JP2003330862A - E-mail transmitting and receiving system and method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an e-mail transmitting and receiving system for easily forming and providing a document capable of easily showing a transmitter's emotion to a receiver. <P>SOLUTION: The transmitter inserts, when forming an electronic document, 'start tag' and 'end tag' of an 'emotion tag' showing emotions to a part the transmitter wants to express its emotion. The receiver obtains the output result by emotions by passing the 'document with emotion tag' to an output device 4 mounted with an emotion tag analytic system 2. When the transmitter defines that the emotion of 'anger', for example, is outputted with red characters to the emotion tag analytic system 2, the receiver can confirm that the transmitter's emotion is 'anger' by the output of the red characters from the output part 4. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail transmission / reception system and a method thereof, and more particularly to an electronic mail transmission / reception system and an electronic mail transmission / reception system for embedding emotions such as emotions of a sender in an electronic mail document and transmitting it to a recipient. It is about the method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, electronic documents have been frequently used as a means of transmitting information to people, and electronic mail exchanged by personal computers and mobile phones is a typical example. With the spread of mobile phones, e-mail has become a familiar tool for people, and since it is cheaper than phone calls, there is a tendency to use e-mail for simple greetings, conversations, and message transmission.

[0003]

However, there is a possibility that the emotional information of the sender may be lost in the electronic document as compared with the voice call such as a telephone call. In particular, when using e-mail as a substitute for conversation, the sentence itself is short and often only the message is described. For this reason, it is difficult to see from the plain text document what the sender intended, especially what kind of sentiment was included. Even if the expressions are the same in the text, their meanings often differ.

As an example, consider the sentence "I can't meet today." It is assumed that the sender creates a sentence by including the meaning of "anger" of emotions. However, since the information obtained by the receiver is only the character information, it is not always possible to correctly read the emotion intended by the sender. For example, it may be interpreted differently, such as "I may not be able to meet because of my business."

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to obtain an electronic mail transmission / reception system and method capable of easily producing a document in which the sender's emotions can be easily seen and providing it to the recipient.

[0006]

An electronic mail transmission / reception system according to the present invention includes a transmission terminal for transmitting an electronic mail document having a portion sandwiched by a predetermined start tag and end tag for indicating emotions, It is characterized by including a receiving terminal having an output unit for receiving the electronic mail and outputting the document sandwiched between these tags in a predetermined output mode.

The start tag and the end tag are characterized in that they are predetermined corresponding to the type of emotion to be expressed, and the output mode is a display color.

Further, the receiving terminal responds to the reception of the electronic mail, and a tag definition dictionary for defining the tag,
It is characterized in that output processing of a document sandwiched between the tags is performed with reference to an output definition dictionary that defines the output mode corresponding to the tags. The tag definition dictionary and the output definition dictionary are provided in the receiving terminal, or the tag definition dictionary is provided in a server accessible by the transmitting terminal and the receiving terminal.

The electronic mail transmitting / receiving method according to the present invention includes a step of transmitting an electronic mail document having a portion sandwiched by a predetermined start tag and end tag for indicating emotions, and receiving the electronic mail. And a receiving step of outputting the part of the document sandwiched between these tags in a predetermined output mode.

The operation of the present invention will be described. When creating an electronic sentence, the sender inserts a "start tag" and an "end tag", which are "emotion tags" indicating emotions, in a portion where he / she wants to express emotions. The recipient obtains the output result for each emotion by passing the emotion-tagged document through the output device equipped with the emotion tag analysis system. For example, if the emotion tag analysis system is defined to output the emotion of "anger" in red, the receiver outputs a red sentence and the emotion of the sender indicates "anger". You can confirm that there is.

The feature of this system is that a sender can easily create a document that expresses emotions, and the receiver can instantly recognize the emotions of the sender by looking at the output device.

[0012]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. When creating a sentence, the sender inserts "start tag" and "end tag", which are "emotion tags" indicating emotions, in the portion where he / she wants to express emotions.
In FIG. 1, <ang> and </ ang> are emotion tags representing the emotion of “anger”, and the state of “I cannot meet today” shows the emotion of “anger”. The recipient obtains the output result for each emotion by passing this emotion-tagged document through the output device equipped with the emotion tag analysis system.

For example, in the case of FIG. 1, the emotion tag analysis system is defined to output the emotion of "anger" in red.
In this case, the receiver can confirm that the emotion of the sender is “angry” by outputting a red sentence (shown by a thick line in FIG. 1) from the output unit.

