WO2007101151A2 - Apparatus and method for knowledge transfer - Google Patents

Abstract

Provides both author and reader the required tools to establish, maintain, and enhance the immersive experience of knowledge transfer via richly-linked and densely-structured portable electronic documents. Combines a graphical author interface (520), a rule-based expert system (526), a presentation database of narrative, glossary, reference, and other textual and non-textual materials for reader presentation, a set of structures for the presentation of the materials for readers, a knowledge database (528) containing the relationships among the author's defined presentation materials and the rules for presentation of said materials, an intensive range of linkages among the materials, multiple threads of presentation for choice by readers, a contextual memory of reader preferences and selections, and a presentation system for readers that suppresses distractions from the immersive reading process, thereby facilitating the study and absorption of the presented materials.

Description

THE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER TOOL: AN APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This disclosure relates to the creation of texts readable on electronic displays, and more specifically to the creation of interconnected narratives and references readable using browser programs such as those adapted for use on the World Wide Web,

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Tools for passing knowledge from an author or originator to a reader are well-known in the realm of electronic literature, and are commonly used to document complex software packages. All such systems have shortcomings. The following discussion outlines both the range of the conventional systems and the shortcomings of each type.

Software and General Documentation

A good example is the documentation system used in the open- source Python language system. This system operates as a set of interlinked hypertext documents, carefully organized to provide the user of the Python language with rapid and relevant access to information on the uses and characteristics of the language. Another example of such tools is the Wikipedia, a collaborative open-source encyclopedia accessible to all on the World Wide Web. Its pages are intensively interlinked, and interconnected with many other Web locations. The Wikipedia, and in fact any open-source document system, suffers from the disadvantage of potential unreliabilty of its content and structure. Any method of reviewing, vetting, and correcting a system of documents relies on a controlling administrative process. The absence, in any formal sense, of such a process for an open-source document system reduces its acceptability as a source of reliable and accurate information. Many proprietary documentation systems, for example the Help pages for a software application, work similarly while eliminating the issues of reliability and accuracy, A key disadvantage to the proprietary systems is their frequent shortfall of coverage and lack of responsiveness in areas needing special attention for users. The open-source systems adapt to such shortfalls quickly, though they usually require cycles of correction.

All such open-source and proprietary systems, as carefully-structured as they are, give readers considerable freedom in choosing paths to take through the contents. Such freedom is at once an asset and a liability. If a document system such as Wikipedia or Python's system is used, the reader is offered no appropriate serialization of presentation that would support the orderly acquisition of knowledge. Sequencing of presentation is a necessary component of education and knowledge transfer.

A proprietary publishing system such as that of Microsoft Reader sequences its presentations quite well using a table of contents for a work, along with a set of conventional links forward and backward through a work, but it lacks richness in its use of links. In other products such as Adobe Acrobat, links within a work and among works are easily placed, but there is no systematization of the determination and placement of those links. In nearly every product, a single narrative line is assumed to be the primary means of presentation and assimilation of a work's content.

Conventional Document Authoring Tools

Document authoring tools abound. XML Editors include: syntactical editors such as Stylus Studio, EditML Pro, xmlBlueprint, Xcena, Xerlin, and Cooktop; visual editors such as XMetal, EditiX, Morphon, FrameMaker, and Vex; and text editors such as emacs, VIM, and JEdit. All of these address the detailed structure and appearance of a document but ignore its semantics and the structure of its meaning. Mind mapping tools such as MindManager, PersonalBrain, Inspiration, Visual Mind, ThinkGraph, or FreeMind address the semantics and structure of meaning, but do not offer flowing, readable text in a continuous narrative form. None of these tools address an instructional mode of presentation in a manner straightforward enough for most authors to use. Immersive Reading

Conventional electronic literature makes extensive use of hyperlinks as a means of letting a reader link from one text to another. The reader's freedom in exercising links in the product of a document authoring system offers a constant temptation to stray outside the document to links elsewhere, or to allow the document's visual distractions, including the visible markings indicating its hyperlinks, to interfere with reading. Learning is most effective when it is immersive: the learner, or in this case the reader, gains information best when outside distractions are not allowed to interrupt the engagement with the material being learned. A student of language can attest to this fact. In immersive reading, the reader is so deeply engaged with the contents of the document that the reading experience embraces the widest and deepest ranges of the reader's awareness. Conventional electronic literature makes little or no attempt to establish and maintain the immersive "spell" for the reader. Consequently, the distractions offered by both the World Wide Web and the links within the document itself serve to disrupt the reader's learning process.

Programmed Instruction

An opposite problem also confronts the designer of an electronic learning tool: the overly-restrictive application of rules to the reader's progress through the presented material. This problem first arose with the advent of "programmed instruction", or PI, in which a reader was required to enter a specific answer to a question and then follow a specific series of steps based on that choice. A pioneering example of this technology was the Plato Project in the 1960s.

The authors of such documents found them difficult to program. Making mistakes was easy, and the trivial nature of the lessons being conveyed made the work much like counting grains of sand. Likewise, readers often found such documents trivial and boring, and lost interest in them quickly. Later efforts met with more success, but the conventional approach to specificity and rigidity of requirements have generally made such tools of less interest to authors and readers. They would be of greater interest if their methods were integrated into a more- relaxed framework.

Offering Choices to Readers

The realm of knowledge transfer would be well served by the availability of tools which offer the author a means for ordering one or more sequencings of written material for presentation, and offer the reader a means for following any specific sequence provided by the author. Furthermore, such tools should provide the author with the means to present to readers any supporting material without breaking the immersive state of a reader's mind during the reading.

Different readers, equipped with different cognitive processes and styles of thought, tend to follow different threads of discourse through a body of knowledge. For example, some readers cannot immerse themselves in the conventional temporally sequenced presentation, but are quite comfortable with a traversal of the material through associated themes and ideas, as is done in the works of James Burke. Allowing readers to choose from a wide variety of approaches to threading the body of knowledge in some order would provide a wider range of readers with improved engagement with the knowledge to be assimilated.

Holding the Reader's Attention

Knowledge transfer works better when the means of conveyance acts as a "containment vessel" for the required knowledge, keeping the reader within its bounds to the extent possible. Furthermore, knowledge transfer is enhanced when the author's background material, originating in glosses, references, sidebars, footnotes, and other sources, is integrated smoothly with the sequenced material. This makes the document as a whole capable of "bootstrapping" the reader into a rapid understanding of what might otherwise be an arcane field replete with jargons, notations, and conventions that make ordinary reading a monumentally difficult exercise.

When an author, whether an educator or a writer of fiction or non fiction, can supply some kind of rule structure to guide readers without frustrating or boring them, the reader's immersion in the material is enhanced and not damaged. Such reader immersion serves the knowledge transfer process in the best possible way.

Strategy Games

Another realm of knowledge transfer well-known in the art is that of the electronic strategy game. Examples abound: Sid Meier's "Civilization" series of games, the "Galactic Civilizations" set, Microsoft's "Age of Empires" series, and many more. Such games confront a knowledge-intensive problem: teaching new players how to play them. Failure at this task yields poor sales of the games. To profit their makers, the games organize and present their rules, entities, relationships, and dynamics in the best ways they can.

Such organization and presentation methodology are appropriate candidates for use in a more-general knowledge transfer setting. The dearth of such applications in formal education is surprising - to bring about a student's rapid and successful absorption of knowledge would seem to be desirable. A major obstacle seems to be the ease with which an educator can adopt the principles and practices of the game authors. Easing the educator's tasks in preparing new works such as electronic textbooks would open the way to significant improvements in the use of electronic materials, including instructional materials developed using game-learning principles, in formal education.

The Demonstrated Need

In summary, a strong need exists for educational tools and methods which: 1) assure validity and relevance of the material presented, 2) maintain the reader's immersion in the material, 3) focus and guide the reader through orderly sequencings of the material, 4) stimulate the reader with presentations of sufficient scope and interest, 5) support the reader's rapid acquisition of knowledge details, 6) offer the reader more than one choice of sequences of presentation of the material, and 7) facilitate and simplify the work of authors and editors in their efforts to accomplish 1) through 6). SUMMARY OF THE INVENTXON

The present invention provides both author and reader the required toolset, called herein for certain embodiments of the present invention the Knowledge Transfer Tool, or KTT, to establish, maintain, and enhance the immersive experience of knowledge transfer via a richly- linked and densely-structured portable electronic document, called here an electronic literary macrame, or ELM. The KTT combines a graphical author interface, a rule-based expert system, a presentation database of narrative, glossary, reference, and other textual and non-textual materials for reader presentation, a set of structures for the presentation of the materials for readers, a knowledge database containing the relationships among the author's defined presentation materials and the rules for presentation of said materials, an intensive range of linkages among the presentation materials, multiple threads of presentation for choice by readers, a contextual memory of reader preferences and selections, and a presentation system for readers that suppresses distractions from the immersive reading process, thereby facilitating the study and absorption of the presented materials.

In its embodiments in a handheld computing environment, the present invention enables a learner to store, carry, and undertake an extended educational program in the space of the palm of one hand.

In one form the present invention also offers both client-only and client-server embodiments of its ELM to expand commercial opportunities for publishers.

DRAWINGS OF THE INVENTION

Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing an overview of one embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 2 is a block diagram of the source and presentation computing systems shown in Fig,

1;

Fig, 3 is a block diagram of the software components of the source computing system shown in Fig. 2; Fig. 4 is a block diagram of an overview of a knowledge database components used in an embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 5 is a block diagram an overview of presentation database components used in an embodiment of the present invention; Fig. 6 is a block diagram of the software components of the presentation computing system shown in FIG. 2;

Fig. 7 is a block diagram of an overview of a conceptual database organization of the units of presentation shown in as embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 8 is a computer screen layout of a representative author screen form for the entry of the rules for a presentation unit in one embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 9 is a block diagram of an overview of a process flow to prepare an ELM according to an embodiment of the invention;.

