Patent Publication Number: US-2016241502-A1

Title: Method for Generating an Electronic Message on an Electronic Mail Client System, Computer  Program Product for Executing the Method, Computer Readable Medium Having Code Stored Thereon that Defines the Method, and a Communications Device

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application claims priority to German Patent Application No. 102015001809.4, which was filed on Feb. 12, 2015. The entirety of this patent application is incorporated by reference herein. 
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention relates to a method for generating an electronic message on an electronic mail client system. The present invention further relates to a computer program product that may be stored on a non-transitory machine readable medium that can be executed for executing the method for generating an electronic message, a non-transitory computer readable medium having code stored thereon that defines the method for generating an electronic message, and a communications device comprising an electronic mail client. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     One of the most widely used communication means within the public space, including the corporate environment, is electronic mail (e-mail). Examples of e-mail client applications include MS Outlook, Apple&#39;s default client, Thunderbird, but also web-based e-mail systems provided through web browsers as services, from providers such as Google and Yahoo, which enable users to generate, receive, and send electronic messages to other users associated with a common or shared network. Basically, a user interface for writing an e-mail comprises a subject header which usually is used for indicating the subject of the e-mail, and a message body text field into which the actual e-mail message text may be input by an e-mail writer. 
     However, often a situation may arise that a sender of an e-mail message only needs to send a very short message. According to RFC5322 describing the Internet Message Format, in the subject header text field, each line of characters must be no more than 998 characters and should be no more than 77 characters, providing adequate space for a short message. Thus, in the above-mentioned situation, usually the subject header field of the e-mail is used to insert the intended short message text, thus, leaving the message body text field completely empty. However, depending on the application used to handle the e-mail message, the recipient is, in most of the cases, unaware of whether the received message still contains a message body or not. To deal with this problem, a common practice amongst frequent e-mail users is the manual insertion of an abbreviated string into the subject line to signify the end of message. 
     A general problem with respect to the above described procedure of manually inserting into the e-mail subject header text field an indication concerning the end of message is that it takes some time to add this indication, or it may even be forgotten by the e-mail writer to add such an indication. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     I have determined that a more efficient and reliable procedure for generating an electronic message which only comprises text, e.g. character content, in the header subject text field can be provided. 
     This object can be solved by a method for generating an electronic message on an electronic mail client system, a computer program product for executing the method for generating an electronic message, a computer readable medium having code stored thereon that defines the method for generating an electronic message, and a communications device comprising an electronic mail client. Preferred embodiments of the present invention are specified in the respective dependent claims. 
     In some embodiments, there is provided a computer-implemented method for generating an electronic message on an electronic mail client system, the electronic message comprising a subject header text field and a message body text field, the method comprising the steps of
         a) parsing, by an e-mail parser, a string representing the electronic message,   b) determining, by the e-mail parser, from the parsed string whether there is character content in the header subject text field,   c) determining, by the e-mail parser, from the parsed string whether there is character content in the message body text field,   d) determining, by the e-mail parser, whether a predefined character string is present in a subject header text field of the electronic message, and if it is determined that there is no character content in the message body text field, and if it is determined that no predefined character string is present in the subject header of the electronic message,   e) inserting, by the e-mail parser, into the subject header text field a predefined character string indicating that there is no character content in the message body text field.       

     For some embodiments of the method, the recipient can be informed by the automatic insertion of a predefined character string indicating in a reliable manner that the specific e-mail does not contain content in the message body text field. This, on the one hand, saves time for the e-mail recipient, since upon receiving such an e-mail, he does not have to go on to open the e-mail in order to read it. On the other hand, the e-mail writer saves time since he does not have to take care of the manual insertion of such an indication. Thereby, a very efficient, time-saving, as well as reliable method is provided for generating an electronic message, specifically, an electronic message comprising only a very short text written into the e-mail subject header text field. Thus, the method is very convenient for both the e-mail writer and the e-mail recipient as well. 
     According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, the predefined character string is an abbreviated text, in particular, an abbreviation for indicating end of message (EOM), and wherein the predefined character string is separated from the text content in the subject header text field. Preferably, the abbreviated character string may be a tag. 
