1. A method for inspecting any of the properties of a computer, said computer’s configuration, contents of said computer’s storage devices, said computer’s peripherals, said computer’s environment, or remote affiliated computers, comprising the steps of:
providing at least one inspector which includes an inspector library and associated methods; and
evaluating subexpressions with said at least one inspector;
wherein said inspector performs any of mathematico-logical calculations, executes computational algorithms, returns the results of system calls, accesses the contents of storage devices, and queries devices or remote computers.
2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:
providing an inspector dispatcher associated with an advice client computer for continually performing relevance determination;
wherein said relevance determination is driven by a database of relevance clauses which can be continually evaluated; and
wherein said inspector library contains executable code which is invoked by said inspector dispatcher as part of said relevance determination process.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein an object, property name, andor string selector is dispatched to said inspector dispatcher for relevance evaluation using a method dispatch module in accordance with dispatch information contained within a method dispatch table.
4. The method of claim 3, wherein said method dispatch module performs the steps of:
parsing a clause in a relevance language;
generating a list of method dispatches in response to said parsing step, wherein specific methods are called in a specific order with specific argument lists; and
systematically carrying out a sequence of method dispatches in an appropriate order.
5. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:
sending certain relevance clauses to a remote location;
evaluating said clauses; and
returning said clauses after a user is made are of what is being transferred; wherein properties of said remote location are learned.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein said at least one inspector is built into said inspector dispatcher.
7. An inspector for inspecting any of the properties of a computer, said computer’s configuration, contents of said computer’s storage devices, said computer’s peripherals, said computer’s environment, or remote affiliated computers, said inspector comprising:
an inspector library containing executable code which is invoked as part of a continual relevance evaluation process; and
one or more inspector methods for performing any of mathematico-logical calculations, executing computational algorithms, returning the results of system calls, accessing the contents of storage devices, and querying devices or remote computers.
8. The apparatus of claim 7, further comprising:
an inspector dispatcher associated with an advice client computer for continually performing relevance determination, wherein said relevance determination is driven by a database of relevance clauses which can be continually evaluated;
wherein said inspector library contains executable code which is invoked by said inspector dispatcher as part of said relevance determination process.
9. The apparatus of claim 7,wherein certain relevance clauses are sent to a remote location, evaluated, and returned, after a user is made are of what is being transferred, wherein properties of the remote location can be learned.
10. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein properties which can be learned are an arbitrary combination of elementary properties that are determined according to basic calculations.
11. The inspector of claim 10, said inspector library further comprising any of:
a declaration of a Phrase to be used in a relevance language;
an association of said Phrase to a specific method;
a declaration of a new data type to be used in an evaluation process;
a declaration of a calling prototype of said specific method, including a number and required data types of arguments to be supplied to said specific method;
a declaration of a result data type of said specific method;
an implementation of said specific method in executable form;
a declaration of special hooks associating code to be called on events, said events including any of inspector dispatcher initialization, inspector dispatcher termination, beginning of inspector dispatcher main evaluation loop, and ending of inspector dispatcher main evaluation loop;
a declaration of special hooks associated with creation and maintenance of special caches associated with said specific method; and
an implementation of special event methods and cache methods in executable form.
12. In a system including computational devices connected by a communications network, said system comprising a communications apparatus for linking an information provider to information consumer, said communications apparatus comprising specific units of advice to be shared, digital documents conveying said advice, an advice provider for broadcasting said advice in the form of advisories, an advice consumer for receiving said advisories, wherein advisories are broadcast over said communications network from said advice provider to said advice consumer, a communications protocol for narrowly-focused targeting of said advisories to said advice consumer by automatically matching advisories with an advice consumer for whom said advisories are relevant, and an inspector dispatcher associated with an advice client computer for continually performing relevance determination, wherein said relevance determination is driven by a database of relevance clauses which can be continually evaluated, at least one inspector, comprising:
an inspector library and associated methods for evaluating subexpressions with said at least one inspector;
wherein said inspector library contains executable code which is invoked by said inspector dispatcher as part of said relevance determination process; and
wherein said inspector performs any of mathematico-logical calculations, executes computational algorithms, returns the results of system calls, accesses the contents of storage devices, and queries devices or remote computers.