Fig. 10 is a block diagram of an initial processing for the units of an author which are to be presented in some specified sequence to a reader in one embodiment of the invention; Fig. 1 1 is a block diagram of initial processing for the units of an author which are to be made available for reference by a reader in an embodiment of the invention;

Fig. 12 is a block diagram of processing for creating threads or sequences for presentation of an author's work in one embodiment of the invention;

Fig. 13 is a block diagram of processing for combining units into components for creating structured works according to an embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 14 is a block diagram of processing for supporting an author's specification of access and threading rules for the units to be shown to a reader according to one embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 15 is a block diagram of the linking of text units to reference units accfording to one embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 16 is a block diagram of the assembly of unit compilation information according tone embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 17 is a block diagram of an overview of the compilation of the ELM according to one embodiment of the present invention; Fig. 18 is a block diagram of the process to create a single ELM unit page according to an embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 19 is an electronic display of the ELM's presentation to a reader of a presentation page; Fig. 20 is an electronic display of the ELM's presentation to a reader of an accompanying reference page according to one embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 21 is an electronic display of a prior art form of prose presentation; and

Fig. 22 is an electronic display of a form of prose presentation according to an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The electronic literary macrame, or ELM, described in U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 11/361,439 filed on February 24, 2006, entitled "Apparatus and Method for Creating Literary Macrames," which is incorporated herein by reference, contains a wide range of functional capabilities. These capabilities reveal the electronic literary macrame (ELM) as a means for knowledge transfer from an author to a population of readers. Additional such capabilities are described in U.S. provisional Patent Application No. 60/833,201 filed on July 25, 2006, entitled "Multiple Improvements in Method and Apparatus for Creating Literary Macrames,'' also incorporated herein by reference. The present description specifies further improvements and enhancements to these two applications.

The preparation of the electronic literary macrame is accomplished using a combination of software components which themselves comprise a tool, here termed a Knowledge Transfer Tool. Presentation output of the Knowledge Transfer Tool (KTT) is here called an electronic literary macrame, or ELM, to be presented to readers.

To illustrate features and functions of the KTT with examples, the development and use of an ELM of the life of Leonardo da Vinci is used in the following sections. Components of the KTT

Documents in printed text form are available to readers in a bewildering range of formats. The simplest form, as exemplified in a literary work of fiction such as James Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake", is a linear narrative text without footnotes or other secondary material, in which the work's great complexity is embedded within the language usage alone. The most complex forms, as exemplified in the physics textbook "Gravitation", by Kip Thorne, Charles Misner, and John Wheeler, incorporate numerous threads of discussion for different readerships, footnotes, endnotes, page and chapter cross-references, sidebars, glosses, expositions, index, and illustrations. Both forms present challenges to any reader.

The KTT enriches the simpler forms by offering an author or annotator a seamless and invisible way of granting a reader access to added material without distracting symbols or marks in the text, permitting instant lookups and immediate return to the narrative without delay. The KTT simplifies the use of the complex forms by: 1) offering the author or editor the ability to conceal background data until a reader calls for it, at which point the information is presented without disrupting the flow of the reader's attention; 2) offering the author or editor the ability to present different threads of reading to different readers, thereby eliminating reader distractions and waste of time; and 3) supplying a graphical user interface (GUI) for authors to facilitate ELM development and production. The software components of the Knowledge Transfer Tool may include a knowledge database and a presentation database. The knowledge database contains the structural definition of an ELM and a set of author-defined rules to manage presentation and sequencing of presentation units to a reader. The KTT's use of rules is explained below in the section titled "The Rule Base of the KTT". The presentation database contains the textual and other materials that are to be presented to the reader.

The software components of the KTT further may include a graphical user interface for an author to use in creating and maintaining the database and the rules, a database management system to support the knowledge database, a rule-processing software component to determine the selection and sequencing of presentation units for readers based on the rules in the knowledge database, a conventional Web browser or other presentation software component for presenting elements of the KTT' s output to readers, and a graphical user interface for a reader to register requirements and needs with respect to the ELM's access and presentation rules.

Turning now to the drawings, Fig. 1 is a block diagram of the knowledge transfer tool 700 comprising a source computing system 500 for organizing knowledge for an author, one or more presentation computing systems 600a, 600b, 600c, 600d, 60Oe, 60Of, 60Og for presenting the author's organized knowledge to readers, and one or more distribution connections 560 between the source computing system and each presentation computing system. The distribution connections 560 serve to transfer organized knowledge from the source computing system 500 to each presentation computing system. The source computing system 500 of the knowledge transfer tool 700 as shown in Fig. 2 may comprise one or more processing subsystems 502, one or more memory and storage subsystems 504 connected to each processing subsystem, one or more communications subsystems 506 connected to each processing subsystem, one or more author interface subsystems 508 connected to each processing subsystem, one or more source software components 510 residing in each processing subsystem, and one or more interconnections 512 among the processing subsystems 502.

As shown in Fig. 3, the source software components 510 of the source computing system 500 may comprise an author interface software component 520, a document linking and threading software component 524, a database management subsystem 532, a knowledge database and database interface component 528, supported by the database management subsystem 532, a knowledge acquisition software component 522, a rule construction and compilation software component 526 connected to the knowledge database and database interface component 528, a presentation database and database interface component 530 of the source computing system 500, supported by the database management subsystem 532, and an electronic document publishing software component 534 connected to the knowledge database and database interface component 528 and the presentation database and database interface component 530.

In Fig. 4 a knowledge database 200 may contain the structural information for an ELM and rules to manage presentation and sequencing of presentation units to a reader. The knowledge base 200 comprises one or more source-language processing unit rules tables 212 specifying conditions determining actions to be taken in the presentation process, one or more information component definitions, a component table 216a, a component table 216b, and a component-component table 216c, containing sets of units and components for each component, one or more thread definitions, a thread file table 232a, a thread table 232b, and a thread- component table 232c, containing sequences of units and components for each thread; and one or more information unit definitions, unit processing tables 202 and a unit table 204, containing properties of information units.

In addition, the knowledge base stores theme information in a theme table 214 for generating sequences of information units for presentation, and marker information in marker tables 210 for generating collections of unsequenced information units for presentation as reference data.

Furthermore, the knowledge base stores term information in a term table 228 and a term usage table 230 for use in generating glossaries, and tabulation definitions in tabulation definition tables 226 for defining organizations of information within a unit for formatted presentation to a reader.

As shown in Fig. 5, the presentation database 300 may comprise one or more information units, unit source files 304, base unit text files 306, stored unit text files 308, reference unit text files 310, tabular reference unit text files 312, linked presentation unit text files 314a, linked reference unit text files 314b, and linked tabular reference unit text files 314c, containing information for use by a reader, one or more compiled processing rules or compiled unit rules 420 specifying conditions determining actions to be taken in the presentation process, and one or more formatting components, unit header templates 322 and unit footer templates 324, containing information for the formatting of material presented to a reader.

With reference again to Fig, 2, the presentation computing system 600 of the knowledge transfer tool 700 comprises one or more presentation processing subsystems 602, one or more presentation memory and storage subsystems 604, one or more presentation communications subsystems 606, one or more reader interface subsystems 608, one or more presentation software processing components 610 residing in each presentation processing subsystem 602, and one or more interconnections 612 among the presentation processing subsystems 602. Turning now to Fig. 6, the presentation software processing components 610 comprise an installation software component 620, a rule processing software component 622, a presentation software component 626, such as a Web browser, a presentation data component 624 comprising all or part of an ELM, further comprising textual and other materials for presentation to readers, and one or more formatting components 628 containing information for the formatting of material presented to a reader. The KTT's base distribution embodiment of its ELM may use a client-only Web-page architecture that may utilize HTML/CSS/JavaScript software components, with its links among Web pages stored in a set of electronic files in one or more folders on a single portable presentation device such as a CD-ROM, a DVD, or a flash memory chip. The restriction of the base distribution embodiment to a client-only form lessens the tendency to incorporate or otherwise link to material not within the scope of the ELM, thereby mitigating distraction from the ELM's focus.

The KTT may also be configured in a first commercial distribution embodiment that divides an electronic literary macrame (ELM) into a freely-provided, client-only first part and a client-server second part that may be either purchased or freely provided, and provides hypertext links between the first and second parts. The reader obtains the first part by file transfer, streaming, download, portable memory, or other electronic means. When the reader selects a link in the first part that accesses the second part, the reader's browser is redirected to a server Web page soliciting purchase, lease, or other payment for access to the second part. The author maintains, develops, changes, and restructures the second part of the ELM on a continuing basis, thereby sustaining reader interest in the ELM as a whole, and offering the reader continued views into the creative process and any corrections and updates required for an evolving ELM. An author may also use the KTT to advertise to readers new versions of the ELM as a whole, made available for download or other transfer process as the author considers appropriate. By applying this particular strategy to works of literature in an ongoing state of development, the ELM offers the publisher substantial reductions of risk in publishing, and potential gains in profits from works sold.

In a second commercial distribution embodiment, the KTT may treat its units as commodity objects, which are handled in a manner analogous to the trading cards such as the Yu-Gi-Oh cards and other similar products. An ELM author makes disconnected units available on a commercial Website for sale and download, and these units are assembled by the reader into a coherent narrative. The actual sequence of the narrative, or more than one such sequence, is also made available for sale and download by the author. In effect, an ELM narrative is assembled and added to an ELM using these means. In addition to electronic presentation of units, physical presentations of ELM units may be made in the form of trading cards, individually or in packets, which add to the content and value of a narrative published as a component of an ELM. A reader may collect an entire narrative by gathering and trading for its component unit cards, and the overall narrative then forms an extension of an ELM in electronic form. By gradually making unit cards available in serial fashion, either in electronic or physical form, an author thereby develops interest and focus attention on a continually-extending narrative line. Such interest and attention are enhanced by a full spectrum of packaging and presentation options now available for existing commodities: boxed sets, encrypted or coded texts, attractive graphical images, multimedia clips, colorful and dynamic decoration, toolsets for viewing, decoding, and transmitting, and more. One type of packaging usable for unit trading is the digital photographic image, which the KTT may exploit by making units and other narrative components available for printing on a digital photo printer using paper or card stock designed for higher-quality reproduction of images. The purchaser downloads the acquired images of narrative components and prints them for use. In this way, each small component of a narrative - a unit - becomes a marketable entity by itself. The author and publisher then profit from the purchase of unit information, at a unit-by- unit level, instead of waiting for the entire finished product to emerge from the publishing process.

