Patent ID: 7206995

Claim:
A time information display system comprising: receiving means for receiving document data by electronic mail; storage means for storing the document data received by electronic mail; date/time character string detecting means for reading the document data from said storage means and detecting whether a character string indicative of data/time is contained within the document data stored in said storage means; relative data/time detecting means for operating in such a manner that when a date/time character string is detected by said date/time character string detecting means, said relative date/time detecting means detects whether the date/time character string stored in said storage means is equal to a relative date/time expression; absolute date/time convening means for converting the relative date/time expression detected by said relative date/time detecting means into an absolute date/time expression; means for storing the absolute date/time character string converted by said absolute date/time converting means; means for calculating difference date/time between present date/time and the absolute date/time stored in said storage means; relative date/time converting means for converting said calculated difference date/time into relative date/time with respect to the present date/time; and storage means for storing the relative date/time character string converted by said relative date/time converting means, wherein the converted character string of the relative date/time is arranged to be displayed together with the date/time character string contained in the previously read document data.