Patent ID: 7234942

Claim:
Apparatus for providing a user with an indication of the content of a text, the apparatus comprising: receiving means for receiving text data; topic determining means for determining from the text data at least one topic; topic context data identifying means for identifying in the text data context data associated with the at least one topic determined by the topic determining means; topic context data position determining means for determining, for each item of context data identified by the topic context data identifying means, the actual position and order of that item of context data within the text; topic representation data providing means operable to provide topic representation data defining a graphical representation of the at least one topic in which are distributed visual indicia representing at least some of the context data with the distribution of the visual indicia indicating visually to the user the relative positions within the text data of the corresponding items of context data on the basis of the actual positions and order of the items of context data within the text as determined by the topic context data position determining means; and supplying means for supplying the topic representation data for enabling display of the at least one topic representation to a user.