Abstract:
A system and process for handling clips with annotations is provided. A user annotates a document. The system gathers context information regarding the clip and displays the clip or clips with annotations to the user. A system for showing clips of content and annotations may include an input for receiving content and annotations, a processor creating a renderable image having the clips with at least one of the clips being a combination of two or more annotations, and an output for outputting the renderable image. A method of displaying clips may include receiving at least two sets of an annotation and related content, filtering the received, combining the filtered output, and displaying a combination of the filtered output.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     Aspects of the present invention relate to image processing and information manipulation. More specifically, aspects of the present invention relate to obtaining and using context information related to selected content. 
     2. Description of Related Art 
     People mark-up documents. For electronic documents, people commonly print them out and annotate them with highlighters, pens, tape flags, and the like. While a document has significance by itself, the reader having made annotations has effectively indicated which sections are the most relevant to him. These annotations are generally graphical in nature and do not always transition well to a textual equivalent. 
     In the computing world, however, attempting to capture annotations and related markups in an electronic fashion can be cumbersome. Typical computer systems do not provide an easy interface for capturing and conveying graphically intensive content. Rather, they are optimized for capturing and rendering text. For instance, typical computer systems, especially computer systems using graphical user interface (GUI) systems, such as Microsoft WINDOWS, are optimized for accepting user input from one or more discrete input devices such as a keyboard for entering text, and a pointing device such as a mouse with one or more buttons for driving the user interface. 
     Some computing systems have expanded the input and interaction systems available to a user by allowing the use of a stylus to input information into the systems. The stylus may take the place of both the keyboard (for data entry) as well as the mouse (for control). Some computing systems receive handwritten electronic information or electronic ink and immediately attempt to convert the electronic ink into text. Other systems permit the electronic ink to remain in the handwritten form. 
     Despite the existence of a stylus, providing a user&#39;s annotations and other markups back to a user in an efficient manner is difficult. While one may view thumbnails of a document with annotations, the corresponding annotations and related content is shrunk to fit within each thumbnail. For annotation and markup heavy documents, the thumbnails may be useless. Accordingly, a better solution for providing content to a user is needed. 
     BRIEF SUMMARY 
     Aspects of the present invention address one or more of the issues mentioned above, thereby providing a better presentation of annotations and their associated context. Various aspects of the invention may include at least one of combining and filtering with a resulting display of the annotations. 
     These and other aspects are addressed in relation to the Figures and related description. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  shows a general-purpose computer supporting one or more aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 2  shows a display for a stylus-based input system according to aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 3  shows a document with content and various annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 4  shows information associated with each annotation being gathered in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 5  shows grouping of annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 6  shows annotations on electronic ink being grouped in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIGS. 7 and 8  show processes for combining and displaying annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIGS. 9 and 10  show orderings of clips of annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 11  shows various levels of links in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 12  shows an illustration of active content being annotated in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 13  shows a user interface in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
         FIG. 14  shows information stored with relation to an annotation in accordance with aspects of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Aspects of the present invention relate to obtaining and displaying annotations in brief format. 
     This document is divided into sections to assist the reader. These sections include: characteristics of ink, terms, general-purpose computing environment, annotation and clip handling, processes for handling annotations and clips, clips and links, user interfaces, and data structures. 
     Characteristics of Ink 
     As known to users who use ink pens, physical ink (the kind laid down on paper using a pen with an ink reservoir) may convey more information than a series of coordinates connected by line segments. For example, physical ink can reflect pen pressure (by the thickness of the ink), pen angle (by the shape of the line or curve segments and the behavior of the ink around discreet points), and the speed of the nib of the pen (by the straightness, line width, and line width changes over the course of a line or curve). Because of these additional properties, emotion, personality, emphasis and so forth can be more instantaneously conveyed than with uniform line width between points. 
