A computer system is disclosed for preparing a complete set of architectural specifications for constructing a building, including, if desired, sets of instructions that will be used by personnel during preparation of construction drawings and during construction. A specifier uses brief symbolic characters representative of individual phrases from a large information repository called a Master Phrase Catalog, to mark decisions and phrase selections in code on an order form designed to facilitate...

A system for filing, updating, and retrieving source documents comprising a video tape recorder; an electro-optic scanner for converting the images on source documents to video signals representative of such images; means for generating update signals representative of update information for source documents; a controller for selectively directing the video signals to first areas of defined storage locations in the video tape recorder and the update signals to second areas of the storage locatio...

A control panel or console for an electronic device which contains a digital process control computer into which there should be fed a predetermined number of data records. At the control panel there are arranged digital display elements, the number of which is equal to the number of data records. An unambiguous correlation exists between these display elements and the data records. Additionally, a further digital display element and a device for the data input are arranged at the control panel ...

A data structure for use in a document processing system corresponds to a document comprised of one or more Pages. Each Page is subdivided into one or more nonoverlapping Areas, each Area in turn being comprised of one or more types of Layers. Each Layer type is expressive of a particular type of information such as text or graphics information. Different Layer types may be superimposed to comprise the contents of an Area.

An information retrieval system for storing and searching Markush formulations is described. All implicit specific structures (ISSRs) of the Markush formulation are stored as a specific multiple-connectivity node representation (SpMCN) by allowing the appropriate atoms to expand beyond their normal valance and accommodate all substituents of the Markush structure. The SpMCN is simplified by using a generic group hierarchy to reduce common structural features to an associated generic multi-connec...

A computerized system and method for electronically storing, retrieving, separating, comparing and interrelating data which is maintained in a predetermined classification scheme. Data is electronically stored under the predetermined classification scheme in the form of hierarchal information trees. Data corresponding to a selected attribute may be found in an information tree by using a CRT terminal to scan the various levels of the hierarchy of the tree. As the various levels of the tree are s...

In a document information filing system of the present invention, the document picture information and the filing information are recorded in a longitudinal video recorder (LVR). When one of the codes forming a retrieval code of the filing information is called for by a keyboard input operation, a plurality of the retrieval codes containing the called for code are selected from the LVR and then sequentially stored in a title memory. Different sequence codes are added to each of the retrieval cod...

A system tool for electronically generating a machine directory entity having a binary tree relationship. The method generates the directory entity directly from a sequence of input keys without using an intermediate stack. The input key sequence may be sorted or unsorted; but if sorted (whether ascending or descending), the system tool is made more efficient. The directory entity is used by the machine to address objects which may be found within the confines of the machine. Unique connectors c...

A method of operating a computer system to store and retrieve information in a database uses a signature file of the database that is divided into subsets. A word signature is mapped to a particular subset during creation of the file and the same mapping information is used to retrieve the information in response to a query word. Each word signature is a logical word signature and has two components a physical word signature and a subset designation field. In this way, when information is retrie...

An office automation system that provides for the incorporation of documents of all types by integrating images into the system. A minicomputer-based system includes applications such as word processing, data base, and mail, each of which can access image documents. Bulk storage of document images is provided using a variety of storage media such as microfilm, microfiche, and optical disks. An image access subsystem provides to each of the office automation applications uniform access to images ...