adapts to the page layout and offers a variety of different views to users to accommodate their preferences, on a page-by-page basis, with a range of granularity greatly exceeding that which is available from conventional readers.
In the present invention, this capability is enabled by mapping a meta-data file to an internal representation of each page, as contained in that file, to regions of the screen as defined by a set of bounding polygons, and then associating gestures or touches within those boundaries with a variety of system behaviors and presentations from which a user can select.
An alternative method of providing similar support not involving the “bounding polygon” approach is the use of a touch-button-activated drop-down menu that includes of list of articles, as depicted in a page-replica view, that begin on a certain page and are available to the user in the text-only view.
Irrespective of the manner of presentation, any article, even when presented in text view, may be accompanied by one or more illustrations, which can be photos, graphics, etc.
In its preferred implementation, the current invention is intended to work in conjunction with appropriate operating systems, middleware and application software necessary to support a touch-sensitive display and interaction sub-systems.
For the purposes of illustrating the present invention, there is shown in the drawings a form which is presently preferred, it being understood however, that the invention is not limited to the precise form shown by the drawing in which:
The format of the electronic publications of the present invention for digital replica content addresses the need for a file format that allows for fluid user interactions, e.g., page-turns, with content derived from press-ready PDFs, while also allowing the textual content of the content to be easily read. This format is hereinafter referred to as “DRP.”
A DRP electronic publication is essentially an ePub publication. It is a zip file with the normal ePub structure, including an Open Packaging Format, OPF, with a manifest, spine, etc. Fundamentally, a DRP contains two categories of items: images of pages rasterized from the incoming PDF from a publisher, and the text and images, if desired, of articles contained in the publication, preferably formatted in XHTML. There are several important ways in which a DRP deviates from the ePub standard. The format of the DRP and the reading system of the present invention allow images to be top-level items in the spine. Further, the DRP adds a replica map, described below, that maps page images to XHTML content and vice versa. In the ArticleView™ state of the present invention, the system presents the text of an article plus a headline, byline and one or more images in an HTML view. Preferably, the article displayed in the ArticleView™ “floats” above the replica page image, with some of the underlying page image visible along the sides of the article view.
While full-page images can be spine items, the preferred implementation of DRP files does not place images as spine items. Rather, the spine items are the articles, such that if a user opens a DRP with a conventional ePub reader, the user navigates through the articles, not the full-page replica images of the content.
An important aspect to the DRP format is the replica map. The replica map contains information that indicates which articles are on which pages, page-images, of the content. This mapping is bi-directional, so there are two ways for a user to navigate through the content of a publication. The user can navigate on an article-by-article basis, in the ArticleView™, or on a page-by-page basis in a replica view. Whichever view is used, the pages and the articles stay in sync. Additionally, a page with one or more articles causes a User Interface, UI, element, e.g., a button, to appear at the top of the screen of the reader device which, when pressed, either opens the article viewer, in the case where there is only one article on the current page, or displays a list of articles, in the case where there is more than one article, or article fragment, on the current page.
The replica map is a simple structure that contains spatial information. The spatial information describes rectangles on a page where articles, or parts of articles, reside. The values are in the range of [0 . . . 1], where zero is the top/left, and one is bottom/right. That is, [0, 0, 1, 1] represents the entire page, while [0.5, 0.5, 1, 1] represents the bottom-right quadrant of the page. The notion used here is essentially identical to the HTML <map> tag, except that the coordinates are expressed as fractions of page width and height, rather than as absolute values. This allows the image to be zoomed and retain the coordinate mapping.
The primary purpose of the ArticleView™ is to solve the problem when the text too small or too cumbersome to read in the replica view, even when viewing a page at full zoom. Content as rendered in the DRP is not tailored for any specific device, but rather is created with print output as the primary medium. The ArticleView™ of the present invention allows users to select fonts and point sizes as in a typical ePub reader.
The DRP format of the present invention comprises a file containing all assets needed by the periodical reader and reader application. The basis for this file is a standard electronic publications file with additions supporting the special functionality of the current invention. Specifically, every page in the page-replica version of the electronic publication exists in the periodical reader package as pre-rendered image, thus not requiring the page to be rendered or formatted before it can be viewed. Further, all text based articles in the publication have corresponding text-only based files that include only the text of the article and perhaps one image at the beginning of the text to assist in identifying the article.
In addition, the preferred implementation includes a meta-data file encoded in .xml that describes the page order, which thumbnail image should be used for a given page, and a reference to one or more groups of blocks.
Groups are identified in the replica map by the “<Group>” tag, and block elements by the <Block> tag. Each group corresponds to the locations on a page spanned by a single article. Articles blocks may be not be contiguous. There may be multiple articles, represented by multiple <Group> elements, per page.