     Electronic ink (or ink) relates to the capture and display of electronic information captured when a user uses a stylus-based input device. Electronic ink refers to a sequence of strokes, where each stroke is comprised of a sequence of points. The points may be represented using a variety of known techniques including Cartesian coordinates (X, Y), polar coordinates (r, Θ), and other techniques as known in the art. Electronic ink may include representations of properties of real ink including pressure, angle, speed, color, stylus size, and ink opacity. Electronic ink may further include other properties including the order of how ink was deposited on a page (a raster pattern of left to right then down for most western languages), a timestamp (indicating when the ink was deposited), indication of the author of the ink, and the originating device (at least one of an identification of a machine upon which the ink was drawn or an identification of the pen used to deposit the ink) among other information. 
     Terms 
     Ink—A sequence or set of strokes with properties. A sequence of strokes may include strokes in an ordered form. The sequence may be ordered by the time captured or by where the strokes appear on a page or in collaborative situations by the author of the ink. Other orders are possible. A set of strokes may include sequences of strokes or unordered strokes or any combination thereof. Further, some properties may be unique to each stroke or point in the stroke (for example, pressure, speed, angle, and the like). These properties may be stored at the stroke or point level, and not at the ink level. 
     Ink object—A data structure storing ink with or without properties. 
     Stroke—A sequence or set of captured points. For example, when rendered, the sequence of points may be connected with lines. Alternatively, the stroke may be represented as a point and a vector in the direction of the next point. In short, a stroke is intended to encompass any representation of points or segments relating to ink, irrespective of the underlying representation of points and/or what connects the points. 
     Point—Information defining a location in space. For example, the points may be defined relative to a capturing space (for example, points on a digitizer), a virtual ink space (the coordinates in a space into which captured ink is placed), and/or display space (the points or pixels of a display device). 
     Document—Any electronic file that has a viewable representation and content. A document may include a web page, a word processing document, a note page or pad, a spreadsheet, a visual presentation, a database record, image files, and combinations thereof. 
     General-Purpose Computing Environment 
       FIG. 1  illustrates a schematic diagram of an illustrative conventional general-purpose digital computing environment that can be used to implement various aspects of the present invention. In  FIG. 1 , a computer  100  includes a processing unit  110 , a system memory  120 , and a system bus  130  that couples various system components including the system memory to the processing unit  110 . The system bus  130  may be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. The system memory  120  includes read only memory (ROM)  140  and random access memory (RAM)  150 . 
     A basic input/output system  160  (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the computer  100 , such as during start-up, is stored in the ROM  140 . The computer  100  also includes a hard disk drive  170  for reading from and writing to a hard disk (not shown), a magnetic disk drive  180  for reading from or writing to a removable magnetic disk  190 , and an optical disk drive  191  for reading from or writing to a removable optical disk  192  such as a CD ROM or other optical media. The hard disk drive  170 , magnetic disk drive  180 , and optical disk drive  191  are connected to the system bus  130  by a hard disk drive interface  172 , a magnetic disk drive interface  193 , and an optical disk drive interface  194 , respectively. The drives and their associated computer-readable media provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for the personal computer  100 . It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that other types of computer readable media that can store data that is accessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, Bernoulli cartridges, random access memories (RAMs), read only memories (ROMs), and the like, may also be used in the example operating environment. 
     A number of program modules can be stored on the hard disk drive  170 , magnetic disk  190 , optical disk  192 , ROM  140  or RAM  150 , including an operating system  195 , one or more application programs  196 , other program modules  197 , and program data  198 . A user can enter commands and information into the computer  100  through input devices such as a keyboard  101  and pointing device  102 . Other input devices (not shown) may include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner or the like. These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit  110  through a serial port interface  106  that is coupled to the system bus, but may be connected by other interfaces, such as a parallel port, game port or a universal serial bus (USB). Further still, these devices may be coupled directly to the system bus  130  via an appropriate interface (not shown). A monitor  107  or other type of display device is also connected to the system bus  130  via an interface, such as a video adapter  108 . In addition to the monitor, personal computers typically include other peripheral output devices (not shown), such as speakers and printers. In one embodiment, a pen digitizer  165  and accompanying pen or stylus  166  are provided in order to digitally capture freehand input. Although a direct connection between the pen digitizer  165  and the serial port interface  106  is shown, in practice, the pen digitizer  165  may be coupled to the processing unit  110  directly, parallel port or other interface and the system bus  130  by any technique including wirelessly. Also, the pen  166  may have a camera associated with it and a transceiver for wirelessly transmitting image information captured by the camera to an interface interacting with bus  130 . Further, the pen may have other sensing systems in addition to or in place of the camera for determining strokes of electronic ink including accelerometers, magnetometers, and gyroscopes. 
