Whole text information in the Legal Office

• Autore: M.A. Heather
• Carica: Professar at the School of Law, Newcastle Polytechnic, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NEI 8ST, UK
• Pagine: 43-51

Basaci on a presentaticion at the International Conference on Man/MachÏne Systems organized by the Computing and Control Division of the Institution of Electrical Engineers of London and held at the University of Manchester Institele of Science and Technology, Manchester, U.K. 6th-9th July 1982.

Page 43

@Introduction

If the machine is macie for tnan and not man for the machine, the machine must master the modes of man, But man communicates mainly by naturai language and stores his Information mostly in documents composed of full text. The powers of the machine in these two fields are stili quite puny despite their extreme importance and relevance to everyday human affairs, Machines at present stil find naturai language impalatatele and it is partly due to this difficulty in getting at the meaning expressed in naturai language that the amorphous strueture of documents of fui text cannot be too easily handled by automatic methods. It may yet be some time begore the problems of developing satisfactory methods to deal properly with naturai language are resorved and in the meanwhile it is necessary to make progress in improving machine capabilities for manipulating documents in full text form. The prime purpose of this paper is to concentrate only on one very pertinent aspect of the latter - machine aids to comprehension, This is of most relevance to one category of fui text, namely the whole text, but it also has some significance for other fui text forms.

The principles seem to be generally tpplicable but they will be discussed here in one particular subject area, that of the Law where active work is in progress in the study of the processing of whole texts. The Law relies heavilu on the full text and legai information systems have been forced to 'meet the problems early.

@Whole texts

It is convenient to distinguisih the different categorice of full text that the machine is called upon to deal with and to consider them in three classes: "loose text", "short text" and "whole text".

Page 44

Loose text is composed of fragmeets of full text often to be found as extra words of explanation in a database that is not primarily in full text form.

Thus a bibliographic database in addition to the text fields of Author, title, etc, may also have notes in phrases or clauses but which tre not in full grammatical sentences. Explanatory captions for figures and diagrams are a second example.

Short text consists of an abbreviated form of full text, it can only be achieved by the relax ation of the striet rules of naturai language. There is the immediate result that there may be a loss in precision in the communication of information; the amount of licence taken in writing short text can vary from the familiar abmpt stoccato style of telegraphy and the telegram to one closer to a normal use of language but with the occasionai use of eiiptic construetions such as the dropping of the definite article.

Whole text on the other hand is that which is expressed in proper full free text form. It is important to distinguisi! the form of the text fron the nature of its contenta. ¿ precis or an abstract may be in either short or whole text form. Brevity and conciseness are not necessarily synonymous. Often a short text form may be used because there is not the time or intellectual energy available to produce an equivalent succinct whole text.

Where electronic mail is in regular use the trend appears to be to use short text rather than whole text. The art of letter writing was developed in an age whan the pace of life was slower. The standard of using the whole text for correspondence once established has been maintained, It appears that those who readily use the short text for telematic communications would stili hesitate to do soon headed notepaper or when using their own pesonal stationery. There are important implications for business and cominerce if short text teleconferencing and electronic mail replace interattive orai negotiations face to face and by telephone when there is not the at tendali a "to be confirmed in writing" in whole text. Where commerciai contraets and arrangements are expressed in short text many complicated legai problems can arise in the constmetion and interpretation. It has been shown by Picot et al[1] in an attitudÏnal survey of 477 office managers that the three most important criteria for a communication channel are (in order) "unambiguous understanding of content", "speediness" and "certainty of exact wording". Vet it would appear that the second mitigates against the other two criteria.

It may also be eoted that teletex and viewdata systems in generai can only display a maximum of about 150 words in one frame because of the constraints of the domestic television receiver. Such systems therefore also show a...