     Depending on the application or language usage, any abbreviated text serving the purpose of signifying the lack of message body content may be inserted. For example, the abbreviation &lt;EOM&gt; standing for ‘end of message’, or &lt;N13&gt; standing for no embodiment&#39; or no (message text) body&#39; may be inserted in order to let the recipient thereby know that this specific e-mail does not contain any body content, thereby preventing the user to proceed with the action to open it and, thus, contributing to an efficient time utilization and more convenience. 
     According to a further preferred embodiment, the step c) of determining whether there is character content in the message body text field comprises determining whether there are US-ASCII characters and/or other entities, in particular, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), present in the message body text field. Further, if it is determined that there are MIME entities present in the message body text field, the method may comprise a further step of determining whether the MIME entity has inline or attachment disposition, and if it is determined that the content disposition is attachment, the method comprises a further step of determining whether the attachment is of textual or non-textural nature, wherein if it is determined that the attachment is of non-textural nature, steps d) and e) are carried out. 
     For example, the message body text field may either comprise simple US-ASCII characters (range of 1 through 127), and/or it may also contain more complex extended formats such as Multipurpose Internet Mail Format (MIME, [RFC2045]), whereby the latter also possibly may comprise different types of non-textual entities as images, audio or video applications, and the like. Should, in the e-mail to be generated, a MIME extension be detected that is of non-textual nature, then not only the multipart content-type (for example, image/jpeg, audio/mp3, video/mp4, and application/MS Word etc.) has to be checked but also the content disposition (if present). The content disposition header field was defined with [RFC2183] to specify the presentation style. A MIME part can have either ‘inline’ or ‘attachment’ content disposition. In cases when the content disposition is attachment of non-textual type then the client may automatically inject, e.g., an &lt;EOM&gt; tag in the message subject header field. 
     The method may further comprise a step of receiving, by a communications module, an instruction for sending the electronic mail preceding the step a) of parsing a string representing the electronic message. 
     In order to avoid any redundancies or errors, or specifically, in cases, when a recipient responds to a received e-mail message which already includes, e.g., an &lt;EOM&gt; tag in the message subject header field but the recipient now uses the message body text field to write a response, the method further preferably comprises a step of removing the predefined character string from the subject header text field. Thus, according to a preferred embodiment, if it is determined in step c) that there is content in the message body text field, and if it is determined in step d) that the predefined character string is present in the subject header of the electronic message, the method further comprises a step of removing the predefined character string from the subject header text field. 
     According to the present invention, there is also provided a computer program product for executing the method as specified above. 
     Moreover, according to the present invention, there is provided a non-transitory computer readable medium having code stored thereon that defines a method that is implemented when the code is executed, the method defined by the code comprising the steps outlined above, 
     Further, a communications device comprising an electronic mail client is provided according to the present invention, the electronic mail client comprising a text editor, an e-mail parser and e-mail composer module, and a communications module, the electronic mail client system being adapted for carrying out the method according to any one of the preceding claims. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       Further advantages, features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent description of preferred exemplary embodiments with reference to the drawings, in which: 
         FIG. 1  shows a schematic illustration of an exemplary e-mail system comprising an electronic mail client according to an embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 2  shows a schematic illustration of an exemplary e-mail client according to an embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 3  shows a schematic illustration of an exemplary user interface of the e-mail client shown in  FIG. 2 ; 
         FIG. 4  shows a schematic illustration of an exemplary user interface of an e-mail client inbox of the e-mail client shown in  FIG. 2 ; 
         FIG. 5  shows an example of an e-mail message thread; 
         FIG. 6  shows a schematic illustration of a user interface of an e-mail client according to a further embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 7  shows a flow chart illustrating the steps of an exemplary embodiment of the computer-implemented method for generating an electronic message on a communications device. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS 
       FIG. 1  shows a simplified schematic illustration of the components and entities of an electronic mail (e-mail) system  1  comprising a first communications device  2  on which an e-mail client  5  (see  FIG. 2 ) is implemented, a second communications device  2 ′, (on which a further e-mail client  5  is implemented), a first e-mail server  3  for the first communications device  2 , a second e-mail-server  3 ′ for the second communications device  2 ′, and a network  4  via which the first and second communications devices  2 ,  2 ′ are connected to each other operatively. The network  4  may be the Internet, a local area network (LAN), a wireless network or any other type of connection via which the first and second communications devices  2 ,  2 ′ may communicate. Each communication device  2 ,  2 ′ can include hardware such as a processor coupled to non-transitory memory. The e-mail client  5  can be implemented at least partially as an application stored in the non-transitory memory that is executable by the processor. In some embodiments, the e-mail client may also include other modules or hardware. 
