SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR TRANSFORMING DOCUMENTS FOR PUBLISHING ELECTRONICALLY

摘要

The invention of the present invention is directed to a rules based engine for taking large numbers of documents and publishing them electronically using a rules based segmentation, linking and versioning engine. The invention is primarily concerned with the ability of the system to perform the following steps. Receive a document (10), receive segmentation rules (20), run segmentation rules (30), display possible segments based on metadata extracted from the running of the rules (30) and if acceptable segmentation points are identified, created logical segments (50), assign one or more unique identifiers (60) and receive (70) and run (80) linking rules, creating actual segmented documents with potential link points identified (100) and reducing potential link points to actual links (110) wherein the documents are therein ready to be published. The invention is further directed to a system that is capable of republishing amended documents such that the republished segments are assigned the the same address and thereby facilitating third party persistent linking. The versioning and comparison engine is also adapted to provide a collaborative environment where many people can author individual segments of a single document in a collaborative online environment.