     Furthermore, although the digitizer  165  is shown apart from the monitor  107 , the usable input area of the digitizer  165  may be co-extensive with the display area of the monitor  107 . Further still, the digitizer  165  may be integrated in the monitor  107 , or may exist as a separate device overlaying or otherwise appended to the monitor  107 . 
     The computer  100  can operate in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more remote computers, such as a remote computer  109 . The remote computer  109  can be a server, a router, a network PC, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described above relative to the computer  100 , although only a memory storage device  111  has been illustrated in  FIG. 1 . The logical connections depicted in  FIG. 1  include a local area network (LAN)  112  and a wide area network (WAN)  113 . Such networking environments are commonplace in offices, enterprise-wide computer networks, intranets and the Internet. 
     When used in a LAN networking environment, the computer  100  is connected to the local network  112  through a network interface or adapter  114 . When used in a WAN networking environment, the personal computer  100  typically includes a modem  115  or other means for establishing a communications over the wide area network  113 , such as the Internet. The modem  115 , which may be internal or external, is connected to the system bus  130  via the serial port interface  106 . In a networked environment, program modules depicted relative to the personal computer  100 , or portions thereof, may be stored in the remote memory storage device. Further, the system may include wired and/or wireless capabilities. For example, network interface  114  may include Bluetooth, SWLan, and/or IEEE 802.11 class of combination abilities. It is appreciated that other wireless communication protocols may be used in conjunction with these protocols or in place of these protocols. 
     It will be appreciated that the network connections shown are illustrative and other techniques for establishing a communications link between the computers can be used. The existence of any of various well-known protocols such as TCP/IP, Ethernet, FTP, HTTP and the like is presumed, and the system can be operated in a client-server configuration to permit a user to retrieve web pages from a web-based server. Any of various conventional web browsers can be used to display and manipulate data on web pages. 
       FIG. 2  illustrates an illustrative tablet PC  201  that can be used in accordance with various aspects of the present invention. Any or all of the features, subsystems, and functions in the system of  FIG. 1  can be included in the computer of  FIG. 2 . Tablet PC  201  includes a large display surface  202 , e.g., a digitizing flat panel display, preferably, a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, on which a plurality of windows  203  is displayed. Using stylus  204 , a user can select, highlight, and/or write on the digitizing display surface  202 . Examples of suitable digitizing display surfaces  202  include electromagnetic pen digitizers, such as Mutoh or Wacom pen digitizers. Other types of pen digitizers, e.g., optical digitizers, may also be used. Tablet PC  201  interprets gestures made using stylus  204  in order to manipulate data, enter text, create drawings, and/or execute conventional computer application tasks such as spreadsheets, word processing programs, and the like. 
     The stylus  204  may be equipped with one or more buttons or other features to augment its selection capabilities. In one embodiment, the stylus  204  could be implemented as a “pencil” or “pen”, in which one end constitutes a writing portion and the other end constitutes an “eraser” end, and which, when moved across the display, indicates portions of the display are to be erased. Other types of input devices, such as a mouse, trackball, or the like could be used. Additionally, a user&#39;s own finger could be the stylus  204  and used for selecting or indicating portions of the displayed image on a touch-sensitive or proximity-sensitive display. Consequently, the term “user input device”, as used herein, is intended to have a broad definition and encompasses many variations on well-known input devices such as stylus  204 . Region  205  shows a feedback region or contact region permitting the user to determine where the stylus  204  has contacted the display surface  202 . 