     In the embodiment shown here and discussed herein, there are two human users involved, namely, Alice using the first communications device  2  implemented in the example as laptop computer equipped with a first e-mail client, and Bob using the second communications device  3 ′ implemented in the example as smartphone or tablet personal computer (PC) equipped with the second electronic mail client. However, any type of device suitable for operating an e-mail client software or service, for example also a personal digital assistant (PDA) etc. may be used as client end device. 
       FIG. 2  shows a schematic illustration of an e-mail client  5  according to an embodiment of the present invention which is implemented, e.g., on the laptop computer  2  or on the tablet PC  2 ′ shown in  FIG. 1 . The e-mail client  5  as its main components basically comprises a simple text editor  6 , an address book  7 , a filing cabinet  8 , a communications module  9  (for example, SMTP), a memory  10 , and an e-mail parser and e-mail composer module  11 . The e-mail composer  11 ′ of the e-mail parser and e-mail composer module  11  is responsible for all actions relating to the sending of an e-mail, whereas the e-mail parser  11 ″ of the e-mail parser and e-mail composer module  11  reads the message from the memory  10  and prepares the electronic message for sending, ensuring thereby compliance with the relevant RFCs. The text editor  6  allows for the creation of an electronic message itself and usually also includes simple spell checking and formatting facilities. The address book  7  allows the user to store, for example, e-mail addresses he/she often uses. The filing cabinet  8  allows for storage of e-mail messages, both sent and received, and usually provides a search function, allowing an easy retrieval of a desired message. Finally, the communications module  9  is the component of the e-mail client  5  that deals with the actual communication of e-mail messages to and from the e-mail server  3 ,  3 ′ (see  FIG. 1 ). 
       FIG. 3  shows a schematic illustration of a user interface  12  of the e-mail client  5  as shown in  FIG. 2 . First, it should be mentioned that generally, an e-mail message consists of header fields and a message body. Header fields are lines beginning with a field name, followed by a colon (“:”), followed by a field body, and terminated by CRLF (carriage return/line feed pair). 
     As can be seen in the embodiment shown in  FIG. 3 , the user interface  12  can be implemented as an initial e-mail composing window which includes, amongst others, a “To” recipient e-mail address input text field  14 , a “Cc” recipient e-mail address input text field  15  indicating a recipient of a copy of an e-mail, and a “From” text field  16  indicating a sender of an e-mail. Further, the user interface  12  can comprise a send button  13  which permits the user to send the e-mail to the recipients designated in the “To” and “Cc” recipient text fields  14 ,  15 . 
     Further, there are provided several buttons and pull-down menus  17  for formatting text which an e-mail writer may write into a message body text field  18  which here is empty. Further, text may be written into the subject header text field  19  which usually functions for indicating the subject matter of the e-mail, but which may also be used for writing a short message without using the message body text field  18  for this. Into the subject header text field  19 , either simple US-ASCII characters (range 1 to 127) may be inserted, or more complex extended formats may be used, such as Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME, [RFC2045]) which may also comprise, as outlined previously, media, text, images, applications or any other type known in the art. 