The KTT may optionally provide a digital watermark embodiment, in which literary information of interest to a reader of the ELM is embedded in a concealed and distributed form in the nondisplayed portions of the ELM. The KTT changes the nature of the watermark by deepening its role in the ELM, since the watermark becomes what is termed in cryptographic parlance a "side channel" for conveying narrative-related information to a reader outside the primary communications stream. If a reader removes the digital watermark from the work, the side channel containing narrative -related information is destroyed, and the literary value of the work is thereby diminished. in its digital watermark embodiment, the KTT may replace a subset of an ELM's HTML link-anchor values with a set of strings taken from unpublished portions of the ELM's narrative text, encode the strings to remove redundancies that would cause collisions among the values produced, and store the encoded strings as HTML link anchors embedded in Web pages comprising the ELM. The KTT also may provide code to be executed by the reader's browser program which collects and orders the strings to reconstruct and present the unpublished portion of text to the reader, at the reader's selection of an appropriate link embedded in the ELM. The distributed narrative text comprises the watermark for the ELM.

In additional digital watermark embodiments, the KTT may identify elements of the ELM by using a text-substitution scheme similar to that proposed hereinabove, but extended to use embedded filenames, pathnames, and other classes of identifiers and text as a means of storing and retrieving concealed content of the ELM.

The Database of the KTT

The database of the KTT may be defined in a relational embodiment as a set of relational tables. In the relational embodiment the database is a relational database. The database of the KTT may be defined in an object embodiment as an object-oriented database. The database of the KTT may be defined in a text-file embodiment as a collection of text files. In a spreadsheet embodiment the KTT' s database may be defined as a collection of sets of rows and columns in one or more spreadsheets.

Referencing Fig. 4, the tables of the database contain the knowledge, facts, and values that comprise the content and organization of an instance of the invention's ELM that is to be presented to a reader. The fundamental presentation element of the KTT is the Unit, which is a single displayable entity such as a Web page accessible to a reader via a single selection such as a mouse click. A Unit may require scrolling, using conventional browser controls, to view its entire visible content. Unit definitions are stored in the Unit Table 204. The Units themselves may be stored either in the Unit Table or as separate files designated in the Unit Table.

The Unit may comprise a lesson unit in a textbook instance of the KTT, it may comprise a scene in a literary instance of the KTT, it may comprise a sidebar or other reference in any instance, or it may comprise any other form of presentation selectable by a single operation, such as a list, a glossary section, a video clip, an audio clip, an animation, or an image or set of images.

A Unit such as a list or a glossary section contains additional structure. In a first sub-Unit structure embodiment, the KTT' s database may provide for the definition and presentation of Terms and Tabulations. A Term definition, stored in the Term Table 228, defines a word, phrase, or symbol of the author's usage, including alternate forms used. Alternate forms for a Term are stored in the Term Usage Table 230,

The KTT may collect Terms into subsets for presentation in one or more glossary sections, dictionary pages, or similar groupings. Each such grouping comprises a Unit. The KTT aggregates and orders Terms into glossaries and indices as directed by an author. A specific glossary for the ELM on the life of Leonardo da Vinci might contain a list of all the surface preparations he used in his painting, in alphabetical order, with a description for each one, while another specific glossary for the same ELM might contain a similar list of all the military inventions he is supposed to have generated. For each such glossary, the KTT generates an index referring the reader to each location in the ELM's narrative where each Term is used.

A Tabulation defines a row-and-column arrangement of data, otherwise known as a table, including tabular headings and titles, which may be incorporated by the author into Units of the KTT. Tabulations are defined in the Tabulation Definition Tables 226. The KTT may prompt an author for the definition of a Tabulation, asking for column headings, row headings, descriptive and formatting information for rows and columns, the data content of each row and column of the Tabulation, and one or more templates for generating a textual definition for each entry of the Tabulation. The KTT further may provide glossary-style storage of text description of Tabulation entries in Term form, so that a reader may either peruse the table entry directly in its table location or else look at each table entry in isolated text form in a supplementary glossary. The KTT may generate a link from each table entry to its corresponding generated glossary entry, and a link from the generated glossary entry back to the table.

An example of a Tabulation in the da Vinci ELM would be a table showing a column for each major era of da Vinci's life and a row for each category of work or research in which he engaged. Each entry in the table would contain a word or short phrase indicating whether or not he did work of a particular type in a particular era. A reader selecting the entry would be shown a glossary supplement entry spelling out the entry in relation to the rows and columns defined for the table. Selecting the name of the Tabulation in the glossary supplement entry returns the reader to the display of the Tabulation. An author incorporates Tabulations in other Units of reference information, so that the context of the Tabulation can be shown.

In order to present Units to a reader in a meaningful, instructive, and stimulating framework, the KTT may provide for the placing of Units into sequences called Threads. Each Thread defines an order in which its units are to be presented. Any Unit may appear in any number of Threads. The KTT provides a means for offering the selection of different sets of Threads for different sets of readers. Thread definitions are stored in the Thread Component Table 232b.

In order to simplify the organization of Threads, the KTT further may provide for the definition of Components, which are collections of Units. See Fig. 7. The top-level Component is the ELM 710. Each Component comprises a set of Components 720 , Units 730, or a mixture of Components and Units. Components 730 are defined as shown in Fig. 4 in the Component Table 216b, and the relationships among Components are defined in the Component-Component Table 216c, in an arrangement resembling that of a manufacturing component-assembly database. The Thread is the specification of reading order for Components. The KTT provides for a base Thread for each Component. The base thread for a Component defines a principal or default sequence in which the set of the Component's elements are to be presented. For example, let an ELM comprise a set of parts, each part a set of chapters, each chapter a set of sections, and each section a set of Units. Parts, chapters, and sections are all Components. Then the KTT provides a thread of the ELM's parts, a thread for each part's chapters, a thread for each chapter's sections, and a thread for each section's units.

The example da Vinci ELM might have two Threads, the first one being the chronological Thread of his life, and the second the topical Thread of his categories of work. A reader of the first Thread would follow da Vinci's life in order, while a reader of the second Thread would traverse all the different types of work he did, in some other convenient author- determined order such as Painting, Sculpture, War Machines, Natural Science, Diversions. In the first Thread, each Component might be a chapter comprised of Units, In the second thread, each Component might be a Unit Overlapping sets of the same Units might appear in both Threads, but in different order. The author may set aside any or all of the KTT' s principal sequences and define others as needed. The author's defined Threads may freely intermix Components and Units at any level. Thus, in the example above, an author may define an added Thread that begins with a single Unit, continues with a part, interposes a section, continues with the next part, and so on.

To provide further flexibility, the KTT's database may include definitions of Markers that relate otherwise-unconnected Units to each other via selected Terms, and of Themes that identify common elements such as Terms that appear in a sequence of Units. Continuing with Fig. 4, Markers are defined in the Marker Tables 210, and Themes in the Theme Table 214. Themes provide the KTT with input to its processes for creation of additional threaded structures, called Traces, so that an author can offer readers additional options for traversing an ELM. In the da Vinci example, one theme might be Leonardo's point of view in a Unit, and another might be Michelangelo's presence in a Unit. Traces rely on the presence of one or more ordering criteria associated with each Unit such as dates and times, sequence numbers, or lexical order to establish a sequence of presentation to a reader. Using a time sequence, the Leonardo point-of-view Trace would lead the reader though the Units where Leonardo would be the point of view character. The Michelangelo presence Trace would instead lead the reader through the Units where Michelangelo appears in the Unit. Both Traces would be in chronological order. Markers provide the KTT with input to its processes for creating additional unordered collections of reference Units, allowing a reader to browse through focused sets of articles, notes, or other ancillary materials. No ordering criteria are needed for the use of Markers. A Marker in the da Vinci example might be a medium of painting, identified in presentation Units by any of a specific set of phrases such as 'oil painting', 'tempera', 'watercolor', 'encaustic', or other identifying phrase, so that the resulting collection comprises a self-contained discussion of painting media in general. Thereby the KTT stimulates the reader with presentations of sufficient scope and interest, and supports the reader's rapid acquisition of knowledge details. The KTT' s database organization as shown contains additional tables and relationships as required to support its operation. The Unit Processing Tables 202 hold all information required to transform an input unit of information into the richly-linked form the KTT produces. The Unit Rules Table 212 may store for each Unit one or more sets of presentation rules to be applied in a guided-access embodiment which may optionally be used by authors wishing to control a reader's access to a series of presentations.

Presentation to Readers

The KTT 's Component organization, and its Traces and Threads, are invisible to the reader at the time of presentation. The KTT presents the reader with a menu or other choice of Thread titles, the reader selects a title, and then the reader selects either the next or the previous Unit on the Thread. There is no general requirement for the reader to choose among Threads. The KTT provides for such choices as needed, but suppresses their presentation under most conditions. Thereby the KTT sustains the reader's immersion in the material, and focuses and guides the reader through orderly sequencings of the material.

