On September 28, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s patent application titled “Copy and paste with citation attributes,” which was originally filed in March 2005. Apple’s patent relates generally to user interfaces and information management in digital processing systems, and in particular, relates to management of citation information when copying and/or pasting or otherwise storing digital content.
It should be noted that although the patent doesn’t list Apple as the official assignee, the inventor of the patent is in fact Jose Olav Andrade who is noted as a contributor to Apple’s patent number 6954193 in 2000 titled “Method and apparatus for correcting pixel level intensity variation.”
Background Information
Users of modern data processing systems, such as general purpose computer systems, often desire to transfer information between different data sources, for example, by copying data from one source and pasting the data into another source. A common example is a user who uses the Internet to research and acquire information or data, which is later compiled and used in forming a new document, such as a text document or a webpage. Most computer operating systems and applications facilitate such copying and pasting through graphical user interfaces. Such user interfaces may for example, allow a user to easily copy then paste selected text through use of commands issued by a keyboard or pointing-device. The ease by which a user is able to copy text or other data, for example from web pages and other documents accessible through the Internet, has resulted in an environment where the original source of information is often undocumented, unclear, or potentially cited improperly. This presents difficulties in managing not only intellectual property rights (e.g. Copyright) to copied data, but also the more practical matter of correctly ascribing authorship or origin of copied information. Furthermore, in some situations, incorporating copied content into new works, without properly attributing the author or source of the material, could potentially result in plagiarism.
Typically, a user does not necessarily wish to obscure the origin of copied data when using the copied data in a derivative work. FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art example of the conventional process which is taken by a conscientious user who wishes to appropriately cite the origin of text copied, for example, from an Internet web page. The user first manually copies the selected text from the webpage 102. This copied text is temporarily stored in an area of memory on the computing system referred to as a copy buffer or “clipboard.” The user then manually pastes the selected text from the clipboard into, for example, a text document of a word processing application 104. Next, to appropriately cite the source of the copied text, the user manually copies or gathers the citation information of the webpage, such as the uniform resource locator (URL) of the webpage from which the text was copied 106. It should be noted that to cite the webpage or source document properly, the user would need to be aware of various standardized citation formats, and gather the appropriate information for an accurate citation.
This copied information is stored in the clipboard, then the user then manually pastes the copied URL from the clipboard into the document 108. Further, since webpages (and Internet content in general) are often dynamic and transient sources subject to frequent change, the user may then need to manually input additional citation information pertaining to the copied text 110, such as the time and date at which the information was collected.
Patent FIG. 2 illustrates a copy buffer 202 and a paste result 204 for a prior art copy and paste operation, such as that found in some conventional computer operating systems. The copy buffer 202 and paste result 204 are illustrative of the results of the operations represented by blocks 102 and 104 of FIG. 1. Copy buffer 202 represents a section of memory used to temporarily hold data that has been cut or copied from a document for the purposes of transferring the data to another document or another location within the same document. Copy buffer 202 may also be referred to as a “clipboard.” By way of example, the contents of the copy buffer 202 as illustrated in FIG. 2 represent the state of the copy buffer 202 after a user has copied the selected text “there is nothing solid but virtue” 252 from webpage 250. For example, a user may have used a mouse to select (”highlight”) a portion of text from a document such as a webpage 250 or other document, after which the user instructed the computing device to “Copy” (or “Cut” for editable sources) the selected data.
The copy buffer 202 specifies attributes (i.e. characteristics) that describe the copied data and are used to display the copied text. Such conventional attributes include, for example, the content 206 of the copied text itself, the font 208 of the copied text, the font size 210 of the copied text, and the typeface 212 of the copied text. Typically, these attributes as stored in the copy buffer 202 represent the formatting of the copied text; e.g. if the copied text was in 10-point Times New Roman regular font, then these characteristics are stored along with the copied text in the copy buffer 202.