FIG. 2 shows an emotion tag analysis system. The input unit 1 receives the document with emotion tag, and by referring to the emotion tag dictionary 3 in which the emotion tag is defined, the tag analysis unit 2 checks the tag and the output unit 4 displays the result.

The structure of this analysis system is shown in FIG. This embodiment includes an input unit 1 such as a mailer, a tag analysis unit 2 that operates under program control, an emotion tag dictionary 3 that stores tag information, and an output unit 4 that corresponds to a display device. The input unit 1 is a device that stores a tagged electronic document sent by a sender. The emotion tag dictionary 3 includes a tag definition dictionary 31 and an output definition dictionary 32. The tag definition dictionary 31 is a dictionary describing the definition of tags used in an electronic document, and is composed of three fields of emotion information, a start tag, and an end tag, as shown in FIG.

Since the sender creates an electronic document according to the tag definition dictionary 31 and the receiver deciphers it, the tag definition dictionary 31 to be referenced needs to be the same on the receiving side and the transmitting side. Therefore, centralized management on the server is suitable. If the unified management system by the server is adopted, it is not necessary to provide the dictionary 31 in the terminal, and the memory capacity of the terminal can be reduced accordingly. In this case, it goes without saying that this server can be accessed by the sending terminal and the receiving terminal.

On the other hand, in the output definition dictionary 32, "sentences sandwiched between tags" and "sentences not sandwiched between tags"
It is a dictionary that defines what kind of output is made. As shown in FIG. 3, it is composed of two fields of emotion information and "output format". The output format is an item that determines the character color corresponding to each emotion according to the output unit 4. Since the output method can be appropriately selected on the sender side and the receiver side, the output definition dictionary 32 may be held by each person.

The tag analysis unit 2 includes an analysis unit 21 for searching a set of a start tag and an end tag and an analysis unit 22 for checking the output format of the tag. In the analysis unit 21, the tag definition dictionary 3 is added to the tagged document sent from the input unit 1.
The start tag and end tag registered in 1 are searched. The analysis unit 22 refers to the output definition dictionary 32 to determine the output method of the sentence sandwiched between emotion tags and the sentence not sandwiched between emotion tags. The output unit 4 outputs based on the information passed from the analysis unit 22. The object to be colored and output is the entire text excluding the tags of the tagged document stored in the input unit 1.

First, a method of registering the tag definition dictionary 31 and the output definition dictionary 32 will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. Referring to FIG. 4, in the tag definition dictionary 31, emotion information is input (step A1), a start tag is input (step A2), and an end tag paired with the start tag is registered (step A3). However, if the same tag is already registered in the tag definition dictionary 31, re-input is prompted as a double definition (step A4). If it is not double registration, it is registered as data of the tag definition dictionary 31 (step A5).

Referring now to FIG. 5, the output definition dictionary 32
In the registration to, first, a list of tags registered in the tag definition dictionary 31 is presented to the user (step B1). Next, the user selects a tag to add / change the output format information from the list (step B2) and inputs it (step B3). It is checked whether the input format is suitable as data to be passed to the output unit 4 (step B4),
If it is suitable, it is registered in the dictionary (step B5), and if it is not suitable, re-input is prompted. In addition, it is assumed that one output format of an untagged sentence (hereinafter, referred to as “untagged sentence”) must be registered.

Next, the overall operation of the present embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS. The flowchart of FIG. 6 is
3 shows processing of electronic documents with a tag stored in the input unit 1 of FIG. 2 in units of one sentence. That is, the flowchart of FIG. 6 loops until the analysis of the whole sentence is completed. The analysis unit 21 refers to the tag definition dictionary 31 to search whether a start tag exists in the sentence (step C1). If the defined start tag exists, it is searched whether an end tag paired with the start tag exists in the same sentence (step C).
3).

If the search is successful, the analysis unit 22 checks the output definition dictionary 32 using the tag set as a search key (step C5). If the search is successful, the output format information can be acquired. Finally, the output format information and the sentence sandwiched between the tags are passed to the output unit 4, and output according to the format is performed. If the search fails in steps C2, C4, and C6 of FIG. 6, it is assumed that the sentence is not tagged, and is output in the output format for the untagged sentence in the output definition dictionary 32.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be described using a specific example. The input sentence is "<ang> I can't meet today </ a
ng> ”, the case of using the tag of FIG. 3 will be described. The start tag <ang> and end tag </ ang> of the input sentence are shown in FIG.
Are searched in steps C1 to C4. From the output definition dictionary 32 of FIG. 3, it can be seen that the output format for the tag <ang> is “output in red”, and in the output unit 4, based on the output format passed, the part “today is I cannot meet you "is displayed in red.