13. The apparatus of claim 12, further comprising:
one or more caches for avoiding heavy CPU and disk access overhead while successfully performing said continual relevance evaluation.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
What is claimed is:
1. A document image processing apparatus, comprising:
a display portion for displaying a document image;
a line input portion for inputting a line portion manually input along the image of an arbitrary character string in the document image displayed at said display portion; and
a processing portion for processing the line portion manually input by said line input portion,
said processing portion including,
direction determining means for determining the direction of the manually input line portion,
row extracting means for extracting the region of a row including the image of said arbitrary character string in the region of said document image based on the direction determined by said direction determining means and at least one character image in said document image, and
line correcting means for correcting said manually input line portion into a normal line portion drawn along the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means, thereby displaying the normal line portion at said display portion.
2. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said processing portion further includes processing region designating means for designating a processing region for processing said manually input line portion in the region of said document image.
3. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said row extracting means includes,
candidate region extracting means for extracting at least one candidate region to be a candidate for the region of said row based on the direction determined by said direction determining means and at least one character image region in the region of said document image, and
row region determining means for determining the region of said row including said arbitrary character string in at least one said candidate region extracted by said candidate region extracting means.
4. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said normal line portion is a straight line.
5. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said line correcting means includes,
line kind identifying means for identifying the line kind of said manually input line portion, and corrects said manually input line portion into said normal line portion according to said line kind identified by said line kind identifying means.
6. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein
the line kind of said normal line portion coincides with said line kind of said manually input line portion identified by said line kind identifying means.
7. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said line correcting means has adjusting means for adjusting the length of said normal line portion into an optimum length based on the region of at least one character in the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means.
8. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said line correcting means has normal line portion position correcting means, when at least one said normal line portion has been already drawn along the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means, for correcting the position of said normal line portion corresponding to said manually input line portion or at least one said normal line portion already drawn along the region of said row, so that said normal line portion corresponding to said manually input line portion and said at least one normal line portion already drawn along the region of said row are continuously drawn.
9. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 8, wherein
said correcting means further includes normal line presenceabsence determining means for determining whether at least one said normal line portion has already been drawn along the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means.
10. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said correcting means has manually input line position correcting means for adjusting the position of at least one said normal line portion corresponding to at least one said manually input line portion, thereby correcting at least one said normal line portion into a single continuous line portion, when at least one said manually input line portion is input on the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means.
11. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 10, wherein
said line correcting means further has manually input line presenceabsence determining means for determining the input of at least one said manually input line portion on the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means.
12. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said line correcting means has ruby row recognizing means for recognizing if the region of said row extracted by said row extracting means corresponds to a row of rubies including kana given alongside Chinese characters, and corrects said manually input line portion into said normal line portion drawn along the region of said row of rubies when the region of said row is recognized as corresponding to said row of rubies by said ruby row recognizing means.
13. The document image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
said document is described in one of two directions, horizontal and vertical directions in said document image,
said direction determining means determines which direction of the two directions said manually input line portion is along.
14. A method of processing a document image, comprising the steps of:
displaying a document image;
inputting a manually drawn line portion along an image of an arbitrary character string in said document image displayed by said displaying step; and
processing the manually drawn line portion input by said inputting step,
said processing step including,
determining a direction of said manually drawn line portion;
extracting the region of a row including said arbitrary character string in the region of said document image based on the direction determined by said determining step and the image of at least one character in said document image; and
correcting said manually drawn line portion into a normal line portion placed along the region of said row extracted by said extracting step, thereby displaying the normal line portion.
15. A computer-readable recording medium recorded with a document image processing program for executing with the computer a method of processing a document image, comprising the steps of:
displaying a document image;
inputting a manually drawn line portion along an image of an arbitrary character string in said document image displayed by said displaying step; and
processing the manually drawn line portion input by said inputting step,
said processing step including,
determining a direction of said manually drawn line portion;
extracting the region of a row including said arbitrary character string in the region of said document image based on the direction determined by said determining step and the image of at least one character in said document image; and
correcting said manually drawn line portion into a normal line portion placed along the region of said row extracted by said extracting step, thereby displaying the normal line portion.