Upon receiving a paste command from the user, the contents of the copy buffer 202 are inserted into a specified location (e.g. another document, such as a text document). Depending on how the user specifies the paste operation to be performed (e.g. paste as formatted text, unformatted text, etc.), and whether the application being pasted to is able to render the specified attributes, some or all of the attributes 206, 208, 210 and 212 specified in the copy buffer 202 may be used to render the text 206 as a paste result 204 in the target application. In the example illustrated in FIG. 2, the paste result 204 displays the pasted text 214 with font, size, and face formatting, as the pasted text would appear in an application capable of rendering the attributes specified in the copy buffer; i.e. the text 214 is displayed in Times New Roman font, 10 point, regular face. A user wishing to add citation information for the copied/pasted text would then need to take additional steps as discussed above with respect to FIG. 1.
As mentioned above, the target application (i.e. the application for a document into which the copied material is being pasted into) may or may not support rendering of the pasted data (e.g. text) according to the attributes specified in the copy buffer. For example, when copied text is pasted into common word processing applications, such as Microsoft [.RTM.] Word X (available from Microsoft Corporation), the application will typically associated the style attributes (e.g. font, size) in the copy buffer with the pasted text. Thus, the application retains the formatting of the copied text. However, some plain text editing applications, such as BBEdit 7.1 (available from Bare Bones Software, Inc.), will not associate style attributes when inserting copied text into a document, and will merely paste a plain text version of the copied text without attributes.
The manual collection or input of citation data by conscientious users for copied/pasted data, when performed correctly and accurately, serves the purpose of accrediting the source of copied information. However, this task requires forehand knowledge of appropriate citation formats, making it unlikely for many users to correctly cite sources, if at all. Furthermore, even with knowledge of how to cite a source appropriately, these tasks are tedious and error-prone, making proper citation the exception, rather than the rule, when collecting digital information from easily copied sources, such as Internet web pages or digital documents.
Apple’s Summary
The present invention relates to incorporating citation attributes into copied digital content for immediate use in paste operations (and the like) or longer-term preservation with the copied digital content.
In one aspect, citation attributes may be incorporated into copy and paste (insert) operations or cut and paste operations. When copying digital information (including but not limited to text, image, audio, and video data), it is often useful to track the source of the information, including both the immediate source (e.g. a webpage from which text is copied) and the original source (e.g. a book in which the text was originally published) of the copied information. Conventional methods require a user to manually track and insert citation information into documents when copying digital content. Embodiments of the present invention provide for the automatic collection of citation information from electronic documents.
In one aspect, a command to copy or cut selected data from a source file is received. In response to receiving the command to copy or cut the selected data, citation information associated with the selected data is automatically collected. The data and the citation information are then copied into a copy buffer. In one aspect, the citation information is stored in the copy buffer as attributes for the copied data. The citation information may include information identifying an author, a composer, a title, a date, a time, a publisher, a uniform resource locator (URL), and a subsection. The copied data may be text, image, audio, or video data.
In another aspect, a command to insert the data into a destination file is received. In response to receiving the command to insert, the data and its associated citation information from the copy buffer are automatically transferred into the destination file. At least a portion of the citation information may then be displayed within the destination file. The citation information can be formatted according to a user-specified citation convention, and may be presented as a footnote, endnote, a parenthetical citation, or within a bibliography for the destination file. The user specified citation convention may be modified by the user by selecting one or more parameters which define, at least in part, the user specified convention.
In another aspect, the citation information is stored as metadata associated with the destination file. The citation information may be collected from metadata associated with the source file. In one aspect, the source file is a webpage, and meta tags within the coding of the webpage specify at least a portion of the citation information.
In yet another aspect, metadata from a source document is captured upon copying a portion of the source file. Metadata associated with the specific copied portion of the source file may automatically be collected. In another aspect, metadata for the entire source document may be collected automatically, even though only a portion of the source document content is copied. In addition, metadata including citation information may automatically be copied upon copying a portion of the source file.
The present invention is described in conjunction with systems, clients, servers, methods, and machine-readable media of varying scope.
Note: it should be noted that the patent makes reference to Apple’s Macintosh, the Mac OS, Network Computers and a Web TV system associated with this patent.
The sole inventor of patent number 20060218492 is Jose Olav Andrade.
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Written and researched by Neo.
