Automated book creator
AssigneeHacche Online Limited
InventorsRuth Ballinger, Nick Ponting
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of automatically producing a book is disclosed. The book is generated from a database of source content items. As an example, a content item may be a cookery recipe. Typically, the source content items have been created for presentation on the web. The method includes the steps of processing the source content items to create publishable content items, allowing the user to select content items according to criteria, and then iteratively applying templates to the selected content items to optimize a print layout associated with each content item. The print layouts may be composed into a book, which may be automatically printed and sent to the user or to the user's order.
Claims20
A method of producing a book, the method comprising:
- accessing a database of source content items;
- processing the source content items to create publishable content items by changing the source content items according to pre-set rules;
- providing a user interface and soliciting input of one or more filtering criteria from a user;
- presenting a selection of the publishable content items on the user interface, the presented publishable content items being selected according to the filtering criteria;
- providing on the user interface a facility for the user to further select from the presented content items, or request further or different content items to be presented, to define a group of user-selected content items;
- accessing a library of templates, and assigning a template to each of the user-selected content items;
- for each user-selected content item and assigned template:
- applying the user-selected content item to its assigned template using a set of parameters to generate a print layout;
- automatically testing the generated print layout against pre-set layout quality criteria;
- if the layout quality criteria are met, then finalizing the print layout;
- otherwise, adjusting the parameters of the user-selected content item as applied to the template, to optimize the print layout, and returning to automatically testing the generated print layout against pre-set layout quality criteria;
- composing the finalized print layouts into a final book layout;
- printing a book according to the final book layout.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.