JPH0628396A - Electronic dictionary - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To save user's operation related to the specification of the language of a dictionary by providing a language kind recognition means recognizing the kind of the language in the character strings of retrieval object and a dictionary selection means selecting dictionarise to be used for retrieval according to it. CONSTITUTION:In a sentence displayed on a display screen, the range of the character string of dictionary retrieval object is specified by an input device 23. when a CPU22 is instructed, the CPU22 extracts the same character string as the one to perform a word retrieval specified its range from the document information of an edited document holding section 26 and stores it in a specified character string holding section 27. Then, the CPU22 recognizes the kind of the language of the character string of the section 27. For example, when the character code of the specifed character string is wholly within the range of the code of KANA (Japanese syllabary) chracters, the specified character string is recognized to be the Japanese. The CPU 22 retrieves words with use of the Japanese dictionary of a disk device 32. On the other hand, when the chracter codes of the specified character string are wholly within the range of the code of English chracters, the retrieval by means of the English-Japanese dictionary is performed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic dictionary device having a plurality of different language dictionaries.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in an electronic dictionary device, word information to be searched for a dictionary is input or specified in a document.

Particularly, in an electronic dictionary device having a plurality of dictionaries of different languages, the user selects the language of the dictionary to be used by key input prior to the dictionary search. In the electronic dictionary device, the selected dictionary is used to search the semantic information about the designated word.

[0004]

However, the conventional device has the following drawbacks.

(1) The type of dictionary to be used must be specified, and the user's input operation becomes complicated when performing a word search in a document in which a plurality of languages are mixed.

(2) When words are sequentially searched for different languages, the word to be searched and the search result are displayed in a window on the display screen of the display device. However, since the display contents of the window screen are switched for each search, a plurality of words are displayed. Search results, especially
I cannot see the search results at the same time when I use dictionaries of different languages. Therefore, when the user looks up the translated word of the English word into Japanese in the English dictionary and then tries to look up the word in the Japanese dictionary, it is difficult to understand the correlation between English word → Japanese word → semantic information. .

Therefore, in view of the above points, the first aspect of the present invention
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic dictionary device capable of eliminating the user's operation relating to the designation of the language of the dictionary.

A second object of the present invention is to provide an electronic dictionary device which can simultaneously see the search results of a plurality of figures.

[0009]

In order to achieve such an object, the first embodiment of the present invention, in an electronic dictionary device having a plurality of dictionaries of different languages, determines the type of language in a character string to be searched. It is characterized in that it comprises a recognition type recognition means and a dictionary selection means for selecting a dictionary to be used for a search in association with the recognition result.

A second aspect of the present invention is, in an electronic dictionary device having a plurality of dictionaries of different languages, an instructing means for instructing a type of a language of a dictionary used for a search, and a result of visually outputting a result of the dictionary search. The present invention is characterized by comprising output means and output control means for visually outputting to the output means the search results of the dictionary for each type of language of the dictionary designated by the instruction means in the form of a multi-window.

[0011]

In the first aspect of the present invention, the language of the word to be searched is identified, and the dictionary corresponding to the language found as a result of the identification is automatically selected. Therefore, the user can perform an input operation for selecting the dictionary. do not need.

In the second embodiment of the present invention, since the search results are displayed in a multi-window according to the language type of the dictionary used,
The user can simultaneously know the search results of dictionaries in different languages.

[0013]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the basic construction of an embodiment of the present invention.

The electronic dictionary device of this embodiment has a plurality of dictionaries in different languages.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1100 is a type recognition means for recognizing the type of language in the character string to be searched.

Reference numeral 1200 is a dictionary selection means for selecting a dictionary to be used for a search in association with the result of the recognition.

Reference numeral 2000 denotes an instructing means for instructing the type of the language of the dictionary used for the search, and in this embodiment, it is composed of the type recognizing means and the dictionary selecting means.

Reference numeral 2200 is an output means for visually outputting the result of the dictionary search.

Reference numeral 2100 is output control means for outputting the result of the dictionary search in the form of a multi-window to the output means according to the type of language of the dictionary designated by the designating means.

FIG. 2 shows a concrete circuit configuration of the embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 2, the following main components are commonly connected to the bus.

The control memory 21 shown in FIG.
Well-known control procedures are stored in advance. These control procedures are arithmetically executed by the central processing unit (CPU) 22.

The CPU 22 controls the operation of the entire apparatus,
The language recognition, the dictionary selection processing, and the multi-window display control processing for each language according to the present invention are executed. CPU
22 operates as the type recognition means, the dictionary selection means, the instruction means, and the output control means of the present invention. The function of each of the above-mentioned means performed in the CPU 22 arithmetic processing process will be described later.

A keyboard, a mouse or the like is used as the input device 23, and a character string (heading word) to be searched is designated by a user's operation.

The output device 24 has a display (display).
Is used to provide a visual display of information. The output device 24 operates as the output means of the present invention.

The memory 25 is provided with the following storage areas according to the type of information.

The edited text holding unit 26 stores the text information to be edited.

The designated character string holding unit 27 stores a character string to be searched designated by the user.

The search result holding unit 28 stores the result of the search executed by the CPU 22.

