Combining and displaying multiple document areas

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10216710-B2
Application number	US-201715723321-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 3, 2017
Priority date	Oct 21, 2014
Publication date	Feb 26, 2019
Grant date	Feb 26, 2019

Abstract

A method includes storing, in response to marking by a user of an area of a displayed document, information on the marked area; displaying an icon representing the marked area; conducting the storing operation and the displaying operation for a different area; and creating, in response to an operation by the user for arranging two or more icons to be in contact with each other, a joined icon by joining the icons together; and combining marked areas represented by the two or more respective icons, according to a state of contact. A corresponding computer program product and computer system are also disclosed herein.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A device for combining and displaying a plurality of areas of a document, the device comprising computer hardware components configured to perform a method comprising:
storing, in response to a user marking an area of the document, information on the marked area, wherein the area of the document is marked by the user selecting a start point and an end point using a pointer of a pointing device;
displaying an icon representing the marked area, wherein a shape of the icon is determined according to the content of the area, and wherein the icon continues to be displayed when the area is not within a window displaying the document, and wherein a connecting line connects the icon to an upper side or lower side of the window when the area is not within the window;
conducting the storing operation and the displaying operation for a different area of the document; and
forming, in response to an operation by the user for arranging two or more icons to be in contact with each other, a joined icon by joining the icons together, wherein the joined icon is created according to the relative orientation and position of the two or more icons as arranged by the user;
combining marked areas represented by the two or more respective icons, according to a state of contact; and
changing the joined icon and changing a combining state of the marked areas in response to an operation by the user for rotating the joined icon.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• MOCHIZUKI Tomoka
• Shioya Tomohiro
• Unno Asuka
• WEN Lianzi

Classifications

• G06F40/106 Primary

  Display of layout of documents; Previewing · CPC title

• G06F3/04842 Primary

  Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements (G06F3/0482 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F40/166

  Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting · CPC title

• G06F40/103

  Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents (automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191) · CPC title

• G06F40/117

  Tagging; Marking up (details of markup languages G06F40/143); Designating a block; Setting of attributes (style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154) · CPC title