🚀 go-pugleaf

In reading the previously posted list of software patents, I came across
the following patent where I can clearly document what is probably
relevant prior art:

> 4,674,040
> Merging of Documents
> granted 6/16/87
> assignee IBM
> This is the so-called "include file patent".  ...
> It covers displaying part of one document within the display of another,
> in response to a kind of cross-reference.  This is, of course, a basic
> idea of hypertext...

I'm posting this not because I think the papers I published are important
contributions to the art, but rather, because these ideas are so widely
known that nobody bothers to publish them in reputable academic journals,
and it just happens that I have done so:

In Communications of the ACM, Vol 27, No 8, published in Aug 1984,
submitted in Dec 1983, I published an article entitled "Improved
Interpretation of UNIX-like File Names Embedded in Data" (pages 782-784).

This paper directly addressed the question of how you interpret the
name used as an argument to the #include statement in C and other
programming languages, but on the way, it explicitly mentions the use of
similar features in text formatters and command language interpreters,
and it mentions such uses not as my invention but as common practice.

Since the program that allows a user to view for a hypertext is a kind
of text formatter, I would assume that the prior art in the area of text
formatting should be directly applicable.

Another claim of the patent in question is that it covers the merging of
one portion of one document with another document -- that is, the #include
statement in one document references not an entire file but just part of
the file.

In Software - Practice and Experience, Vol. 13, published in 1983,
submitted in June 1981, I published an article entitled "Assembly
Language as Object Code."

This paper includes a discussion of a USE statement (analogous to a C
#include statement), and it includes a specific discussion on pages
721 and 722, illustrated by examples, of the use of USE statements to
include parts of one file in another.

The specific context I worked in is the inclusion of only the procedure
you want from an object library, where the library is referenced by a USE
statement and conditional assembly is used to accomplish the selective
inclusion of only the needed parts.  A similar mechanism is clearly widely
used today by authors of C include files to avoid multiple definitions,
and I make no claim to the mechanism.

So, don't worry about patent infringement if you sell software with
something like a #include mechanism and use something like conditional
assembly to include parts of one document in another.

					Doug Jones
					jones@cs.uiowa.edu