The information holding unit 29 stores various kinds of information in addition to the information shown in FIG. 4 for displaying the result of the search using the national language dictionary in a window.

The information holding unit 30 stores various kinds of information in addition to the information shown in FIG. 6 for displaying the result of the search using the English-Japanese dictionary in a window. The information holding unit 31 stores the error message of FIG. 8 displayed when the dictionary search cannot be executed.

The disk storage device 32 includes a data holding unit 3
3 and 34, and stores a Japanese dictionary and an English-Japanese dictionary in their respective data holding units.

The operation relating to the present invention in such a circuit configuration will be described below.

In the sentence displayed on the display screen, when the character string to be searched for the dictionary is specified by the input device 23 and the word search is instructed, the CPU 22 causes the same character as the specified character string to be specified. A column is extracted from the document information in the edited document holding unit 26 and stored in the designated character string holding unit 27 (step S1 in FIG. 3).

Next, the CPU 22 uses the designated character string holding unit 27.
The type of the language of the country is recognized for the character string of. In the present embodiment, in the character code system of the Japanese Industrial Standard, the character codes representing kana characters and English characters are grouped according to the type of language respectively, and it is noted that the specified character strings are above the specified character range. The type of language is recognized by determining whether it is within the code range.

When the character codes of the designated character string are all within the code range for kana characters, the designated character string is recognized as Japanese and the national language dictionary is selected (step S10 in FIG. 3). At this time, the CPU 22 operates as the type recognition means, the dictionary selection means, and the instruction means of the present invention.

As a result, the procedure is steps S10 → S11.
Then, the CPU 22 searches for a word using the Japanese dictionary of the disk device 32. Specifically, the same headword in the dictionary is searched using the specified character string “word” as a headword, and the orthographic information “word” and word meaning information “society-specific” stored in the dictionary in relation to this headword. Read out the audio expression that has been decided. After that, the CPU 22 displays the headline information, the orthography information, and the word sense information in a window on the display screen of the output device 24, as shown in FIG.

In this embodiment, there are two for the Japanese dictionary and one for the English-Japanese dictionary.
We have two windows (multi-window),
The CPU 22 displays the search result in each window in association with the selected dictionary. At this time, the CPU 22 operates as display control means.

Since the control processing procedure for displaying the multi-window is well known, detailed description will be omitted.

On the other hand, when it is determined that all the character codes of the designated character string are within the code range of English characters (alphabet characters), this character string is recognized as English and a search process is performed by the English-Japanese dictionary (step S10 → S20 →
S21).

Next, the CPU 22 displays the result of the search in a dedicated window area as shown in FIG.

When it is detected that the designated character string partially includes characters of another language (negative determination in step S20), the CPU 22 determines that the word search is impossible, and as shown in FIG. The error message is read from the information holding unit 31 and displayed on the output device 24 (step S3 in FIG. 3).
1).

As described above, in this embodiment, as shown in FIG.
As shown in, since the search result is displayed in a multi-window for each language type of the search target character string, the user can simultaneously know the correlation between the display partners.

Besides the present embodiment, the following examples can be given.

1) In this embodiment, an example of automatically selecting a Japanese dictionary and an English-Japanese dictionary is shown, but depending on the code system to be processed, there are three or more dictionaries such as an English-German dictionary, a French-German dictionary, and other dictionaries. It is also possible to select.

2) In this embodiment, an example is shown in which language recognition is performed by the character code of a character string to be searched. However, a single search for a specified character string is performed for each dictionary, and a specified character is specified by a dictionary that provides a search result. It is also possible to perform language recognition of columns. However, in this case, there is a drawback that the recognition processing time becomes long.

3) The character string to be searched in this embodiment is specified in the displayed text, but the input device 23
Of course, it may be entered by key input from.

[0049]

As described above, according to the present invention, since it is not necessary for the user to perform an input operation for specifying a dictionary as in the conventional case, a single search for a document in which English and Japanese are mixed is particularly useful. In, the operation effort of the user is reduced. In addition, since the search results of a plurality of dictionaries can be viewed, it is possible to know the correlation between the search results of each other and also the dictionaries used.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a specific circuit configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure executed by a CPU 22 of FIG.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of control information used for window display in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing a display example of a window relating to a national language dictionary according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of control information used for window display in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing a display example of a window relating to the English-Japanese dictionary of the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of an error message according to the embodiment of this invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 22 CPU 23 Input Device 24 Output Device 25 Memory 32 Disk Storage Device

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Yoichi Matsuyama 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ota-ku, Tokyo Canon Inc. (72) Inventor Koichi Fenceki 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ota-ku, Tokyo Canon Within the corporation

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. In an electronic dictionary device having a plurality of dictionaries of different languages, a type recognition means for recognizing a language type in a character string to be searched and a dictionary to be used for a search in correspondence with the result of the recognition. An electronic dictionary device, comprising: 2. An electronic dictionary device having a plurality of dictionaries of different languages, an instruction means for instructing a language type of a dictionary used for a search, an output means for visually outputting a result of the dictionary search, and the instruction. An electronic dictionary device, comprising: output control means for visually outputting to the output means the result of a search of the dictionary according to the type of language of the dictionary designated by the means.