Patent ID: 7318193

Claim:
An annotation based automatic web document generation apparatus comprising: a web server for providing a web document; an annotation editor for referring the web document from the web server to generate at least one annotation and for generating a merged command for data for said at least one annotation; and an annotation/meta file database for storing the data for said at least one annotation and a merged meta file including the merged command for the data for said at least one annotation; wherein the annotation includes: a destination address of a destination node; an importance level of the destination node; a context indicating characteristics of a user terminal accessing the destination node; alternative resources for the destination node; and an action for the contents of the destination address if the annotation is one of the contents provider annotation and the user annotation, the action being one of “preserve current contents”, “replace with a text”, and “replace with a URL”, the action indicating whether the contents of the destination address are be replaced with information specified in the alternative resources; and wherein the merged meta file is generated as follows: i) in case that there exists the author annotation alone as said at least one annotation, a) a “preserve contents” command is generated in the merged meta file if the importance level of the author annotation is “high”; b) a “replace contents” command is generated in the merged meta file if the importance level of the author annotation is “medium”; and c) no command is generated in the merged meta file if the importance level of the author annotation is “low”; ii) in case that there exists one of the contents provider annotation and the user annotation as said at least one annotation, said at least one annotation is regenerated as the merged meta file; iii) in case that there exist the author annotation and the contents provider annotation as said at least one annotation, a) the “preserve contents” command is generated in the merged meta file if the importance level of the author annotation is “high”; and b) the contents provider annotation is regenerated as the merged meta file otherwise; iv) in case that there exist the author annotation and the user annotation as said at least one annotation, a) the “preserve contents” command is generated in the merged meta file if the importance level of the author annotation is “high”; and b) the user annotation is regenerated as the merged meta file otherwise; v) in case that there exist the author annotation, the contents provider annotation, and the user annotation as said at least one annotation, a) the “preserve contents” command is generated in the merged meta file if the importance level of the author annotation is “high”; and b) the user annotation is regenerated as the merged meta file otherwise; and vi) in case that there exist the contents provider annotation and the user annotation as said at least one annotation, the user annotation is regenerated as the merged meta file.