The KTT may provide for the optional presentation of a menu or other selection of Threads to be followed by a reader on completing the perusal of a Unit. With the availability of multiple Threads to be followed from any Unit, the KTT stimulates the reader with presentations of sufficient scope and interest. To streamline the selection of Threads, the author may characterize different classes of readers in a reader characterization input to the KTT. The author specifies for each Unit the criteria which must be satisfied for a reader to view the Unit. The KTT supplies a graphical user interface to register each reader's characteristics when said reader first accesses a specific ELM. In a first access-rule embodiment, for each Unit the KTT may prompt an author for a set of unit transition rules to be applied at the time any link to a Unit is to be displayed or used. The KTT may store the rules constructed by the author in its database. The KTT' s rule conditions may include the class of reader, the Units considered presentation prerequisites to the presentation of the Unit in question, and any other conditions potentially affecting the decision to display the Unit to the reader. The KTT may retrieve its Unit transition rules from its database and compile or otherwise store said rules for evaluation at the time the reader accesses each Unit of the ELM. The KTT 's use of Unit transition rules helps assure validity and relevance of the material presented to a given reader.

As described in the incorporated applications, the KTT links all Terms mentioned in its Units to the definitions of those Terms, to indices showing other uses of the Terms, and to tabulated definitions of the Terms. The KTT also provides the author with the ability to insert and maintain links among different Units. All such links of all types are presented to readers in the most unobtrusive forms, thereby helping maintain the reader's immersion in the material.

The KTT' s combination of Units, Components, Threads, Tabulations, Terms, rules and rich Unkings among its elements presented to readers stimulates any reader with presentations of sufficient scope and interest, and supports the reader's rapid acquisition of knowledge details.

To facilitate an author's construction of an ELM, the KTT may furnish a conventional graphical user interface to populate and maintain its database. The KTT further may provide a set of software tools that facilitate the author's conversion of conventional electronic documents into forms suitable for loading into its database.

The KTT' s database embodiments may optionally use a conventional database software subsystem that supports tables and relations in the SQL form. One embodiment of the KTTs database uses MySQL, an open-source relational DBMS. Other embodiments may use similar products, either open-source, commercial, or freeware. A spreadsheet database embodiment of the KTT may use a commercial spreadsheet software subsystem olptionally coupled with specialized scripts to manage the author's data. Numerous database embodiments are possible, and the KTT works in any of them, including possible combinations of different database software subsystems working in federated or interoperable architectures.

The Rule B ase of the KTT

The KTT may provide for the incorporation of rules that determine how readers may interact with the presentation of the content (ELM) produced by the Knowledge Transfer Tool. An author supplies rule definitions to the KTT using a conventional graphical user interface (GUI). See Fig. 8 for a representative embodiment of a screen form 900 for entering rule definitions. Many variations on the present embodiment are possible using conventional user interface designs.

The author first enters a Rule ID 902 and Rule Title 904 to identify the rule being created, and selects from drop-down menus to specify one or more Reader Levels 906 and Reader Categories 908 to which the rule applies. Reader Levels 906 and Reader Categories 908 are separately established using conventional permissions applications. The author then selects a single Unit ID 910 from a drop-down menu of Unit IDs indicating the Unit to which the rule applies. The Unit Title 912 and Unit Description 914 are displayed by the interface to assist the author in creating rules. The author then selects one or more prerequisite Unit IDs from a drop- down menu to create the Prerequisite Unit ID List 916 specifying all Units which must be presented before the Unit to which the rule applies can be presented to the reader level and category given earlier.

The author may create different rules for the same Unit as accessed during the reader's traversal of different Threads. To use this feature, the author selects one or more Thread IDs 920 from a drop-down menu of Thread IDs indicating the Thread(s) for which the rule applies. The Thread Title 922 and Thread Description 924 are displayed by the interface to assist the author in creating rules. The author then selects zero or more prerequisite Thread IDs from a drop-down menu to create the Prerequisite Thread ID List 926 specifying all Threads which must be presented before the Unit to which the rule applies can be presented to the reader level and category given earlier.

Using the screen of Fig. 8, an author may also define rules having no prerequisite Units, no prerequisite Threads, or no prerequisites of either type.

The KTT may compile or otherwise transform the author's rule specifications into rule software components that operate at the time the reader is perusing an ELM. The transformation takes the same general form as the specification of search criteria for a search engine software program. Each prerequisite Unit ID, for example, is translated into a program statement component testing for the presence of that Unit ID in a list of Unit IDs already read by the reader. If the given Unit ID is present in the list, the test returns a positive result, and if the given Unit ID is not present, the test returns a negative result. The set of all the tests created from the prerequisite Unit IDs, the prerequisite Thread IDs, and the reader level and category becomes a rule software component. Said rale software components use reader and ELM unit characteristics to determine 1) which Thread is used to link a particular reader forward and back between units of presentation; and 2) which Threads are displayed for reader selection, either at the outset of perusal of an ELM₃ or on completion of perusal of a unit of presentation of the ELM. Said rule software components may also be used to determine which references and other supporting material are presented to a particular reader when the reader selects a Term for definition or other elaboration.

The KTT' s rule specifications may take the form of rules as defined in a rule-based expert system such as CLIPS. Each rule contains a set of logical conditions and a set of software actions. When all logical conditions defined in a rule are met, the rule is 'triggered', and carries out its software actions, or 'fires'. Considered without any software context, this process is exactly that of an ordinary "If...Then..." programming language construct.

The KTT may be constructed in a compiled-rule embodiment that compiles the author- specified rules into software functions which execute when a reader specifies a link in a presentation Unit. This simple embodiment accomplishes the KTT' s purposes without additional supporting software.

The KTT may be constructed in a rule-based expert system embodiment that uses an inference engine to process author-specified rules, so that a rule of the KTT may fire at any time it is tested, irrespective of the state of execution of the software in general. In other words, the testing of rules is not sequentially performed as if it were specified by a sequence of "If... Then..." statements. The testing of rules is performed according to the expert system's independently- defined criteria, and not in some linear, programmer-prescribed order. In the rule-based expert- system embodiment, the KTT may incorporate an expert rule processing component such as CLIPS to handle its rule testing and execution. The KTT' s rule-based expert-system embodiment offers a much-richer range of effects to an author, at the cost of considerable added complexity in the author's rule definition process.

As an example, the author brings up a Unit from the work itself. In the da Vinci example, the Unit might contain a narrative of da Vinci's entry into Milan in the 1480s. The KTT prompts the author with a series of questions or a form to fill in to identify a point of view (maybe da Vinci, or Ludovico Sforza, his new patron), the locale (Milan, perhaps at Sforza's residence), one or more themes or markers (art, inventions, patrons, change of career, wars, etc.), a time within the narrative (1480) for the scene, and other information such as a list of other people present in the scene.

Once all this information is in place, the KTT may ask the author for a set of categories of reader permissions, associating with each category a set of reader classes eligible to have the scene presented to them. In the da Vinci case, for example, a particular scene might be suitable for college-level readers but not for those whose reading level is below 10th grade.

For each reader class, the KTT then prompts the author for one or more lists of scenes or other components or threads which must have been presented to the reader before the current scene is presented: prerequisite reading in the ELM.

For a reader on da Vinci's life, for example, the reader should have completed the last scene set in Florence with da Vinci preparing to leave, and for a reader of a thread reviewing da Vinci's inventions, the reader should have completed the scene showing him abandoning or completing his previous inventive effort. For each such list, the KTT may also prompt the author for any qualifiers such as themes or markers indicating other supporting material of value that should be reviewed before the current scene is read.

For a life history thread list, one such marker might be the marker flagging scenes involving the patrons who supported da Vinci in his work. For an invention thread list, another such marker might be the one flagging the wars in which da Vinci's inventions were supposed to play a role.

An Illustration of Rule Implementation and Use in the KTT

HTML tags arc primary markup components of HTML used in the formatting and functioning of hypertext pages on the Web. A simple link target embodiment of the KTTs reference linkages may use the 'nam.e="anchorid^m attribute of the '<a>' tag in HTML to mark link targets within a glossary section. In some applications, scoping requirements for some names may require the name to be applicable to a whole section of a document, and not to just the '<a>' tag. The KTT may meet this need using the 'icN'anchorid¹'¹ attribute of the <div> tag, and building a reference containing individual terms (such as a glossary or an index) with each term's identifier embedded in a <div> tag that marks off the entire term's section. This usage replaces the

attribute in the <a> tag for each term, so there is no net change in complexity of the glossary or index.

Such usage facilitates scoping of custom variables for use in association with each glossary term. The phrase "scoping of custom variables" means that a variable's value used in a Web page can be associated with some component of the page and not with the entire page. For example, the

attribute of an <a> tag associates only with the tag in which it appears. By contrast, if anchorid is used in the Id=" anchorid'" attribute of a <div> tag, that anchorid value associates with the entire section of the page marked off by the <div>...</div> pair. Therefore, if a link appears somewhere in the <div id="divθθr>...</div> section, the value 'divOOT can be accessed and used in JavaScript processing of the link at linking time, and the same processing can be applied for all links in that <div> section. Another advantage of the <div> approach is that a div can be assigned a stylesheet dynamically in XHTML during loading of the page, so that different versions of the same page section can be displayed or suppressed as required. This facilitates conditional control of content display.

The clearest illustration of this advantage is the creation of multiple glossary entries for a single term to provide alternative displays depending on conditions existing in the narrative being traversed by the reader. Here is an example.

Time in a narrative unfolds the narrative for a reader. A term used in an earlier passage in the narrative may require a restricted definition for readers at that point, but a more-extensive definition for readers at a later point in the story. Consider Michelangelo as a character in Leonardo da Vinci's life. A new reader of an ELM that narrates the story might click on the name 'Michelangelo' when it is first mentioned, and be shown a Glossary entry that simply says that Michelangelo was the Italian Renaissance artist who painting the Sistine ceiling. But a reader who has completed the part of the story that describes the rivalry of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci might click on the name 'Michelangelo' and be shown a Glossary entry that Includes a frank description of the physical, economic, and social differences between the two men.