     The general procedure for indicating a recipient of an e-mail in such a case as mentioned above according to which a user only uses the subject header text field  19  for writing a message and does not write any further text into the message body text field  18  which thus remains empty is outlined in the following. The sender of the e-mail message (here: Alice, indicated in the “From” text field  16 ) has used the subject header text field  19  for writing the message “Are you available on Tuesday?”. As soon as the e-mail sender triggers the sending of this e-mail, e.g. by clicking on the send button  13 , the e-mail client  5  shown in  FIG. 2  used by the sender (Alice, see also  FIG. 1 ) detects that the e-mail body text field  18  is empty. In the e-mail parser  11 ″ (see  FIG. 2 ), the insertion of a predefined abbreviated character string or tag is performed automatically, if it is determined at the same time that there is text in the subject header text field  19 . The abbreviated character string or tag may be implemented, for example, as “EOM” indicating the three initial letters of the expression “END OF MESSAGE”. However, depending on the application or language used, any abbreviated text serving the purpose of indicating a recipient of an e-mail that there is no further text in the message body text field  18  may be appropriate as well. Further, either one of the following formats may be used when the insertion is performed whereby the tag can be inserted either at the beginning of the field body, followed by a colon (:) or at the end of the field body separated again by a colon as shown in the example below: 
     “Subject:” &lt;EOM&gt;&lt;:&gt;&lt;subject text&gt;&lt;CRLF&gt; or “Subject:”&lt;subject text&gt;&lt;:&gt;&lt;EOM&gt;&lt;CRLF&gt; 
       FIG. 4  shows a schematic illustration of a user interface  20  of an e-mail client inbox of an e-mail client  5  as shown in  FIG. 2 . Here, an example of the inbox of the recipient (here: Bob, indicated in the “To” text filed  14  of  FIG. 3 ) of the e-mail as described above with respect to  FIG. 3  is shown. The recipient of this e-mail receives the e-mail message through his/her domain exchange server  3 ′ (see  FIG. 1 ) which is then presented on the graphical user interface  20  of the e-mail client  5  that the recipient uses. The user interface  20  comprises a feed area  21  including the user&#39;s e-mail inbox where received e-mails are displayed. Depending on the e-mail client interface  20 , e-mail messages which have been received and are now available in the user&#39;s inbox are usually displayed with specific header field information, such as “From”, the “date”, and also the “subject”. 
     The recipient of this e-mail message will know only by reading the line of the e-mail message displayed in the feed area  21  which says “From: Alice FW: Will you be available on Tuesday: EOM Date 25.08” that there is no further message body in the e-mail so that he does not have to go on opening the e-mail, thereby saving valuable time. 
       FIG. 5  shows an example of an e-mail thread  22  with three messages presenting a conversation between the sender (Alice) of the e-mail as described with reference to  FIG. 3  and the recipient (Bob) of this e-mail as described with reference to  FIG. 4 . As can be seen here, the sender (Alice) initiates a message to the recipient (Bob) explicitly using only the subject header text field  19  for message content. The recipient (Bob) receives the message and he knows from the indication “EOM” at the end of the subject line that there is no message body content included. He now selects to send an e-mail exclusively using the subject header text field  19  (see  FIG. 3 ). Thus, automatically, an &lt;EOM&gt; tag is added by its e-mail client. The initial sender (Alice) who now is recipient of Bob&#39;s message in a third e-mail message changes the subject of the thread and enters content in the message body text field  18  (see  FIG. 3 ). In this case, her e-mail client ensures that the &lt;EOM&gt; tag (if present in the subject header text field  19 ) is removed so that the recipient of this new e-mail will know that there is further text available and he has to open the e-mail for reading it completely. 
       FIG. 6  shows a schematic illustration of a user interface  23  of an e-mail client according to a further embodiment of the invention. This user interface  23  which comprises the components described above with respect to  FIG. 3 , additionally includes a “no message body” button  24  which allows a user to manually insert an “EOM” tag when the user composing the e-mail decides not to use the message body text field  18  and only uses the subject header text field  19  for writing a message. This embodiment, for example, is of specific relevance when considering cases in which the message body text field  18  already includes an automatically generated text, such as a signature with a closing form, the signature of the e-mail sender, contact data of the e-mail sender, and/or a confidentiality note or the like. If such automatically included text is present in the message body text field  18 , this—although not providing any relevant information when a sender intends to send a short message only using the subject header text field  19 —cancels the automatic insertion mechanism of, e.g., an &lt;EOM&gt; tag to the subject header text field  19 . However, in such a case, the user or e-mail sender may use the “no message body” button  24  to thereby add an &lt;EOM&gt; tag manually by clicking on that button. Actuation of only that button  24  can result in having the message body  18  removed and/or any text that is to be automatically inserted in the message body  18  removed so that the message body is empty in response to actuation of the “no message body” button  24 . 