     In various embodiments, the system provides an ink platform as a set of COM (component object model) services that an application can use to capture, manipulate, and store ink. One service enables an application to read and write ink using the disclosed representations of ink. The ink platform may also include a mark-up language including a language like the extensible markup language (XML). Further, the system may use DCOM as another implementation. Yet further implementations may be used including the Win32 programming model and the .Net programming model from Microsoft Corporation. 
     Annotation and Clip Handling 
       FIG. 3  shows a document with content and various annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. Document  301  includes electronic ink represented by ink strokes  302 - 304 , image data represented by picture  308 , and text information represented by text  310 . 
     Electronic ink  302  has been highlighted by highlights  305 . Highlights  305  may be highlighting ink, electronic ink in a different color that may be used to emphasize other content. Electronic ink  303  has been underlined as represented by underlining  306 . Electronic ink  304  has been annotated with vertical bars  307  in the right margin. Image  308  has been encircled by loop  309 . Text  310  has been annotated by some words having been circled with loop  311  and an ink note  312  added. Other annotations and underlying document contents are possible. Those shown in  FIG. 3  are for illustrative purposes only. 
       FIG. 4  shows information associated with each annotation being gathered in accordance with aspects of the present invention. Each annotation in  FIG. 3  relates to content as described above.  FIG. 4  shows the designation of context information relevant to each annotation. For instance, highlight  305  and a portion of ink  302  is designated by region  401 . Region  401  may be a rectangle or any other shape. In general, region  401  is referred to as a bounding box in that it reflects the bounds of the combination of the annotation and underlying content. 
     A bounding box may or may not encompass all related content. For instance, for highlight  305 , some of ink  302  may be captured in bounding box  401 . Alternatively, all of ink  302  may be captured in bounding box  401 . Bounding box  401  may be resized as needed to include as much or as little of underlying context as desired. The bounding box may be modified in shape depending on the type of annotation. Here, bounding box  401  contains some of ink  302  beyond the ends of highlight  305  but not all of ink  302 . Likewise, underline  306  and a portion of ink  303  is designated by bounding box  402 . Bounding box  403  is different in that it includes all of ink  304 . Here, annotation  307  is a pair of margin bars. The system interprets the margin bars as referencing the horizontal stretch of ink  304 . Of course, the horizontal selection in bounding box  403  may include more than one line as determined by whether bars  403  extend for more than one line. Bounding box  405  encompasses image  308  and loop  309 . Bounding box  404  encompasses loop  311  and connected note  312 . 
     In one aspect of the invention, bounding boxes  401 - 405  may be rendered to a user to show the user his annotations, thereby providing the user with a quick understanding of the relevant portions (according to him) of the document. All bounding boxes may be rendered separately. Alternatively, bounding boxes may be combined based on various criteria. For instance, the bounding boxes may be combined based on short distances between the bounding boxes.  FIG. 4  shows distance determinations being made between each bounding box and its neighboring bounding boxes. 
       FIG. 5  shows grouping of annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. Based on the distance determinations from  FIG. 4 , the system determines that the distance between bounding boxes  401  and  402  is within a threshold and groups bounding boxes  401  and  402  into a larger bounding box  501 . Combining bounding boxes may be done based on distance determination, type of annotation, type of content having been annotated, user identification, tablet identification, pen identification used to make the annotation, and the like. 
       FIG. 5  shows the resulting annotations being displayed to a user with underlying contextual information in the bounding boxes. The bounding boxes may be ordered as appearing in the document or may be ordered based on other criteria. The bounding boxes may be presented as boxes, with or without borders. To further distinguish the bounding boxes with annotations and related context information, additional visual embellishments may be used including shadows and/or torn edges. 
     Aspects of the present invention may be implemented as a shell in an operating system. Alternatively, aspects of the present invention may be implemented as part of an application running on the operating system. When applied at an operating system level, aspects of the present invention permit clippings to be gathered across documents from different applications. For instance, one may highlight a first document in a web browsing application, underline a second document in a word processing application, circle data in a spreadsheet application, and add text and arrows to a mapping application. Next, these various annotations may be shown together in a single view. Of course, more views may be permitted based on filtering. However, this example highlights at least one advantage of deploying aspects of the invention on a system-wide basis. 
