Method for displaying amount of documents

Claim 1

A method for displaying an amount of documents in which a plurality of stored documents are distributed in accordance with contents thereof, guide lines are provided on borders of the distributed documents, and the guide lines are displayed on a display screen, said method comprising the steps of: (a) determining a state of respective guide lines in response to a number of documents collected together which have a same classification; and (b) displaying the guide lines with a thickness thereof, a spacing therebetween or a hue therebetween which is proportional to the state determined in said step (a) said step (b) comprises the substep of: i) displaying the guide lines with a change in spacing between the guide lines which is proportional to the state determined in said step (a); the spacing between guide lines is incrementally variable by multiples of a folder interval, the folder interval being set at either a first predetermined interval value or a second predetermined interval value depending on whether a number of documents is above or below a threshold, respectively.

Claim 2

A method for displaying an amount of documents in which a plurality of stored documents are distributed in accordance with contents thereof, guide lines are provided on borders of the distributed documents, and the guide lines are displayed on a display screen, said method comprising the steps of: (a) determining a state of respective guide lines in response to a number of documents collected together which have a same classification; and (b) displaying the guide lines with a thickness thereof, a spacing therebetween or a hue therebetween which is proportional to the state determined in said step (a) said step (b) comprises the substep of: i) displaying the guide lines with a change in spacing between the guide lines which is proportional to the state determined in said step (a); the spacing between guide lines is incrementally variable by multiples of a folder interval, the folder interval being set at either a first predetermined interval value or a second predetermined interval value depending on whether a number of documents is above or below a threshold, respectively.

Claim 3

A method for displaying an amount of documents in which a plurality of stored documents are distributed in accordance with contents thereof, guide lines being provided on borders of the distributed documents and the guide lines being displayed on a display screen, said method comprising the steps of: (a) selecting a plurality of documents stored by classification in a tree-like hierarchical structure; (b) determining a number of documents having the same classification; and (c) expressing guide lines of the selected documents by a change in spacing between the guide lines, the spacing between the guide lines being incrementally variable by multiples of a folder interval, the folder interval being set at either a first predetermined interval value or a second predetermined interval value depending on whether the number of documents in each classification is above or below a threshold, respectively.

Claim 4

A method for displaying an amount of documents in which a plurality of stored documents are distributed in accordance with contents thereof, guide lines being provided on borders of the distributed documents and the guide lines being displayed on a display screen, said method comprising the steps of: (a) selecting a plurality of documents stored by classification in a tree-like hierarchical structure; (b) determining a number of documents having the same classification; and (c) expressing guide lines of the selected documents by a change in spacing between the guide lines, the spacing between the guide lines being incrementally variable by multiples of a folder interval, the folder interval being set at either a first predetermined interval value or a second predetermined interval value depending on whether the number of documents in each classification is above or below a threshold, respectively.

Claim 5

A method of displaying guide lines used on borders of documents to encode micro features representative an associated document, said method comprising the steps of: (a) determining a series of guide lines to be successively displayed; (b) determining a number of documents represented by the guide lines to be successively displayed; (c) altering a macro feature of the guide lines to be successively displayed based on the number of documents represented by the guide lines; and (d) successively displaying on a display screen the altered guide lines.

Claim 6

A method of displaying guide lines used on borders of documents to encode micro features representative an associated document, said method comprising the steps of: (a) determining a series of guide lines to be successively displayed; (b) determining a number of documents represented by the guide lines to be successively displayed; (c) altering a macro feature of the guide lines to be successively displayed based on the number of documents represented by the guide lines; and (d) successively displaying on a display screen the altered guide lines.