The above is a simple example illustrating temporal dependency in linking to glossary entries. Custom variables in the Web pages allow the ELM to make time comparisons and act accordingly. Each scene Web page carries a time attribute that would specify the time within the flow of the story. Each glossary Web page carries a pair of times that represent beginning and ending dates/times of the applicability of that glossary Web page. The same glossary term could therefore have one, two, three, or more entries depending on whether or not time dependencies exist for that term. There are no default rules, only the default set of forms and prompts for establishing them. Other such forms and prompts are easily defined and derived as needed by builders of instances of the KTT - those suggested above are basic, but by no means definitive. The only thing that could be considered default rules is the set of threads, each of which determines for a reader what will be presented next regardless of what the reader has encountered before. Finally, an author can create new rules in accordance with conventional methods of rule construction for a rule-based expert system. The KTT may supply one or more embodiments each of which may let an author fill out a simple form to produce a rule, based on drop-down menus of knowledge base fact and rule content.

Rule-based expert systems are well-known in artificial intelligence circles, and in programming computer games, where AI plays the part of the computer 'adversary' or 'ally' of the player.

The KTT's general use of rules is sketched here. Each rule resembles an "If...then.,," construction in a programming language. An author might want to say for a scene, say, Scene 24 of a work: "If you've read Scene 23 and you're a graduate student or above, I'll display Scene 24 for you. If you haven't read Scene 23 and you 're a graduate student, 111 display Scene 23 for you. If you've read Scene 19 and you're a high school graduate or college undergraduate, I'll show you Scene 27, If you haven't read Scene 19 and you're a high school graduate or college undergraduate, I'll show you Scene Al . Everybody else gets Scene 32," In the ongoing example, Scene 24 is a graduate-leve! discussion of da Vinci's drawing techniques with red crayon, Scene 23 is a similar discussion on da Vinci's experimentation with drawing media, Scene 19 is a general review of da Vinci's drawing style, Scene 27 is a genera! review of da Vinci's chalk drawings, Scene 32 is a multimedia presentation on da Vinci's art. and Scene Λl is a reminder page suggesting that the reader review the general development of da Vinci's drawing methods as it leads to Scene 19, The KTT may prompt the author for all these conditions and actions, subsequently translating them into sets of software program statements, compiling, interpreting, or otherwise adapting the statements for their execution in the browser of the presentation computer system, and storing the adapted statements for browser use when the reader attempts to read the ELM.

When the reader finishes reading a scene on the presentation computer system and selects a link to the next scene, the rules associated with the selected scene are processed by the browser. The browser then presents the scene that best matches the rule processing results. More than one set of rule criteria may be met in some cases, depending on how complex the author has made the rules, so the KTTs rule processing code used by the browser must prioritize and disambiguate the results of the rule processing.

Rule Pseudocode

In a rule-based expert-system embodiment, the ELM's rule code for addressing such dependencies may use a structure along the lines of the following illustrations. The following rules, written as software-independent pseudocode, are assumed to operate in a general inference environment, in which no contextual constraints such as current page and linked page ID are assumed at the time the rules are processed.

REPAIR THE FOLLOWING

RULE-0091 IF

Current-Page-ID = "LeoAndMike.html" AND Linked-Page-ID = "Glossary_A.htmI#Michelangelo" AND Current-Page-Section-Story-Time < Time-of-Rivalry THEN

LINK-TO("Glossary_A.html#MichelangeIo_Div001 ") ENDRULE

RULE-0092

IF

Current-Page-ID = "LeoAndMike.html" AND Linked-Page-ID = ^MGlossaτy__A.html#Michelangelo" AND Current-Page-Seclion-Story-Time > Time-of-Rivalry THEN

LINK-TO("Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo_Div002") ENDRULE

RULE-0093 IF

Current-Page-ID = "LeoAndMike.html" AND Linked-Page-ID = "Glossary _A. html#Michelangelo" AND Current-Page-Section-Story-Time NOT-AVAILABLE THEN LINK-TO("Glossary_A.html#MichelangeloJDiv000")

ENDRULE

The first rule, RULE-0091, fires when the time of the current point in the story for the reader is less than or equal to the time of the Fall. The current point in the story (Current-Page-Section- Story-Time) is established as any time between the start time for the currently-displayed section of the LeoAndMike.html page and the end time for the same section of the same page. The " Time-of-Rivalry'¹ time marks the point in story time before which the reader can only see a simple glossary entry for Michelangelo (^MGlossary___A.html#MichelangeloJDiv001"), and after which the reader may be allowed to see a more-complete glossary entry for Michelangelo ("Glossary___A.html#Michelangelo_Div002"). The author codes such time markers as Time-of- Rivalry manually; further enhancements provide an ELM chronology data structure that works in a manner analogous to a PERT chart or similar tool.

The second rule, RJULE-0092, fires when the time of the current point in the story for the reader is greater than the time of the Fall. The third rule, RULE-0093, fires when the time of the current point in the story for the reader is not available - in such cases, generic glossary entries may be provided by the author to reveal as much or as little of Michelangelo as wished.

The selection of Michelangelo JDivOOl, to continue, displays the entry for an innocent Michelangelo, and the entry may in turn contain links to other entries or other pages. Any JavaScript code processing those links may now use the presence of MichelangeloJDivOOl , as defined in the <div>...</div> surrounding that glossary entry, to maintain consideration of the reader's original context of a time before the Fall. Such awareness is not possible using only the anchor in the <a> link. Thus the temporal character of the reader's experience may be better preserved using the <div> approach.

Rules as Written in CLIPS

In the rule-based expert system CLIPS, the pseudocode becomes:

(defrule RULE-0091 (eq Current-Page-ID "LeoAndMike.html")

(eq Linked-Page-ID "Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo") (<= Current-Page-Section-Story-Time Time-of-Rivalry)

(link-to "Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo_DivOO] "))

(defrule RULE-0092

(eq Current-Page-ID "LeoAndMike.html") (eq Linked-Page-ID "Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo") (> Current-Page-Section-Story-Time Time-of-Rivalry) => (link-to ^MGlossary_A.html#Michelangelo__Div002^M))

(defrule RULE-0093

(eq Current-Page-ID "LeoAndMike.html") (eq Linked-Page-ID "Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo")

(isnul 1 C urrenl- Page- Section- Story- Time) =>

(link-to "Glossary_A.html#MichelangeloJ3iv000"))

For a CLIPS-type embodiment, the KTT may be constructed so as to compile the CLIPS code in the form above into a global program in a JavaScript or other client-side run-time software platform.

Rules in Compiled Code

The KTT may be constructed in a compiled JavaScript embodiment that may implement rules as JavaScript code fragments. Each page and each possible link selection for that page may have its own set of rules to be tested. The appropriate rule tests are executed when a reader makes a specific link selection on a specific page. Link selection causes the execution of an event-driven function (the onClick event, in JavaScript) containing the set of rule tests for the requested selection. Rules that do not apply to that specific page and link are not tested when the link is selected. Given the specific page and link selected, the rules are simpler in the compiled embodiment than in the expert-system embodiment, because the current page ID is known to be "GenesisOne.html", and the Linked-Page-ID is known to be "Glossary_A.html#MicheIangelo". The following is pseudo-JavaScript code, formatted to convey the KTT' s method of processing rules in the compiled embodiment:

//

// RULE-0091 if (CurrentPageSectionStoryTime < TimeOfRivalry) { HnkTo("Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo_Div001 ");

}

// ENDRULE // // RULE-0092 if (CurrentPageSectionStoryTime > TimeOfRivalry) { linkTo("Glossary_A.html#Michelangelo_Div002^M);

}

// ENDRULE //

// RULE-0093 if (CurrentPageSectionStoryTime = null) { linkTo("Glossary_^A.html#Michelangelo_DivOOO");

} // ENDRULE

//

The end result is the same here as in the previous pseudocode illustration. The primary difference between the two embodiments lies in the greater generality afforded by the rule-based expert-system embodiment, at the cost of added complexity and slower operation. The advantage of the expert-system embodiment lies in its ability to apply global rules regardless of the current page or link being accessed, so that a generic rule may be applied for many pages and links. The advantage of the compiled-code embodiment lies in its compactness, clarity, and speed.

The KTFs Links Between Units

A conventional hypertext link in the HTML sense, implemented using the <a> tag, contains both a link to a presentation Unit, or page, to be loaded and a displayed text that identifies 1) the link itself, and 2) the function or purpose of the link. An example might be: <a href="NewPage.html">Go To New Page</a>

where the reader sees the text "Go To New Page", and selecting the text causes the browser to load the page named "NewPage.html". The KTT eliminates the use of 1) from most link processing altogether, instead treating each link as a variable identified functionally by its displayed text.

Selecting the link invokes one or more software functions which evaluate the conditions applicable at the point of the selection (current page or Unit, identity of reader, link selected) and execute a linking operation to a new page determined by the evaluation. Therefore, a hypertext link stored conventionally at the location selected by the reader may or may not be the same as the link actually applied.

The KTT may accomplish its linking process in an HTML/JavaScript setting by using author rule specifications to construct code to be executed when the reader selects a link. Following is an example of the KTT' s hypertext reference (href) code in HTML, showing the displayed text for the link ("To Next"), the function ("inkSF") called when the reader selects the link display, a function ("chkThr") called to display in the window status bar the explanation of the displayed link for the reader, and the default link value ("Andrew-49-Gl-01.htm") to be used if InkSF does not return a usable link for any reason:

<a href=" Andrew-49-01 -01.htm" onClick="this.href=lnkSF(this.href, this. text); return true;" onMouseOver=" window. status=chkThr('Next scene in current thread¹, this. text); return true;"> To Next

</a>

The above implementation of the KTT' s linking process is presented here as an example of such implementations. The use of other client-side and client-server languages and logic may be employed to yield the KTT 's effects in different embodiments. The Reader Context of the KTT

The KTT may produce both context-free and context-dependent embodiments of its ELM, or either the context-free ELM or the context-dependent ELM independently. In the context-free embodiment, the KTT need not retain any information concerning the reader and the reader's previous accesses to the ELM. A reader of a context-free ELM may access freely any page or other unit of the ELM without restriction. In the context-free embodiment, the only constraints to access are the links among the ELM's pages, and the reader is free to access any page in any order.