       FIG. 7  shows a flow chart illustrating the steps of an exemplary computer-implemented method for generating an electronic message on a communications device  2 ,  2 ′ (see  FIG. 1 ) on an electronic mail client  5  (see  FIG. 2 ) according to an embodiment of the invention. First, the procedure starts with an initiation of an e-mail send process in step  25 . After initiation of the e-mail send process in step  25 , the e-mail parser reads the user input content from the memory  10  in step  26 . Specifically, the e-mail parser parses a string representing an electronic message. Then, the e-mail parser determines in a further step  27  whether there is character content in the message body text field  18  or not. If it is determined by the e-mail parser from the parsed string that there is no character content in the message body text field, then the method proceeds with a further query in step  28  whether there already is a predefined character string, e.g., implemented as an &lt;EOM&gt; tag, present in the subject header text field  19 . If it is determined that there is no predefined character string, e.g.,&lt;EOM&gt; tag, present, then a further step  29  of automatically adding or inserting a predefined character string, e.g., an &lt;EOM&gt; tag, to the subject header text field  19  is performed by the e-mail parser. Subsequently, in step  30 , a formatted e-mail string is output, and finally, in step  31 , the e-mail thus generated is sent. 
     If in step  27 , it is determined that there in fact is a message body present in the message body text field  18 , then a step  32  of checking whether it is MIME is carried out. If it is determined that it is not MIME, then in step  33 , it is determined whether a predefined character string, as an &lt;EOM&gt; tag, is already present. If negative, then the method proceeds again with steps  30  and  31  by outputting a formatted e-mail string and sending the thus generated e-mail. In case there already is a predefined character string present, then the method further comprises a step  34  of removing the predefined character string &lt;EOM&gt; tag from the subject header text field  19 , before proceeding with steps  30  and  31 . 
     If in step  32 , it is determined that it is MIME, then there is a further step  35  of checking whether the content disposition is an attachment. If it is not an attachment, then steps  33 ,  30 , and  31  (or  33 ,  34 ,  30 ,  31 ) are carried out to complete the e-mail generation and sending procedure. If it is determined in step  35  that the content disposition is “attachment”, then it is further checked in step  36  whether the content type is non textual. If it is non textual, steps  28 ,  29 ,  30  and  31  are carried out for completion of the e-mail generation and sending procedure. If it is determined that it is textual, then however, the method further proceeds with steps  33 ,  30 , and  31  (or  33 ,  34 ,  30 , and  31 ) as already outlined above for completion of the e-mail generation and sending procedure. 
     It should be noted that the features of the invention which have been described above with respect to specific embodiments, such as input fields or specific components of the e-mail client, may also be present in other embodiments, except for these features being excluded with respect to specific embodiments or if their implementation technically is not possible. Further, the features which have been described above in specific combinations do not necessarily have to be implemented in all of the embodiments. Therefore, it should be understood that while certain exemplary embodiments of devices, systems, non-transitory computer readable medium, and methods of making and using the same have been discussed and illustrated herein, it is to be distinctly understood that the invention is not limited thereto but may be otherwise variously embodied and practiced within the scope of the following. 
     REFERENCE NUMERALS 
       1  electronic mail (e-mail) system 
       2 ,  2 ′ first and second communications devices 
       3 ,  3 ′ first and second e-mail servers 
       4  network 
       5  e-mail client 
       6  text editor 
       7  address book 
       8  filing cabinet 
       9  communications module 
       10  memory 
       11  e-mail parser and e-mail composer module 
       11 ′ e-mail composer 
       11 ″ e-mail parser 
       12  user interface of e-mail client 
       13  send button 
       14  “To” recipient e-mail address input text field 
       15  “Cc” recipient e-mail address input text field 
       16  “From” text field 
       17  buttons and pull-down menus for formatting text 
       18  message body text field 
       19  subject header text field 
       20  user interface of an e-mail client inbox 
       21  feed area 
       22  e-mail thread 
       23  user interface of e-mail client 
       24  “no message body” button 
       25 - 36  method steps