1. Technical Field
An “Interactive Word Lattice,” provides a user interface for interacting with and selecting user-modifiable paths through a lattice-based representation of alternative suggested text segments provided in response to an input text segment.
2. Background Art
Proofing tools and other forms of authorial and editorial assistance often provide users with suggested corrections (e.g., spelling, grammatical, etc.) to an input text segment, such as a word, phrase, sentence, etc., in the form of a dropdown graphical user interface or the like that presents a set of simple alternatives to choose from. These types of interfaces are generally inflexible and typically present only a small subset of the often complex range of alternatives that are actually available to the writer.
Similarly, query suggestions provided by search engines in response to a user provided query do not provide an intuitive way of combining multiple queries or search terms. For example, some search engines many provide a simple list of possible alternative queries to a user provided input query. Each of these alternative queries is then generally individually selected or otherwise provided to the search engine by the user. Further, search engines that may provide alternative queries fail to provide a mechanism for combining various elements of those alternative queries. In addition, members of the general public are generally unaware of how to formulate a query using complex query syntax that may be understood by a particular search engine.