FORM – 2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
(39 of 1970)
&
THE PATENTS RULES, 2003
PROVISIONAL
Specification
(See section 10 and rule 13)
FOCUSED INFORMATION DEVELOPMENT
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LTD.,
an Indian Company
of Bombay House, 24, Sir Homi Mody Street, Mumbai 400 001,
Maharashtra, India
THE FOLLOWING SPECIFICATION DESCRIBES THE INVENTION.

This invention relates to focused information development.
In particular, this invention relates to organization and development of information, typically technical documents.
Technical documentation is integral to the design, development, deployment, maintenance and usage of various products, solutions and services. Such documentation could take various forms such as simple technical notes through design documents right upto comprehensive business documents, project documentation, contracts and the like. By virtue of these forms, technical documentation finds application across all categories of business and industry.
The level of skill required to ensure correct focus and content in such documentation is very high. Often, training programmes are conducted to teach the standards required for drafting and preparing such documentation. Elaborate effort, through reviews and rework, is invested to correctively provide drafts of technical documentation to a required standard.
There are a number of problems, which may be encountered while a technical document is drafted. One of the many problems is demonstrated herein under with a simple example. Let us consider a simple writing context. If people are asked to write their names in a soft-copy document, there are bound to be at least four basic variations (First Name-Last Name, First Name-Middle Name-Last Name, First Name-Middle Initial-Last Name, Two Initials-Last Name and the like). Further, various fonts can be used
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while writing such information, which would lead to more variations. In the instance of "educational qualifications", the variations would be much more than in the instance of a "name". If such simple information instances could result in so many variations, one can imagine the scenario when it comes to a large number of people writing complex information that requires more thought and expression than what is necessary to write simple information such as "name" and "educational qualification".
Conventionally, area-specific procedural training had to be provided to authors in accordance with the standards and guidelines for drafting of technical documentation.
Further, after technical documents were complete, they had to be manually reviewed and examined for variations, and had to be corrected so that the documentation could be made compliant to the standard requirements. Evidently, the above approach is highly skill dependent and results in high cost of quality and intellectual resource capitalization in technical documentation. Hence, there is a need for a different approach to develop means and devices to proactively minimize defects in the creation of focused content, and thereby create technical documents which are standardized and highly accurate, consume less time and less effort and involve less cost in their making, presentation, storage, reuse and the like.
This invention seeks to overcome the limitations of the prior art.
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An object of this invention is to provide a simple and efficient tool and method for design and development of focused content for technical documentation.
Another object of this invention is to provide a tool which utilizes templates means for design and development of technical documentation.
In accordance with this invention, there is provided a tool for design and development of technical documentation, said tool comprising:
(i) an InfoMoulding component; and
(ii) a Workbench component;
said InfoMoulding component and said Workbench component functioning in synergy with each other and providing an authoring environment for information development.
The InfoMoulding component comprises:
(a) an InfoType component, which specifies the name of a specific unit of information;
(b) an InfoDef component, which provides a concise and correct explanation of each InfoType component;
(c) an Infolnstance component, which provides an applied form to the explanation provided by the InfoDef component; and
(d) an InfoQuality Index component, which provides a composite measure that characterizes the content and form of information.
The Workbench component comprises:
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(a) a template designing means adapted to develop templates with applicable embedded standards, formatting and content rules, guidelines, checklists, defect controlling rules, wizards, tutorials and animations required for information development;
(b) a document assembling means adapted to assemble each of said units of information, said document assembling means working in unison with said template designing means to assemble each of said units of information;
(c)a document formatting means adapted to format each of said assembled units of information, said document formatting means working in unison with said template designing means, said formatting means having pre-stored formatting instances;
(d)a selecting means adapted to select said pre-stored formatting instances, said selecting means adapted to work in unison with said document formatting means in a manner such that said each of said assembled units of information are formatted in accordance with the formatting instance selected by the selecting means;
(e) a defect sentinel means adapted to check for defects or errors in said technical documents, said defect sentinel means working in unison with said template designing means;
(f) an information reviewing means adapted to review and recheck said technical documents, said information reviewing means further adapted to assign and compute an Information Quality Index (IQI); and
(g)a controller means adapted to define and manage a controlled authoring environment, said controller means working in unison with each of said template designing means, document assembling means,
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document formatting means, selecting means, defect sentinel means and information reviewing means.
The InfoType, InfoDef and Infolnstance components together make up the Focus Definition of information. In other words, such Focus Definition sets out in highly precise terms, the content of specific information. Thus it serves as a 'mould' for developing information in conformity with this mould, and thereby, this component being called as InfoMoulding.
The invention addresses the limitations of the prior art by providing a framework for setting rich standards, which are context-sensitively served to writers as and when they write specific types of information. Thereby, regardless of whether a writer has read conventionally published standards at full length, undergone training, and has the ability for total recall, the invention ensures that the writer is thoroughly sensitised about the focus of what needs to be written at the time of writing.
In this context-sensitized manner of the serving of standards, the invention also helps writers acquire good information development skills, which leads to high quality information/documentation with less defects, minimal effort and less cost.
In accordance with another aspect of this invention, there is provided a method for design and development of information, typically technical documents. The method comprises a number of steps, which are herein after explained with reference to an example. Say, for example, that the technical document to be drafted is a patent specification. The method provides a
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Workbench component, said Workbench component having a template designing means. In the example such as a patent specification, a designing means forms a template, which contains fields that define various parts of the patent specification such as 'Field of invention', 'Background of the invention', 'Prior Art', 'Summary of the invention', 'Brief description of the accompanying drawings', 'Detailed description of the accompanying drawings', 'Examples', 'Claims' and 'Abstract'.
The Workbench component helps deploy the InfoMoulding method through the templates. The Workbench component requests the author to enter the raw data. The Workbench component then accepts the raw data entered by the author, it scans for certain keywords and phrases within the raw data entered and then on finding the particular keywords the raw data is processed and allocated to the different heads provided in the template. The templates context- sensitively serves the standards to authors as and when specific type of information is written. Thus, regardless of whether an author has read the standards, undergone training or has the ability for recall, the templates ensure that the author is thoroughly sensitized about the focus of what is being written and the resultant final technical document is in consonance with the required standards and guidelines. The deployment of the info-mould component creates an authoring environment wherein the application of information standards is both facilitated and controlled automatically. The Workbench component provides an efficient framework for developing the info-mould component. Further, the Workbench component provides the standards and controls the application of the standards in a context-sensitive and defect-preventive mode during the writing process.
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The formatting means of the Workbench component then formats the document, in this case the patent specification, in accordance with the data provided to the InfoMoulding component. The formatting means also has pre-stored formatting instances which are selectable. The selecting means selects any one of the pre-stored formatting instances. The selecting means works in unison with the formatting means in a manner such that the assembled units of information are formatted in accordance with the formatting instance selected by the selecting means. The defect sentinel means checks and corrects the defects and errors, if any, present in the document formatted by the formatting means. The defect sentinel means also checks the document and checks the relevance of the information entered under the various heads in the templates provided. The controller means controls and manages the entire operation.
The InfoMoulding component also provides for deriving Information Focus. Based on given focus definitions for two different types of information, the derivative means is used to derive the focus definition of a third type of information.
While considerable emphasis has been placed herein on the components and the interrelationships between the component parts of the preferred system, it will be appreciated that many systems can be made and that many changes can be made in the preferred system without departing from the principles of the invention. These and other changes in the preferred system as well as other systems in accordance with this invention will be apparent to those
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skilled in the art from the disclosure herein, whereby it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the invention and not as a limitation.