A system for displaying and reliably drawing attention to identified parts of arbitrary documents by use of in-place transitory distinguishing that stimulates automatic attention capture and stimulates involuntary neuronal interference with other image processing at no more than user-tolerable levels, the system comprising:
- one or more hardware-based processors;
- one or more hardware-based memories storing computer-executable instructions;
- and
- a user agent comprising one or more of the one or more hardware-based processors, one or more of the one or more hardware-based memories storing computer-executable instructions, and a screen;
- wherein:
- each member of a set of one or more documents has an in-place first transitory distinguishing property with respect to a triple that consists of the user agent, a manner of distinguishing, and a set of distinguishing inputs;
- a first identification datum is derived from a first intended snippet;
- a salient distinguishing interval is no more than four seconds in duration, starts at a starting time, and ends at an ending time;
- in response to a first one or more selection inputs to the user agent:
- a first document display of a first version of a document, which is a member of the set of one or more documents, is displayed on the screen;
- and
- a first distinguishing context, which has the manner of distinguishing and which has the set of distinguishing inputs, of the first document display is derived from the first identification datum and the first version of the document;
- a first set of target document snippets is non-empty and consists of all of at least partially viewable document snippets that are in-place partially distinguished in the first distinguishing context;
- a distinguishing response, which is in response to the first one or more selection inputs and zero or more inputs to the user agent that are permitted according to the set of distinguishing inputs, comprises:
- a first target snippet, which is canonically similar to the first intended snippet and a member of the first set of target document snippets, is selected;
- deriving of an in-place transitory partially distinguishing of the first target snippet is performed;
- and
- a displaying of the in-place transitory partially distinguishing on the screen within the salient distinguishing interval is performed, which partially distinguishes the first target snippet at the starting time and at the ending time;
- the displaying of the in-place transitory partially distinguishing contributes to an overall in-place partially distinguishing, which is an instance of the manner of distinguishing, of the first target snippet;
- the visual salience of the overall in-place partially distinguishing, beginning with at least one frame displayed during the salient distinguishing interval, is greater than the visual salience of the overall in-place partially distinguishing beginning with any frame displayed during a subdued distinguishing interval that begins at the ending time, has a duration of at least 500 milliseconds, and has a duration that is no less than the duration of the salient distinguishing interval;
- each member of a set of zero or more instances of in-place partially distinguishing, which includes every instance of in-place partially distinguishing of the first target snippet during the subdued distinguishing interval, is contributory to the overall in-place partially distinguishing;
- the overall in-place partially distinguishing of the first target snippet is temporally the first partially distinguishing of a document snippet of the first document display that is derived from the first intended snippet;
- a second identification datum is derived from a second intended snippet;
- in response to a second one or more selection inputs to the user agent:
- a second document display of a second version of the document is displayed on the screen;
- and
- a second distinguishing context, which has the manner of distinguishing and which has the set of distinguishing inputs, of the second document display is derived from the second identification datum and the second version of the document;
- a second set of target document snippets is non-empty and consists of all of at least partially viewable document snippets that are in-place partially distinguished in the second distinguishing context;
- a first set of cross matching document snippets, which consists of all at least partially viewable document snippets of the second version of the document that are canonically similar to the first intended snippet, has at least one member that is textually identical to the first intended snippet and its members are undistinguished in the second distinguishing context;
- and
- a second set of cross matching document snippets, which consists of all at least partially viewable document snippets of the first version of the document that are canonically similar to the second intended snippet, has at least one member that is textually identical to the second intended snippet and its members are undistinguished in the first distinguishing context.