In the KTl^Λ's context-dependent embodiment, two types of information may be retained and used during a reader's access to the ELM. The first is the set of characteristics that apply for a particular reader. A registration or data-gathering process of the KTT collects information concerning the reader, including an identifying name, an access authentication phrase or password, a list of permissions or other constraints on scope of access, and a set of reader qualifications and abilities. This set of characteristics establishes criteria to be applied by the

The KTT' s second type of contextual information comprises the set of Units a reader has already viewed, together with a number of visits to each Unit. As a reader traverses a Thread, each Unit the reader views in the Thread is identified and its identifier stored in a list for the reader, or its count of visits incremented. When the KTT' s rule processing is applied at the time the reader selects a link, the rules applicable to the current page and the reader's link selection may apply the reader's list of Units already viewed and the number of viewings in order to choose an appropriate response to the reader's selection. The KTT' s context-dependent embodiment may operate with one or both types of information.

Use of the KTT as a Programmed-Learning Too! An author may organize the KTT' s Units and links in such a way as to create an ELM that functions as a programmed-learning entity. The displayed information for any link may be provided by the author as an answer to a question in the text of a Unit, Several such links may be placed together to offer the reader a menu-style choice as in a multiple-choice examination or questionnaire. When the reader selects a link displaying the reader's preferred response to the question, the resulting response of the ELM depends on the author's desired treatment of that response. The author may use a context-dependent embodiment of the KTT using rules that check a reader's previously-viewed Units and the reader's characteristics. In such an embodiment, the author may then direct different readers to different Units as desired, thereby customizing the learning process to the needs and responses of each reader.

Operation of the KTT

The KTT' s overall operation is summarized in Fig. 9. The KTT uses as its primary input an author's source file(s) 302 in electronic form, breaking down and storing the input texts as

Units using a text breakdown and text unit storage process 102, constructing and storing Threads defined by the author using a thread construction and storage process 104, grouping Units into Components and storing the resulting definitions using a unit grouping and component storage process 106, constructing and storing presentation rules for the Units using a presentation rule construction and storage process 108, linking all reference usages in each Unit using a reference usage linking process 110, converting all Units to hypertext pages using a conversion to hypertext pages process 112, packaging the pages using an ELM packaging processl 14 into an ELM 422, and distributing the ELM 422 using an ELM distribution process 116.

The following steps reflect the sequence of steps just described, with overlaps and repetitions shown as needed by the KTT's design.

Breaking a Text into Stored Units of Presentation and Reference (Steps 1.-2.) The KTT' s first step takes place when an author or publisher organizes a set of texts and other material for electronic storage and organization in the KTT' s database. With reference to Figs. 10 and 11, the author separates, using an author unit text file separation process 118, each Unit source file 304 into a set of one or more base Unit text files 306. The author then specifies attributes of the resulting Units using an author unit attribute specification process 120, storing the attributes in the Unit Processing Tables 202, the Marker Tables 210, and the Theme Table 214. The author also stores using a unit storage process 122 the Unit text itself in files 308 or in the database, and a set of Unit definitions, one per Unit, in the Unit Table 204. The author also initiates the process of preparing access rules for Unit presentation using an author rule specification process 124, storing said rules in the Unit Rules table 212.

The KTT distinguishes between Units of presentation and Units of reference. The KTT' s Units of presentation comprise the set of Units to be displayed to a reader in one or more defined sequences. The KTT' s Units of reference comprise the set of Units to be used in support of the Units of presentation as reference material, such as sidebar articles, notes, glossaries, dictionaries, illustrations, expositions, animations, tabular data, indices, tables of contents, cinematic clips, audio files, and other supporting materials.

Units of reference require additional processing shown in Fig. 11, The preparation of a Unit of reference using an author reference unit presentation process 126 as a text file 310 and the storage of Unit attributes in the Unit Processing Table 202 is done in the same way as for Units of presentation using the reference source materials 406. In addition, a Unit of reference may contain list or tabular structure, as in a table, a glossary or dictionary, and for such references the author provides reference tabulation definitions 408 and lists of terms and their definitions to be stored in Tabulation Definitions Tables 226, Term Table 228, Reference Unit Table 204b, and Term Usage Table 230 using a reference unit database load process 128. The KTT compiles the tabulation definitions, using a tabular reference unit compilation process 130, into tabular reference unit text files 312, for later inclusion in other Units if needed.

The result of this step is the breaking of a text and related materials into Units, the derivation of reference Unit structure, and the derivation of unit attribute and access information for use in later processing. Preparing and Storing Sequences of Presentation (Steps 3.-4.)

The KTT then may establish an initial set of sequences, called Threads, in which Units of presentation are to be presented to readers. With reference to Fig. 12 the author initially determines separately a set of themes and a set of markers to be used by the KTT to collect and sequence Units into Threads. A theme is usually a characteristic of multiple Units, together with one or more sequencing criteria, that develops a comprehensible and engaging body of information in a reader's mind. For a piece of fiction, for example, a theme might comprise a point-of~view character's Units and a time sequence in which those Units are to be read. A marker is a term, phrase, or other element of interest that allows collection of Units into a set, regardless of their sequence. For example, a marker might be any of a set of names for a geographical area, and the KTT would later use the marker to grant a reader easy access to all references to that area without traversing irrelevant information. In steps not shown, the KTT may prompt the author for thematic and keyword information of importance in the intended ELM, storing themes in the Theme Table 214 and markers in the Marker Tables 210. As shown in Fig. 12, using these tables along with Unit Table 204 and Component Tables 216, the KTT prompts the author for unit thread attributes 410 having one or more sequences of presentation of subsets of the Units of presentation, using a conventional graphical user interface, so that the author specifies, using an author unit thread specification process 132, and constructs, using an author thread construction process 134, a set of Thread definitions 412, which the KTT loads, using a thread database load process 136, into the Thread tables 232a, 232b, and 232c. The KTT also examines the Unit Table 204, Theme Table 214, and Marker Tables 210 information supplied by the author, and generates sequences (called Traces) based on the contents of these three sets of tables. The KTT stores the generated sequences in its Threads tables 232a, 232b, and 232c.

In a step not shown, the KTT may prompt the author for reader-related criteria that associate each specific reader level and expectation with sets of Threads suitable for that specific level and focus of readership. The resulting reader-related criteria are stored in the KKT' s Unit Rules table (Fig. 10, 212) as facts for use in rule processing.

Grouping the Units of Presentation and Reference into Stored Components of Presentation (Steps 5.-6.)

Next the KTT may prompt the author to define sets of Units of presentation and reference, in order to treat such sets as collective entities. See Fig. 13. Using the Presentation Unit Table 204a for all Units of presentation, the author prepares, using an author component preparation process 138, Component definitions 414. Each such Component contains one or more Units, one or more smaller Components, or a mixture of Units and smaller Components. The author may identify components according to the needs of the final ELM. For example, an ELM's largest components might be identified as parts, with each part consisting of one or more components identified as chapters, with each chapter consisting of one or more components identified as sections, each of which contains one or more units. The KTT stores, using a component database load process 140, the author's Component definitions and associations in its Component tables 216a, 216b, 216c.

At this stage the author may construct additional Threads, as in the previous step, comprised of Components and Units in combination. A given ELM might then have multiple orders of presentation defined for it at a part, chapter, section, unit, or mixed level for different readers or classes of readers.

Preparing and Storing Rules of Presentation (Steps 7.-8.)

In its next step, the KTT may prompt the author to set up rules defining the reader's use of Units and Threads in the finished ELM. See Fig. 14. The KTT provides author access via its graphical user interface to the Unit Table 204, the Component Tables 216a, b, and c, the Unit Processing Tables 202. the Theme Table 214, the Marker Tables 210, and the reader characteristics 416 prepared earlier by the author. The KTT prompts the author to add, edit, or otherwise change the basic set of rules for each presentation Unit to specify, using an author rule specification process 142, a final set of rules of presentation. The KTT stores in process 142 the resulting rules of presentation constructed in both stages in its Unit Rules Table 212.

Locating and Linking All Usages of Each Unit of Reference (Steps 9.-10.)

In its next step the KTT may collect all the terms, phrases, symbols, and other usages explained in its reference Units, searches out all occurrences of each such usage in every presentation Unit and reference Unit, and inserts a link to the reference Unit explaining the usage in every location in every Unit where the usage occurs. See Fig. 15. The KTT uses as input the stored Unit text file 308, the Unit Table 204b (for reference Units), the Tabulation Definition Tables 226, and the Term Usage Table 230 to insert links in the text file using a unit file reference link insertion process 144 to produce a linked Unit text file 316. The KTT constructs its links to reference Units so that at the time a reader selects a link, the KTT tests any rules in its rule base that are applicable to links into a reference Unit, and takes actions specified in any satisfied rule.

The KTT' s links to reference Units may direct the reader to the reference Unit as a whole, to some section or portion of the reference Unit, or to a single Term in the reference Unit. Any reference Unit may contain multiple hypertext link targets (anchors). The KTT applies structural information for such a reference Unit from its Tabulations tables to determine how and where to place its link targets.

Converting Units to Electronic Document Pages (Step 1 1.)

The KTT then may compile all of its linked Units into hypertext form such as HTML,

XHTML, or other Web page markup format. The first stage of the compilation process, creating the links for the Threads, is shown in Fig. 16. Using a unit link generation process 146 links are generated from the Thread Tables 232a, b, and c connecting each Unit in one or more Threads, collects, using a unit file parameters collection process 148, compilation parameters 418 from its link generation process 146, Unit Table 204, Marker Tables 210, Theme Table 214, and Tabulation Definition Table 226, and constructs, using a unit processing record process 150, entries in the Unit Processing Tables 202 for each Unit.