     An illustrative process relating to an operating system-level clipping view may include creating an annotation and storing the data from the annotation in a location accessible by the operating system. Next, a user may start a user interface that allows the querying and filtering of the stored annotations. When the user requests a view of the annotations and context, the operating system builds a list of the annotations and context (referred to as clips) from the annotation data stored above. 
       FIG. 6  shows annotations on electronic ink being grouped in accordance with aspects of the present invention. Annotations may take a variety of forms. However, when the type annotation takes the same form as the context it is annotating, determination of what is context and what is an annotation can be difficult. In accordance with aspects of the present invention, what is considered to be an annotation may be determined based on the type of annotation, the shape of the annotation, the underlying context and the like.  FIG. 6  shows a document in electronic ink. Highlights  601 ,  602 ,  603  and  604  may be considered annotations separate from the underlying ink document even though the difference between the highlight and the original ink may be as small as a user using a different color and/or a different width pen tip. Other distinctions may also be used to determine the nature of an ink stroke (content or annotation). 
       FIG. 6  shows bounding boxes  605  and  606  combined into bounding box  609  and bounding boxes  607  and  608  combined into bounding box  610 . The resulting boxes  609  and  610  with context and annotations may be displayed. 
     The user may initiate the display of the annotations and context information by pressing a button or making another selection. Alternatively, an application may display the annotations and context information to the user when the user starts the application. Both approaches may be used together or separately. 
     Processes for Handling Annotations and Clips 
       FIGS. 7 and 8  show processes for combining and displaying annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention.  FIG. 7  shows two steps: combine  703  and display  706 . In step  703 , annotations, context, and/or bounding boxes are reviewed to determine whether they may be combined. If so, they are combined, if not, they are left separate. In step  706 , the annotations, context, and/or bounding boxes are displayed to the user. For purposes of description, the information shown to the user is referred to as clips. 
       FIG. 7  shows optional steps. The information that creates the annotations and/or context may be created by a user in step  701  and directly forwarded to step  703 . Alternatively, annotations and/or context may have been previously created and stored. Step  703  may receive the information from storage  702 . 
     After combining annotations and context, clips may be displayed as described above with reference to step  706 . Alternatively, the clips may be stored in storage  704 . The clips may then be filtered in accordance with filtering criteria (for example, the user may only want to see clips that contain red ink, highlights, certain words, certain shapes, and the like). The system may include the ability to perform handwriting recognition on annotations to determine if the annotations contain text and what the text is. This text may be searched in filtering step  705 . Likewise, the system may be able to recognize various shapes and filter on these shapes in step  705 . 
     In yet another aspect of the invention, storing in storage  704  may not be performed and only filtering step  705  be performed after combining step  703  and display  706 . Whether or not storage  704  is used, combining before filtering provides the benefit of reducing the number of independent clips that need to be searched during filtering step  705 . 
     It is appreciated that both steps  701  and  702  may be used when, for example, previously stored content from step  702  is used with new annotations from a user from step  701 . 
       FIG. 8  shows an alternative process to that of  FIG. 7 . Here, the system filters in step  803  prior to combining in step  805  and displaying the clips in step  806 . One advantage of filtering before combining is that it allows a user greater influence in what clips are combined and shown. For instance, if a user only wants to have clips of one highlighting color shown, then filtering before combining eliminates non-selected highlights from the clips to be shown to the user. 
     Optional steps are also shown in  FIG. 8 . First, the input to filtering step  803  may come from a user having created the annotations and/or context in step  801  or may come from a storage where previously stored annotations and/or content resides in step  802 . It is appreciated that both steps  801  and  802  may be used when, for example, previously stored content from step  802  is used with new annotations from a user from step  801 . 
       FIGS. 9 and 10  show orderings of clips of annotations in accordance with aspects of the present invention. In  FIG. 9 , clips are displayed in region  901 . The clips  1 -N are displayed in a raster pattern. Any number of columns may be used. A single column provides the ability to only need to look in a single direction to find clips. Multiple columns can be more efficient in providing the clips to a user who is using them to obtain an overall idea of the relevance of the document. In  FIG. 10 , the clips are arranged in two columns. Here, one may need to scroll to the bottom of the displayed region  1001  to read all of clips  1 -N then need to scroll back up to the beginning to start reading the next column of clips (clips N+1 and N+2). 
