Abstract: In order to facilitate the maintenance and enable to update a program, data, etc. anytime, a POS system has a plurality of registers for entering orders and processing accounts, and a controller for sales management, connected by a communication line to each of the registers, for managing sales of the whole store and setting items, unit prices, etc., wherein the controller for sales management has a maintenance control block including a section for setting and storing maintenance data, a section for detecting that the power supply to a register is turned on to execute an opening process, and a section for sending, when the turning on of power is detected, maintenance data to the register to update the executable program and/or various setting data of the register in the case where there is the maintenance data.

Abstract: A central office correlates charitable contributions made at vending stations in food service establishments which issue information carriers in return for charitable contributions which are receipts for the contribution and entitle the donor to a beverage dispensed from a machine responding to the information carrier.

Abstract: This invention relates to a microcomputer and method for selecting foodstuffs from a foodstuff database, nutrients from a nutrient database, minerals from a mineral database, vitamins from a vitamin database and physical activities from a physical activity database, maintaining a record of the foodstuffs, nutrients, minerals and vitamins eaten and the physical activities exercised, and by computational means to analyze the selected and recorded foodstuff, nutrient, mineral and vitamin nutritional data along with the selected and recorded physical activities exercised to compare the user's daily dietary and physical activities to the user's RDA (recommended dietary allowance).

Abstract: An electronic register having a chit file in a memory which includes the function of setting various dimensions of the chit file, the function of setting control information for use in settling operations, the function of issuing a chit or a sales management report on the basis of the control information, the function of setting the maximum customer number per chit file, the maximum registration item number, the open chit maximum number and the settlement chit maximum number able to be handled by the electronic register, the function of setting information for control of the settling operation for each chit file, and the function of referring to the control information and issuing the sales management report on the basis of the settlement chit information, which can set a structure of the chit file so as to be suitable for an arbitrary store or shop, and easily change information for control of the settling operation of each chit file in a wide range so as to issue such a sales management report as is suitabl

Abstract: A method and apparatus accesses relevant documents based on a query. A thesaurus of word vectors is formed for the words in the corpus of documents. The word vectors represent global lexical co-occurrence patterns and relationships between word neighbors. Document vectors, which are formed from the combination of word vectors, are in the same multi-dimensional space as the word vectors. A singular value decomposition is used to reduce the dimensionality of the document vectors. A query vector is formed from the combination of word vectors associated with the words in the query. The query vector and document vectors are compared to determine the relevant documents. The query vector can be divided into several factor clusters to form factor vectors. The factor vectors are then compared to the document vectors to determine the ranking of the documents within the factor cluster.

Abstract: Methods and systems that facilitate translation of text associated with application programs (such as word processors, spreadsheets, and design software) into languages other than English are disclosed. At least the key textual terms of the application are isolated from executable program code and stored in separate character-string library files. Independent libraries are maintained for each foreign language into which the program is to be translated. Library entries are accessed by means of a string reader and formatter, which, in response to commands embedded in the application text, loads the appropriate libraries and retrieves the designated terms. The invention replaces text entries, which would otherwise appear alongside program code and require compilation, with commands designating character strings and, if desired, their manner of display as well.

Abstract: A recording medium contains operation descriptions for information reading apparatus, where such operating descriptions are recorded in multiple languages. When a CD-ROM, as the recording medium, is loaded into an information reading apparatus and the language for display is selected by the user, a CPU retrieves operating descriptions of the information reading apparatus expressed in the selected language for display from the CD-ROM and stores them into a main RAM. Thereafter, according to the operations made by the user, applicable sentences of the operating descriptions of the information reading apparatus, expressed in the selected language, are displayed on a display by the CPU.