With reference to FlG. 17, in its compiled-rule embodiment, the KTT then may compile, using a unit rule compilation process 152, all Unit rules for each Unit from the Unit rules table 212, producing compiled Unit rules 420 as an executable script or code element. (This step is omitted in the ELM expert-system rule-based embodiment, since the inference engine for such a system is packaged and distributed with the ELM.) Using the entries in Unit Processing Tables 202, the linked Unit text files 314a, 314b, 314c, and the compiled Unit rules 420, the KTT compiles, using an ELM compilation process 154, the entire ELM 422. See Fig. 18. In the compilation process as outlined in the Unit Processing Table 202, the KTT combines, using a generate unit hypertext page process 156, header 322, body 316, footer 324, and Compiled Unit Rules 420 for each unit into a valid conventional Web page document or other form of electronic document page 424. The KTT may use conventional stylesheets and formatting processes to bring the appearance of the output Web page document as close as possible to the appearance of a simple, conventional, printed page, thereby supporting improved reader immersion in the material being presented through the reduction of visible distractions.

The KTT may store the rules derived for each presentation Unit as software references or code inserted into the Web page document.

In a compilation embodiment of the KTT, this step may be performed during a compilation process before the packaging of the final ELM, allowing an author or publisher to simplify the structure and operation of the product ELM,

In a dynamic embodiment of the KTT, this step may instead be accomplished by passing the header, body, and rule information along in the delivered ELM along with Web page generation code in JavaScript or other such language to perform the page assembly at the time the reader links to each page. In the dynamic embodiment, the KTT may reduce storage space for its pages at the expense of more-complex execution of programs at the reader's system. The dynamic embodiment may be implemented using DHTML, PHP, and other conventional software means.

In an instance of the client-only embodiment, during the sixth step, the KTT may collect all Units, stylesheets, executable page-based code such as JavaScript, text documents, and other supporting materials such as images, audio clips, and similar elements into a single set of folders supporting the KTT's links among its elements. The output of the sixth step for the client-only embodiment is the standalone ELM to be stored in its entirety and used on the reader's system.

In an instance of the client-server embodiment, during the sixth step, the KTT may collect all Units, stylesheets, executable page-based code such as JavaScript, text documents, and other supporting materials such as images, audio clips, and similar elements into a set of folders to be stored in the reader's client system for use, and a set of folders to be stored in one or more server systems for retrieval during reading to the reader's client system.

Packaging the ELM (Step 12.)

In its packaging step the KTT may combine the ELM with additional elements that provide installation, formatting, and presentation information specific to a particular software and hardware platform used by a reader. Such information accommodates the operation of the ELM on different devices and software platforms used by different readers. Each device type and its software components require different treatment due to memory limitations, software availability and compatibility, display and presentation characteristics, and user input differences.

For example, an ELM reader may use a desktop PC, a laptop computer, a handheld computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a handheld game computer such as a Sony PSP, or a wireless telephone with a working Web page browser program. One device may allow multiple windows, another may not. The display width on a wireless telephone is a few tens of characters in a fixed format, while the display width on a desktop computer may easily exceed a hundred characters. A wireless telephone display offers limited graphics capability, while a desktop may be designed to handle the most complex and sophisticated dynamic graphics. The KTT is designed to accommodate such differences in the ELMs it produces.

ELM Transfer (Step 13.)

In its transfer step the KTT uses conventional file and folder transfer processing methods to make the ELM available to readers. Said processing methods include flash memory plug-in and use, portable storage media attachment and use, file transfer over physical connections, and wireless file transfer,

Thread Presentation to the Reader - Selection (Step 14.)

The KTT produces as a part of its ELM one or more menu pages containing lists of threads available for reader selection. Each thread listed is displayed to the reader with a description of its content and any potential reader prerequisites. If a reader has registered qualifications with the ELM, then the ELM's menu pages show only those threads for which the reader is qualified.

Both Threads, constructed by the author directly, and Traces, constructed by the KTT using author parameters, are presented to the reader as selectable threads wherever reader prerequisites allow.

Page Presentation to the Reader (Step 15.)

Once the reader has selected a thread for presentation, the KTT displays the first page in the selected thread. See Fig. 19 for a representative embodiment of page format. Many similar page formats in a wide range of embodiments are possible in the KTT. The reader's screen 5 in this representative embodiment shows a presentation page SOO, flanked by a reference article page 820 and a glossary page 840. Only the presentation page 800 is fully visible. In a small- screen embodiment, one or both of the flanking pages might not be shown. In Fig. 20, the reference article page 820 is visible, as when a reader decides to peruse it during the reading of the presentation page. In all cases, the flanking pages 820, 840 arc presented to the reader concurrently with the presentation page 800, either in overlapped form as shown, in nonoverlapped form showing the complete content of all pages, or in stacked form that makes non-visible pages in the stack visible with a single selection action such as a mouse or key click.

In a multiple-presentation embodiment not shown, two or more presentation pages 800 may be displayed in adjacent windows or frames to provide for comparison of texts or other content. Flanking pages 820, 840 may be presented the same way in the multiple-presentation embodiment as in other embodiments. The text of the presentation page is formatted using stylesheets and other conventional methods to resemble printed page form as much as possible. See Figs. 21 and 22. Fig. 21 shows the convention method of showing textual links 605, 607 to the reader, openly and clearly. The KTT's method suppresses all visible trace of the textual links except the shift in mouse icon appearance 610, 611 during mouseover, so the reader can read without visual distraction, and with maximum familiarity with the printed form.

The KTT presents "Next" and "Previous" labeled links to the reader to choose from after reading the displayed page. The KTT optionally presents added links labeled with their purposes as specified by the author. The reader may select "Next", "Previous", or any of the other links shown. In a textbook ELM context, another link might be titled "Detail", where a reader can find an expanded series of pages elaborating the content of the current page. Still another link might be titled "Background", where a reader can find historical or contextual information concerning the content of the currently-displayed page, A further link might be labeled "for Nonspecialists", where the reader can find simplified or summary information concerning the current page content, ϊn a literary ELM context such as that of a novel, another link might be titled with the name of a secondary character for the current page, allowing a reader to follow a thread

The KTT allows the reader to exploit conventional browser controls (forward, back, reload, stop) to navigate to and from the pages displayed. In the context-dependent embodiments, information identifying each page or other Component of the ELM that may be presented to a reader is identified and stored, at the time the page is presented. When the reader selects a subsequent page to be displayed, the rules bound to the subsequent page may be processed to determine whether the input conditions (i.e., the reader and the pages already presented) meet the prerequisites for the selected page. A subsequent page appropriate for the rules satisfied by the input conditions is linked and presented.

Conclusions

In contrast to prior art tools for an author or originator to pass knowledge to a reader, one or more embodiments of the KTT combine software and digital data elements derived from documents into structures and programs which reinforce validity and relevance of the material presented, maintain the reader's immersion in the material, focus and guide the reader through orderly sequencings of the material, stimulate the reader with its presentations, support the reader's rapid acquisition of knowledge details, offer the reader a profusion of sequences of presentation of the material, and facilitate and simplify the work of authors and editors in preparing material for readers. The KTT⁷S apparatus and method eliminate the overload and distraction a reader experiences when using conventional Web pages in a multiple-document or Internet-wide linkage, while enriching the reader's rate and depth of intake of knowledge well beyond what is possible with printed works. The KTT also provides authors with methods and means for converting, constructing, and maintaining electronic works easily and completely. The KTT helps open the way to meeting deeply-felt educational needs worldwide. Once an author develops educational content, it can be disseminated with the speed of the Internet, installed on a wide range of presentation devices most convenient and best-suited for diverse groups of readers and their environments, and assimilated by learners of widely-divergent backgrounds, with the highest rates of absorption and degree of accuracy. An educator can create an entire educational program, together with its means of presentation, to fit in the palm of one hand.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Component - a Unit, a collection of Units, or a collection of other Components. A chapter can be considered a Component. A section of a chapter is also a Component.

ELM - an electronic literary macrame, comprising a complete output of the KTT. An ELM contains Presentation Units, Reference Units, Threads, and Presentation Rules. Marker - an identifiable element in a Unit, usable in creating Traces of Units for presentation purposes. An example of a Marker might be the name of a city. A Trace for that name would present to a reader all the Units containing references to the city name.

Presentation Rule - a Rule stored in a Presentation Unit. Presentation Unit - the basic Unit of the ELM's Threads, presented to a reader in an order determined by the Thread and the Presentation Rules.

Reference Unit - a Unit used primarily to provide a reader with expository information concerning some Term, Unit, or aspect of an ELM.

Rule - a logical expression stored in a Unit and tested to determine whether or not the Unit may be presented to a reader based on the results of the expression's tests. A Rule also determines which Unit is to be presented to the reader based on the expression's test results.

Tabulation - a definition of structure and content for some aspect or segment of a Unit. A Term definition, for example, may appear in a glossary list within a Reference Unit. A Tabulation may be used to construct a matrix of values, terms, or definitions as needed, to be inserted in a Unit.

Term - a word, phrase, or other unit of expression for which an author requires a Reference Unit explanation, definition, or exposition.

Thread - a series of Units to be presented to a reader in a sequence determined by an author or a process defined by the author. The author may explicitly sequence a set of Units, or the author may incorporate in the Units a timeline or other ordering to be used in the sequencing. Most Threads are used to sequence Presentation Units.

Trace - a Thread of Units constructed based solely on criteria furnished by an author, without detailed author participation in the construction process.

Unit - a single lesson, passage, or scene established by an author to be presented to a reader. A Unit is short enough to be presented in no more than a brief interval of viewing. listening, or otherwise making directly available, so that the reader's attention is unlikely to be diverted during the perusal of the Unit.

Claims

Claims

What is claimed:

L A knowledge transfer tool comprising: a source computing system for organizing knowledge for an author; one or more presentation computing systems for presenting the author's organized knowledge to readers; and one or more distribution connections between the source computing system and each presentation computing system for transferring organized knowledge from the source computing system to each presentation computing system.

2. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 1 , wherein the source computing system comprises: one or more processing subsystems; one or more memory and storage subsystems connected to each processing subsystem; one or more communications subsystems connected to each processing subsystem; one or more author interface subsystems connected to each processing subsystem; one or more source software components residing in each processing subsystem; and one or more interconnections among the processing subsystems.

3. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 2, wherein the source software components comprise: an author interface software component of the source computing system; a document linking software component of the source computing system; a document threading software component of the source computing system; a database management subsystem of the source computing system; a knowledge database component of the source computing system, supported by the database management subsystem; a knowledge acquisition and rule construction software component of the source computing system, connected to the knowledge database component; a knowledge database interface software component of the source computing system, connected to the knowledge database component; a presentation database component of the source computing system, supported by the database management subsystem; a presentation database interface software component of the source computing system, connected to the presentation database component; and an electronic document publishing software component of the source computing system, connected to the knowledge database component and the presentation database component.

4. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 3, wherein the knowledge database comprises: one or more source -language processing rules stored and maintained in the knowledge database and specifying conditions determining actions to be taken in the presentation process; one or more information component definitions stored and maintained in the knowledge database and containing sets of units and components for each component; one or more thread definitions stored and maintained in the knowledge database and containing sequences of units and components for each thread; and

database and containing properties of information units.

5. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 3, wherein the presentation database, comprises: one or more information units stored and maintained in the presentation database and containing information for use by a reader; one or more compiled processing rules stored and maintained in the presentation database and specifying conditions determining actions to be taken in the presentation process; and one or more formatting components stored and maintained in the presentation database and containing information for the formatting of material presented to a reader.

6. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 1 , wherein the presentation computing system comprises: one or more processing subsystems; one or more memory and storage subsystems connected to each processing subsystem; one or more communications subsystems connected to each processing subsystem; one or more reader interface subsystems connected to each processing subsystem; one or more presentation software components residing in each processing subsystem; and one or more interconnections among the processing subsystems.

7. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 6, wherein the presentation software components of comprise: an installation software component of the presentation computing system; a rule processing software component of the presentation computing system; a presentation software component of the presentation computing system, such as a Web browser; a presentation data component of the presentation computing system, further comprising textual and other materials for presentation to readers; and one or more formatting components containing information for the formatting of material presented to a reader.

8. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 3, wherein the author interface software component comprises: a graphical author interface software component of the source computing system; a command-line author interface software component of the source computing system;

9. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 3, wherein the knowledge database component comprises: one or more rule storage tables; one or more information unit storage tables; one or more information component storage tables; one or more ordered thread storage tables; one or more information unit structure definition storage tables; one or more information unit processing definition storage tables;

10. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 3, wherein the knowledge database interface software component comprises:; a knowledge database information unit interface software component of the source computing system; a knowledge database rule definition interface software component of the source computing system; a knowledge database information component interface software component of the source computing system; and a knowledge database thread definition interface software component of the source computing system.

1 1. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 10, wherein the knowledge database information unit interface software component comprises: a knowledge database information unit structure definition interface software component of the source computing system; and a knowledge database information unit processing definition interface software component of the source computing system.

12. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 4, wherein one or more information unit definitions stored and maintained in the knowledge database comprise: one or more reference information units maintained in the knowledge database and containing information for reference by a reader: and one or more presentation information units stored in the knowledge database and containing information for ordered presentation to a reader.

13. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 12, wherein each reference information unit further comprising a set of short definitions.

14. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 12, wherein each reference information unit further comprising an expository article.

15. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 12, wherein each presentation information unit further comprising a lesson.

16. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 12, wherein each presentation information unit further comprising a scene.

17. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 4, wherein one or more source-language processing rules stored and maintained in the knowledge database comprise: one or more presentation-sequencing rules stored in the knowledge database and specifying conditions determining sequencing actions to be taken in the presentation process; one or more presentation-triggering rules stored and maintained in the knowledge database and specifying conditions determining triggering actions to be taken in the presentation process; and one or more presentation-formatting rules stored and maintained in the knowledge database and specifying conditions determining the format of each page presented to a reader.

18. The knowledge transfer tool of claim 4, wherein one or more information unit definitions stored and maintained in the knowledge database comprise: one or more information unit structure definitions stored and maintained in the knowledge database and containing structural properties of information units; and one or more information unit processing definitions stored and maintained in the knowledge database and containing processing methods to be applied in the presentation process.

19. The knowledge transfer tool of Claim 1 , further comprising: a loading means component of the source computing system for all reference information units, presentation information units, and rules; and a database analysis program component of the source computing system for producing reports and displays of knowledge database content and structure.

20. The knowledge transfer tool of Claim 1 , wherein the source computing system comprises: a networked computing system comprising at least one computing system client connected to at least one computer system server; an integrated computing system comprising at least one client-server computing system; and at least one presentation computing system.

21 . The knowledge transfer tool of Claim 1, wherein each of the one or more presentation computing system comprises: a networked computing system comprising at least one computing system client connected to at least one computer system server; and an integrated computing system comprising at least one client-server computing system.

22. A method for transferring knowledge electronically, comprising the steps of: loading and restructuring an author's source documents into units of presentation and reference; storing the units of presentation and the units of reference in the knowledge database on a source computing system; preparing one or more sequences of presentation of the units and components of presentation; storing the sequences of presentation in the knowledge database on the source computing system; grouping the units of presentation and reference into components of presentation; storing the definitions of the components of presentation in the knowledge database on the source computing system; preparing one or more sets of rules of presentation of the units and components of presentation; storing the sets of rules of presentation in the knowledge database on the source computing system; locating in the units of presentation and the units of reference all usages of each unit of reference; linking all usages of each unit of reference found in the units of presentation and the units of reference to the unit of reference used; preparing electronic document pages on the source computing system from the units and components of presentation, the units of reference, and the sets of rules of presentation; packaging the electronic document pages on the source computing system for presentation to a reader; transferring the electronic document pages from the source computing system to one or more presentation computing systems of a reader; presenting the reader with the choice of one or more of the sequences of presentation on the one or more presentation computing systems; and using the reader's choice of a sequence of presentation and one or more of the sets of rules of presentation to display a sequence of units of presentation to the reader on the one or more presentation computing systems.

23. The method of claim 22 in which the step of preparing one or more sequences of presentation of the units and components of presentation further comprises the steps of: prompting the author for one or more sequences of presentation of subsets of the units of presentation, using a conventional graphical user interface; storing the author's defined sequences in its threads database tables: prompting the author for thematic and marker (keyword) information of importance in the final output document; storing the thematic and keyword information selected or entered by the author; using the unit-level information supplied by the author to generate sequences based on themes or markers (keywords) appearing in the presentation units storing the generated sequences in the threads database tables; prompting the author for reader-related criteria that associate each specific reader level and expectation with sets of threads suitable for that specific level and focus of readership; and storing the resulting reader-related criteria in the rule base as facts for use in rule processing.

24. The method of claim 22 in which the step of preparing one or more sets of rules of presentation of the units and components of presentation further comprises the steps of: using the threads database tables and the rule base to construct for each presentation unit a basic set of rules that grant access to said unit based on sets of readers and sets of previously- read units that satisfy said set of rules; and prompting the author to add, edit, or otherwise change the basic set of rules for each presentation unit.

25. The method of claim 22 in which the step of locating in the units of presentation and the units of reference all usages in each unit of reference further comprises the steps of: collecting all the terms, phrases, symbols, and other usages explained in the reference units; reading all structural information concerning each reference unit to determine the location of each usage definition in said reference unit; and searching out all occurrences of each such usage in every presentation unit and reference unit.

26. The method of claim 22 in which the step of linking all usages of each unit of reference found in the units of presentation and the units of reference to the unit of reference used further comprises the steps of: constructing each link to the reference unit location explaining the usage so as to test any rules in the rule base that are applicable to links into a reference Unit and take actions specified in any satisfied rule; and inserting the constructed link into every location in every unit where the usage occurs.

27. The method of claim 22 in which the step of using the reader's choice of a sequence of presentation and one or more of the sets of rules of presentation to display a sequence of units of presentation to the reader on the one or more presentation computing systems further comprises the steps of: identifying each page presented to a reader at the time the page is presented; storing the identity of said page in a browser memory; accepting a reader selection of a subsequent page to be displayed; processing the rules associated with the selected page to determine whether the rule conditions meet the prerequisites for the selected page; and presenting to the reader a subsequent page appropriate for the rules satisfied by the rule conditions,

28. An apparatus for displaying concurrently a text and two or more supplemental appendices where access to the supplemental appendices does not interfere with the reader's place in the text, comprising: means for structuring narrative information in a sequence of electronic narrative texts; means for structuring two or more appendices in two or more supplemental electronic appendices visible concurrently with the electronic narrative texts; and means for concurrently presenting the sequence of electronic narrative texts and the supplementary electronic appendices to a reader.

29. A method of displaying concurrently a text and two or more supplemental appendices where access to the supplemental appendices does not interfere with the reader's place in the text, comprising the steps of: structuring narrative information in a sequence of electronic narrative texts; structuring two or more appendices in two or more supplemental electronic appendices visible concurrently with the electronic narrative texts; and concurrently presenting the sequence of electronic narrative texts and the supplementary electronic appendices to a reader.

30. An apparatus for displaying concurrently two or more texts and two or more supplemental appendices where access to the supplemental appendices does not interfere with the reader's places in the two or more texts, comprising: means for structuring narrative information in two or more sequences of electronic narrative texts; means for structuring two or more appendices in two or more supplemental electronic appendices visible concurrently with the electronic narrative texts; and means for concurrently presenting two or more sequences of electronic narrative texts and the supplementary electronic appendices to a reader.

31. A method of displaying concurrently two or more texts and two or more supplemental appendices where access to the supplemental appendices does not interfere with the reader's places in the two or more texts, comprising the steps of: structuring narrative information in two or more sequences of electronic narrative texts; structuring two or more appendices in two or more supplemental electronic appendices visible concurrently with the electronic narrative texts; and concurrently presenting two or more sequences of electronic narrative texts and the supplementary electronic appendices to a reader.