There are emotions, emotions, and emotions,
For "joy", start tag <joy> and end tag </
joy>, and for "sorrow", start tag <sad>
And end tag </ sad>
It has a start tag <hap> and an end tag </ hap>,
It is not limited to this. The display color is also appropriately selected and determined. It is necessary that the definition of these tags be the same for the sender and the recipient, and it is set in advance within a certain group for exchanging e-mail, or in advance by the manufacturer of the mobile terminal. It is possible to keep it.

Next, another embodiment of the present invention will be described. In the above-described embodiment, a sentence is output to the display in different colors for each emotion based on the emotion tag information of the tagged electronic document, and the emotion of the sender is sensuously read. For example, by introducing this system into an electronic mail transmitted and received by a mobile phone, it is possible to easily know the emotion of the other party by looking at the screen of the mobile phone without calling.

Regarding the creation of a document with an emotion tag, in order to save the trouble of describing the tag in the document, a mechanism that can be called in a few steps by using a similar method of inputting pictograms or symbol characters of a mobile phone should be introduced. You can That is, when the sender uses the emotion tag, the start tag can be inserted with one push, and at the same time, the end tag is automatically inserted, and the input cursor is automatically moved to immediately after the start tag.

Since the emotion of the author can be distinguished by the tag, the characteristics of the electronic document with emotion tag can be effectively used for automatic reading of the document. By designating a voice reading device as the output unit 4, for example, by making an angry voice correspond to the part sandwiched by the tags of "angry", it is possible to realize utterance close to that of a real human. As an extension of this system, it is assumed that all output devices that have the advantage of outputting human emotions are included.

It is also effective to increase the types of data registered as a dictionary. By adding "gender field" and "age field" to the emotion tag field,
When outputting to a voice reading device, it is considered that it becomes possible to read a document that distinguishes old and young.

[0029]

The first effect of the present invention is that the sender's emotion can be easily added to a general text-based sentence. The reason is that it takes a simple way to insert the tags defined between the sender and the receiver into the document.
A second effect is that the sender of the information can arbitrarily determine the output method by using the emotion information of the sender.
The reason is that a dictionary defining a tag and a dictionary defining an output method are separately prepared as a dictionary used for tag analysis.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining an outline of an embodiment of the present invention.

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

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a tag definition dictionary and an output definition dictionary according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating registration processing in a tag definition dictionary.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating registration processing in an output definition dictionary.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the operation of the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Input section 2 Tag analysis section 3 emotion tag dictionary 4 Output section 31 Tag definition dictionary 32 output definition dictionary

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. A sending terminal for sending an electronic mail document having a portion sandwiched by a predetermined start tag and end tag for indicating emotions, and a terminal for receiving the electronic mail and sandwiching these electronic mail between these tags. An electronic mail transmission / reception system, comprising: a reception terminal having an output unit that outputs the document of the above portion in a predetermined output mode. 2. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 1, wherein the start tag and the end tag are predetermined corresponding to a type of emotion to be expressed. 3. The electronic mail transmitting / receiving system according to claim 1, wherein the output mode is a display color. 4. The receiving terminal refers to a tag definition dictionary that defines the tag and an output definition dictionary that defines the output mode corresponding to the tag, in response to reception of the electronic mail. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein output processing is performed on a document sandwiched between the tags. 5. The definition dictionary and the output definition dictionary are provided in the receiving terminal.
E-mail sending and receiving system described. 6. The electronic mail transmitting / receiving system according to claim 4, wherein the definition dictionary is provided in a server accessible by the transmitting terminal and the receiving terminal. 7. A step of transmitting an e-mail document having a part sandwiched by a predetermined start tag and end tag for indicating emotions, and receiving the e-mail and sandwiched between these tags. A receiving step of outputting a partial document in a predetermined output mode, the electronic mail transmitting / receiving method. 8. The electronic mail transmitting / receiving method according to claim 7, wherein the start tag and the end tag are predetermined corresponding to a type of emotion to be expressed. 9. The electronic mail transmitting / receiving method according to claim 7, wherein the output mode is a display color. 10. The receiving step, in response to receiving the electronic mail, refers to a tag definition dictionary that defines the tag, and an output definition dictionary that defines the output mode corresponding to the tag. 10. The electronic mail transmitting / receiving method according to any one of claims 7 to 9, further comprising a step of performing an output process of a document sandwiched between the tags.