Interactive electronic reference systems and methods

a reference system and electronic technology, applied in the field of interactive electronic reference systems and methods, can solve the problems of waste of paper and ink resources, the cost of printing, transporting and updating materials, and the waste of resources

Inactive Publication Date: 2003-10-02
DRS C3 & AVIATION
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

While this solution provides for a high degree of likelihood of the three meeting, the problem lies in the cost of printing, transporting, and updating materials.
This both wastes resources of paper and ink as well as storage and transportation resources devoted to storing and moving all that paper.
However, if each serviceman was given a copy of the materials above, and 10 servicemen service the same device, resources are also wasted.
A problem exists in creating a change to a paper publication, delivering the change to every piece of equipment effected by the change, and ultimately posting or attaching the change to the written documentation which is often of fixed form.
The gap between completing a change and finally getting it to the existing materials can often be as long as a year due to delays in printing, shipping, and posting.
As war gets more sophisticated, the problems get larger as more complex systems require more and more documentation to support.
Unfortunately, these reference manuals are growing more massive by the day.
Further, so as to always make sure that anyone who might need a manual has access to the manual, there is a huge amount of repetition and redundancy of documents provided in the military.
It should be apparent that logistically the transport of all these reference materials results in a gargantuan amount of wasted transport space, wasted fuel in hauling paper, and wasted space within military systems as many of these manuals will simply be unneeded as that device does not require maintenance, or, when it does, it is located somewhere where there is another copy of the reference.
In addition to the space that these reference materials take up, printed reference materials often have the problem of being self-contained while still requiring internal and external reference.
Even within a document, referencing to other pages and / or sections is regularly necessary to make the document as a whole vaguely useful as the single order layout mandated by paper publication is rarely entirely sufficient.
While this process is simplified through indexing such as tables of contents, page numbers, footnotes, and indexes, the process is still less than ideal and just about everyone has had a reference book held open with pens, papers, fingers, wrenches or other items stuck in pages so that the disclosure of those pages can be located quickly as work progresses and the material is needed.
That is, the document cannot know what the user wants to look at next, and therefore the chosen format of the author may be completely wrong.
Again, this problem becomes even more acute in the military as different components of the same device may have been built by different contractors so an operation may be described in one document and continued into another, or the explanation of a part may be in a different document than the one which tells you how to remove the part, which is in a still different document to the one which tells you when to know that the part might have failed.
Yet another problem with paper reference materials in the military is making sure they are secured.
Therefore, it is often necessary for the crew of a plane, tank, or truck, to have the time to destroy the materials they carry before they are captured, something which is often not possible and further often requires the inclusion of incinerators or other machines in the vehicle, taking up yet more space and more weight.
Even as documents have become electronic, many of the problems still remain.
Some documents may include rudimentary linking (such as indexes or tables of contents) but these are generally confined to a single reference document and further do not provide for interlinking between multiple sections, much less multiple documents as exists in an interactive system.
Further systems with rudimentary linking generally require massive numbers of man-hours to produce and there are no systems which allow for the rapid conversion of paper or plain-text documents into interactive electronic documents.

Method used

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  • Interactive electronic reference systems and methods
  • Interactive electronic reference systems and methods
  • Interactive electronic reference systems and methods

Examples

Experimental program
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second embodiment

[0121] conversion software is discussed in conjunction with FIGS. 13-19 and is designed to learn so that the more documents that are available in the interactive reference system, the easier it is to convert new reference material into interactive reference material. In particular, this system, instead of assigning particular tags to a particular piece of reference text which is then matched to a related piece of reference text, utilizes a macro global control where commands can be nested within a document based on a global control set. In this way, any number of tagged reference documents can be simultaneously linked together through the use of nested commands so long as they use the same global control. It is preferable that this embodiment be encoded using XML or Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) as such nesting of commands within global controls is efficient in these languages, but other languages may be used as understood by those of ordinary skill in the art. This di...

first embodiment

[0126] When the document is converted it may be converted into an HTML shell, which utilizes XML and an associated XSL style sheet to provide for the global parameters. Or it can alternatively be turned into straight HTML creating a resulting file similar to that created by the The frame situation is generally preferred, as it maintains more flexibility in the resulting files for later editing or inclusion of additional interactive reference materials interlinked therewith and shifts much of the formatting to the client. From a user's point of view, the two methods will produce screens which are essentially identical. A technical manual (this time without a linked figure showing) are shown in FIGS. 19A and 19B, 19A is the document using HTML from the original XML source while 19B is the HTML frame, XML, XSL document. As can be seen, they are virtually identical.

[0127] Regardless of which embodiment of the system and / or method is used to create the interactive reference system. The ...

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Abstract

Described herein, amongst other things, are electronically available interactive reference materials that can preferably be accessed by using a network, such as the World Wide Web or Internet, to eliminate the need to create and transport paper. There are further described systems, methods, and means for generating, storing, and providing to a user these interactive reference materials. There are also disclosed, system, methods, and means for generating, storing, and providing to a user interactive electronic systems for use with the interactive reference materials.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS(S)[0001] This Application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Applications Serial Nos. 60 / 336,192; 60 / 336,195; 60 / 336,204; and 60 / 336,206 all filed Oct. 31, 2001. The entire disclosure of all the above applications is herein incorporated by reference. This application is also related to United States patent applications entitled "Systems and Methods for Generating Interactive Electronic Reference Materials" with Mike Watson listed as inventor (attorney docket 2 / 1088US) and "Systems and Methods for Generating Interactive Electronic Reference Materials" with Mike Watson listed as inventor (attorney docket 2 / 1090US); both cases are filed concurrently herewith, and the entire disclosure of all of which is also herein incorporated by reference.[0002] 1. Field of the Invention[0003] This disclosure relates to the field of systems and methods for generating interactive electronic reference materials from non-interactive hard copy or soft copy ...

Claims

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Application Information

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Patent Type & AuthorityApplications(United States)
IPC IPC(8): G06F40/143
CPCG06F17/218G06F17/22G06F17/2235G06F17/2247G06Q30/0643G06F17/2276G06F17/243G06F17/50G06Q30/0635G06F17/2264G06F40/157G06F40/12G06F40/134G06F40/117G06F40/151G06F40/174G06F30/00G06F40/143
InventorWATSON, MIKETRICOMI, FRANK
OwnerDRS C3 & AVIATION