Claims
- 1. A method for visualizing and navigating documents in a graphical user interface comprising the steps of:
generating a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms using a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution; triggering an enhancement of said summary view by cursor brushing; and navigating to at least one segment of said document by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.
- 2. The method of claim 1 comprising the further step of identifying said documents with at least one search engine.
- 3. The method of claim 1 comprising the further step of generating document metadata using at least one indexing tool.
- 4. The method of claim 3 wherein said metadata includes at least one of: search terms, textual transcript, results of a textual transcript search, results of a speaker change search, results of a stress analysis, topic headings, results of a topic change search, results of a speech transcript search, audio features, audio amplitude data, number of accesses to a particular document segment.
- 5. The method of claim 3 wherein said generating step uses said document metadata to depict said search term density distribution.
- 6. The method of claim 3 wherein the physical dimensions of said summary view encode metadata values.
- 7. A system for visualizing and navigating documents in a graphical user interface comprising:
a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms including a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution; an enhancement of said summary view triggered by cursor brushing; and at least one segment of said document navigated to by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.
- 8. The system of claim 7 wherein said graphical user interface is generated by at least one of: a digital computer, a personal digital assistant, a personal information manager, a cell phone microbrowser.
- 9. The system of claim 7 wherein said document comprises at least one of: a text file, an image file, a web page, an audio file, a video file.
- 10. The system of claim 7 wherein said document includes a collection of documents.
- 11. The system of claim 7 wherein said representation includes an array of cells having rows and columns corresponding to said search terms and said document segments.
- 12. The system of claim 11 wherein contents of a particular cell represent the presence and absence of search terms, and a frequency with which said search terms occur in the document segment corresponding to said cell, as an indication of document relevance.
- 13. The system of claim 7 wherein said enhancement includes the first several words from a particular corresponding document segment.
- 14. The system of claim 7 wherein said summary view is displayed in a modified version of said document.
- 15. The system of claim 7 wherein said enhancement includes a contextual snippet having said search term and a number of surrounding words.
- 16. The system of claim 7 wherein said summary view is displayed in a fold-out window above said document.
- 17. The system of claim 7 wherein said enhancement includes a hierarchy of said representations, with each subsequent representation in said hierarchy depicting information at an increased resolution.
- 18. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is a video file and said enhancement includes a hierarchy of said representations and at least one video frame.
- 19. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is a collection of video files and said enhancement includes individual video files from said collection.
- 20. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is collection of video files and said enhancement includes a hierarchy of said summary views, with a first layer in the hierarchy including information describing individual video files from said collection, and with a second layer in the hierarchy including at least one video frame from said individual video files.
- 21. The system of claim 7 wherein said document is a video file and said enhancement includes a storyboard having a number of video frames.
- 22. A system for visualizing and navigating documents in a graphical user interface comprising:
means for generating a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms using a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution; means for triggering an enhancement of said summary view by cursor brushing; and means for navigating to at least one segment of said document by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.
- 23. A computer program product comprising a machine-readable medium having computer-executable program instructions thereon including:
a first code means for generating a summary view of at least one document containing instances of search terms using a condensed abstract representation depicting a search term density distribution; a second code means for triggering an enhancement of said summary view by cursor brushing; and a third code means for navigating to at least one segment of said document by selecting a corresponding portion of said summary view.
DESCRIPTION OF RELATED APPLICATIONS
[0001] This application is related to two other commonly owned and concurrently filed applications, “System and Method for Visualizing and Navigating Dynamic Content in a Graphical User Interface” (attorney docket number ARC920010063US1) and “Navigation Tool for Slide Presentations” (attorney docket number ARC920010060US1), which are incorporated herein by reference.