Patent ID: 7200808

Claim:
An electronic document processor, comprising: means for variably setting a size of an abstract display area, in an entire display area, for display of an abstract to be generated from one or more electronic documents; means for allowing a user to (i) select desired portions of one or more electronic documents for generating the abstract only from the selected desired portions of said one or more electronic documents and (ii) enter any desired non-designated or non-programmed keyword in order to generate an abstract based on the desired non-designated or non-programmed keyword; means for determining a length of an electronic document abstract to be generated based on the abstract display area size set by the setting means and designated character size; means for generating the abstract having a length the depends on the length determined by the determining means, wherein the generating means generates the abstract by calculating a central activation value for each of the elements by activation propagation, calculating a mean value of central activation of each of the sentences, selecting sentences in the descending order of their mean activation value, extracting skeletons of the selected sentences, generating the abstract based on the skeletons; means for generating, from the one or more electronic documents, an abstract having a length which is a function of the length of the electronic document abstract and the weight of each element of the electronic document; and a display controlling means for displaying the abstract generated by the generating means in the abstract display area.