     Clips and Links 
     Clips may be used to provide information regarding the annotations in a document. Alternatively, clips may also be used to link the user back to the region of the document from which the clip was created. A set of displayed clips may come from one or more documents from one or more applications. Links associated with the clips may refer back to those documents across the applications. 
       FIG. 11  shows various levels of links in accordance with aspects of the present invention. Displayed region  1101  includes clips  1 ,  2 , N, and N+1. These clips may not link to any documents, may link to one document, or may link to multiple documents. Here, clip  1   1102  links to a relevant portion of document  1106  from which clip  1   1102  originates. Similarly, clip  2   1104  may link to a relevant portion of document  1106  from which clip  2   1104  originates. Alternatively, as shown by broken arrows, the clips  1   1102  and  1104  may link to the document  1106  in general. 
     To show different documents being linked by clips shown in region  1101 , clip N  1103  may link to document  1105 . 
       FIG. 11  also shows displayed regions  1107  and  1109 . In both of these regions, clips  1 ,  2 , N, and N+1 are shown. Here, however, annotations are made on the existing clips as annotation  1108  in region  1107  and annotation  1110  in region  1109 . Multiple sets of links may or may not exist. First, no links may be permitted based on annotated clips. So, for instance, activating clip  1  in region  1107  with annotation  1108  may not link to any location. Second, a first level of linking may be permitted. As shown by the solid arrow from clip  1  with annotation  1110  in region  1109 , the clip  1  may link generally to the previous set of clips in region  1101 . Alternatively, as shown by the broken arrow from clip  1  of region  1109 , the clip  1  may link to the portion of region  1101  from which clip  1  originates. Third, the system may support unlimited levels of linking. For instance, the link from clip  1  in region  1109  may point to document  1106 , the origin of the context and annotation for clip  1 . 
       FIG. 12  shows an illustration of active content being annotated in accordance with aspects of the present invention. Web pages and other documents may include content that changes over time. In some instances, the pages themselves change. In other instances, they include content that may be only temporarily visible to the user, yet nonetheless relevant and annotatable.  FIG. 12  includes a web page  1201  with active content or data  1202 . The page  1201  includes annotation  1203  that annotates the active content or data  1202 . At least two options are possible to maintain the context of the annotation. In a first example, the system may capture a static image of the content  1206  (as a bitmap, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS, or other format) and may keep the image of the content  1206  available for display as a clip including annotation  1207 . In a second example, the active content  1202  may be captured and stored locally to allow the content  1204  to be associated with an annotation  1205 . This may include downloading the current active content or maintaining a link to the content that was displayed at the time of annotation. 
     User Interfaces 
       FIG. 13  shows a user interface in accordance with aspects of the present invention. A user interface  1301  is provided that allows various selections of the content. The ability to show clips, filter clips and what to filter clips on is shown in region  1302 . The filtering criteria may include highlights flags, annotations, underlining, ink color, location, stars, ink notes, bullets, arrows, loops, and selectable text. Region  1303  shows a user interface that permits one to select the sort order of the annotations. 
     Data Structures 
       FIG. 14  shows information stored with relation to an annotation in accordance with aspects of the present invention. A clip  1402  may be shown in region  1401 . The clip  1402  may be stored in a variety of formats including HTML, XML, and other formats. The content of each clip may be represented by the following items  1403 :
         Annotation data (may include electronic ink);
           Type of document;   
           Color;   Shape;   Type of Annotation;   Author;   Pen ID;   Tablet ID;   Date created;   Date modified; and   Link or storage of context.       

     Aspects of the present invention have been described in terms of illustrative embodiments thereof. Numerous other embodiments, modifications and variations within the scope and spirit of the appended claims will occur to persons of ordinary skill in the art from a review of this disclosure.