A block contains four values identifying where on the page the block/article fragment is located. These values range from 0 to 1, and are fractions applied to the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the page, as rendered, to derive x and y offsets, preferably in pixels, from the top-left corner of the page. These values may then be used to map touch events to a particular article or article fragment.
Groups are used by the reader application to present the list of articles on a given page. Each group contains a reference to an XML file describing the article. An “article.xml” file referenced as an attribute of a group via “ePubTarget” contains the text only content of the article, along with additional data for next/previous article links, header information, etc. Note that the markup in the article is used to identify the “hero image” that is presented as part of the article in article mode. As implemented, this image “slides in” as an effect has part of moving to a particular article.
The replica map is processed by the periodical reader application to construct data structures enabling navigation, article mode on appropriate pages, as identified by the presence of one or more Group tags, and a scrubber, via the per-page thumbnails. Article XML files are consumed by the reader application, enabling it to present visually pleasing article text plus images, and quickly navigate to other articles on the same or different pages.
Below is an example replicaMap.xml file, including page definitions.
There may be multiple “Group” elements per page, one per distinct article, and zero or more Block elements per Group element. The Block element defines a rectangle, as described above that contains all or part of a particular article. The “pageNum” attribute is the value to be displayed if any page numbers are shown in the user interface.
Following the <Pages> section is the <Articles> section. Below is an example <Articles> section.
Following the <Articles> section is the <TOC> section. Below is an example <TOC> section.
The TOC in a DRP contains information beyond the standard <navItem> entries in a typical NCX file (page number and summary).
The present invention allows a user to access multiple articles/text items on an individual replica page and go directly to that individual item in ArticleView™ This allows a user to toggle into the ArticleView™ to read the specific content from a replica page that they were interested in, versus just reading the content found on a replica page. None of the prior art periodical readers allow a user to decide which article/caption/or text item from an individual replica page to read in a text only ArticleView™. When users of the reader of the present invention are viewing the replica view of a periodical and tap on that article to isolate the article for reading, the prior art readers simply present another replica view of that article, not a text-only view.
The present invention allows a user to navigate the periodical from text article to text article within ArticleView™. This feature is illustrated in
This feature of the present invention allows a user to navigate and read a magazine without ever leaving the ArticleView™ experience. The user is able to navigate between using articles using conventional navigation methods, e.g., a right to left swipe advances to the next article down, a left to right swipe goes to the previous article.
In addition to being able to access the text-only versions articles in ArticleView™ from the replica view, the present invention allows the user to directly link to either the replica page or the ArticleView™ page from the Table of Contents, TOC, for the periodical. This feature optimizes the reading and navigation experience for the user by allowing them to control what reading experience they would like per individual content piece in a magazines TOC. In one embodiment of the present invention, if the user taps on the title of the article in the TOC, she is brought to the page in the replica view of the periodical containing the article. If the user taps on the brief text description of the article contained in the TOC, she initiates the text-only version of the article in ArticleView™.
The present invention further provide for customization of the format of the text in the ArticleView™. The user can customize the display of the text shown in the ArticleView™ with respect to font, type size, background, margin and line spacing. Once the user finds the settings for viewing that she prefers, she can save these settings. The reader of the present invention will subsequently apply these customized preferences across all periodicals that the user reads using the reader of the present invention. This feature of the present invention provides a highly personalized and therefore more enjoyable reading experience and allows for this personalized experience to follow the user across all periodicals.
Electronic device 500 can include any suitable type of electronic device. For example, electronic device 500 can include a portable electronic device that the user may hold in his or her hand, such as a digital media player, a personal e-mail device, a personal data assistant, PDA, a cellular telephone, a handheld gaming device, a tablet device or an eBook reader. As another example, electronic device 500 can include a larger portable electronic device, such as a laptop computer. As yet another example, electronic device 500 can include a substantially fixed electronic device, such as a desktop computer.
Control circuitry 500 can include any processing circuitry or processor operative to control the operations and performance of electronic device 500. For example, control circuitry 500 can be used to run operating system applications, firmware applications, media playback applications, media editing applications, or any other application. Control circuitry 500 can drive the display 550 and process inputs received from a user interface, e.g., the display 550 if it is a touch screen.
Orientation sensing component 505 includes orientation hardware such as, but not limited to, an accelerometer or a gyroscopic device and the software operable to communicate the sensed orientation to the control circuitry 500. The orientation sensing component 505 is coupled to control circuitry 500 that controls the various input and output to and from the other various components. The orientation sensing component 505 is configured to sense the current orientation of the portable mobile device 500 as a whole. The orientation data is then fed to the control circuitry 500 which control an orientation sensing application. The orientation sensing application controls the graphical user interface, GUI, which drives the display 550 to present the GUI for the desired mode.
Storage 510 can include, for example, one or more storage mediums including a hard-drive, solid state drive, flash memory, permanent memory such as ROM, any other suitable type of storage component, or any combination thereof. Storage 510 can store, for example, media content, e.g., eBooks, music and video files, application data, e.g., software for implementing functions on electronic device 500, firmware, user preference information data, e.g., content preferences, authentication information, e.g., libraries of data associated with authorized users, transaction information data, e.g., information such as credit card information, wireless connection information data, e.g., information that can enable electronic device 500 to establish a wireless connection, subscription information data, e.g., information that keeps track of podcasts or television shows or other media a user subscribes to, contact information data, e.g., telephone numbers and email addresses, calendar information data, and any other suitable data or any combination thereof.
Memory 520 can include cache memory, semi-permanent memory such as RAM, and/or one or more different types of memory used for temporarily storing data. In some embodiments, memory 520 can also be used for storing data used to operate electronic device applications, or any other type of data that can be stored in storage 510. In some embodiments, memory 520 and storage 510 can be combined as a single storage medium.
I/O circuitry 530 can be operative to convert, and encode/decode, if necessary analog signals and other signals into digital data. In some embodiments, I/O circuitry 530 can also convert digital data into any other type of signal, and vice-versa. For example, I/O circuitry 530 can receive and convert physical contact inputs, e.g., from a multi-touch screen, i.e., display 550, physical movements, e.g., from a mouse or sensor, analog audio signals, e.g., from a microphone, or any other input. The digital data can be provided to and received from control circuitry 500, storage 510, and memory 520, or any other component of electronic device 500. Although I/O circuitry 530 is illustrated in
Electronic device 500 can include any suitable interface or component for allowing a user to provide inputs to I/O circuitry 530. For example, electronic device 500 can include any suitable input mechanism, such as a button, keypad, dial, a click wheel, or a touch screen, e.g., display 550. In some embodiments, electronic device 500 can include a capacitive sensing mechanism, or a multi-touch capacitive sensing mechanism.
In some embodiments, electronic device 500 can include specialized output circuitry associated with output devices such as, for example, one or more audio outputs. The audio output can include one or more speakers, e.g., mono or stereo speakers, built into electronic device 500, or an audio component that is remotely coupled to electronic device 500, e.g., a headset, headphones or earbuds that can be coupled to device 500 with a wire or wirelessly.
Display 550 includes the display and display circuitry for providing a display visible to the user. For example, the display circuitry can include a screen, e.g., an LCD screen, that is incorporated in electronics device 500. In some embodiments, the display circuitry can include a coder/decoder, Codec, to convert digital media data into analog signals. For example, the display circuitry or other appropriate circuitry within electronic device 1 can include video Codecs, audio Codecs, or any other suitable type of Codec.
The display circuitry also can include display driver circuitry, circuitry for driving display drivers, or both. The display circuitry can be operative to display content, e.g., media playback information, application screens for applications implemented on the electronic device 500, information regarding ongoing communications operations, information regarding incoming communications requests, or device operation screens, under the direction of control circuitry 500. Alternatively, the display circuitry can be operative to provide instructions to a remote display.
Communications circuitry 540 can include any suitable communications circuitry operative to connect to a communications network and to transmit communications, e.g., data from electronic device 500 to other devices within the communications network. Communications circuitry 540 can be operative to interface with the communications network using any suitable communications protocol such as, for example, Wi-Fi, e.g., a 802.11 protocol, Bluetooth, radio frequency systems, e.g., 900 MHz, 1.4 GHz, and 5.6 GHz communication systems, infrared, GSM, GSM plus EDGE, CDMA, quadband, and other cellular protocols, VOIP, or any other suitable protocol.
Electronic device 500 can include one more instances of communications circuitry 540 for simultaneously performing several communications operations using different communications networks, although only one is shown in
In some embodiments, electronic device 500 can be coupled to a host device such as digital content control server for data transfers, synching the communications device, software or firmware updates, providing performance information to a remote source, e.g., providing riding characteristics to a remote server, or performing any other suitable operation that can require electronic device 500 to be coupled to a host device. Several electronic devices 500 can be coupled to a single host device using the host device as a server. Alternatively or additionally, electronic device 500 can be coupled to several host devices, e.g., for each of the plurality of the host devices to serve as a backup for data stored in electronic device 500.
Although the present invention has been described in relation to particular embodiments thereof, many other variations and other uses will be apparent to those skilled in the art. It is preferred, therefore, that the present invention be limited not by the specific disclosure herein, but only by the gist and scope of the disclosure.
This application claims benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) from U.S. Provisional Patent application No. 61/406,975, filed on Oct. 26, 2010, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61406975 | Oct 2010 | US |
