Data processing: presentation processing of document – operator i – Presentation processing of document – Layout
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-08
2003-07-08
Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2778)
Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator i
Presentation processing of document
Layout
C715S252000, C715S252000, C715S252000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06589291
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer system, and deals more particularly with a method, system, and computer-readable code for dynamically determining the most appropriate location (whether on a server and/or Web proxy, or on a client) for applying style sheets. Furthermore, the present invention enables style sheet applicability to be increased.
2. Description of the Related Art
A “style sheet” is a specification of a style that is to be used when presenting a document. The style specification includes information such as the font and margins to be used, the formatting layout, and other types of information that indicate how the presented document should appear. Style sheets can be used for many types of presentation of a document, including printing the document, displaying it on a video display, processing the document by a speech synthesizer, etc. Consequently, style sheets may also be utilized to describe transformations from one document type to another (e.g. from MathML to HTML) or as filters which describe transformations to reduce the amount of content while maintaining the original document type.
One type of style sheet is an XSL Style Sheet. XSL Style Sheets are style sheets specified in XSL, which is a particular style sheet language. “XSL” is an acronym for “Extensible Stylesheet Language”. An XSL Style Sheet specifies how an XML document is to be transformed for presentation, resulting in a different document which may or may not maintain the original document type. “XML” is an acronym for “Extensible Markup Language. XML is a standardized formatting notation, created for structured document interchange on the World Wide Web (hereinafter, “Web”). (Refer to “Extensible Markup Language (XML), W3C Recommendation Feb. 10, 1998” which is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210, for more information on XML; and to “Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), Version 1.0, World Wide Web Consortium Working Draft Dec. 16, 1998”, hereinafter “XSL Specification”, which is available on the Web at http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl, for more information on XSL.)
Style sheets include “template rule” constructs, which define an input pattern and a template (also known as an “action”) to use in creating an output result tree fragment. When applying a style sheet, the patterns in the templates are matched against the syntax of the source document. When a match is found with the template pattern, an output document fragment is created according to the actions specified in the template (which may include processing additional elements in the source document beyond the matching element). The source document is parsed recursively, until no more matching patterns are found. The resulting document fragments are then aggregated to yield a complete output document. (For more information on this process, refer to section 2, “Tree Construction”, in the XSL Specification.) It is this template matching and substitution of different document elements according to the actions in the matching rules that enables style sheets to transform documents.
(While the term “document” is used herein when discussing encoded data and application of style sheets thereto, it is to be understood that the information on which a style sheet operates may represent any type of information, and is not limited to the traditional interpretation of the word “document”. As one example, a style sheet may be used to process an encoded representation of records from a data repository which specify a company's sales data. As another example, a style sheet may be used to format employee information retrieved from a corporate database for presentation. For ease of reference, the term “document” will be used herein to refer to these diverse types of information.)
XML is emerging as a powerful methodology for representing document content, due to its ability to store data in a self-defining, portable manner. Style sheet languages such as XSL, along with their associated processors, are powerful tools for filtering data content encoded in notations such as XML, as well as for transforming documents encoded in one markup language into other markup languages such as HTML (HyperText Markup Language) or WML (Wireless Markup Language). Because of these features, style sheets have tremendous potential to aid in the process of transcoding data content. “Transcoding” refers to a process by which data content is transformed. A content-reducing “transcoding filter” may be applied to a file, to reduce the file size. Transcoding filters are software applications that algorithmically reduce the number of bits used to represent information while still retaining its essential content. Such filters are known in the art. For example, a transcoding filter can be applied to an image that was rendered using 256 colors (also known as “8-bit color”), to create a simpler version of the same image which uses only 16 colors. Or, the image could be converted to grayscale using a different transcoding filter. This type of filtering process greatly reduces the number of bytes in the resulting file.
One environment in which this type of content-reducing transcoding process is becoming quite important is with computing devices connected to a network using relatively expensive wireless connections which may have limited bandwidth, and/or with pervasive computing devices. Pervasive computing devices are typically small, constrained-storage devices such as “Smart Phones” or the WorkPad device from the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). (“WorkPad” is a registered trademark of IBM.) Before sending data from a server to a constrained-storage device, or over a limited bandwidth connection, it may be beneficial to reduce the size of the data. The smaller file can then be transmitted more quickly and at less cost, and it is more likely that sufficient storage space will be available for receiving the file (and subsequently processing it) on the device.
Filtering style sheets may be considered a type of content-reducing transcoding filter. In addition to using style sheets for content reduction, style sheets that transform file content from one form to another may also be considered transcoding filters. This type of transcoding process may be beneficial in the wireless environment and with pervasive computing devices, and in any other environment where it is desirable to transform a file from one format into another. For example, a document encoded in a data file may not include any images or video files (and therefore might not benefit significantly from a reduction in size), but it may be desirable to transmit this document from a server to a handheld device. If the document is encoded in one markup language, such as XML, while the device is only capable of supporting a different markup language such as WML or WBXML (“Wireless Application Protocol Binary XML”), then a transcoding process needs to be performed. An appropriate transforming style sheet may be used to perform this process.
Some significant problems associated with using style sheets for transcoding have been addressed. The first related invention, “Achieving Complex Transformations with Dynamic Style Sheet Coalescing”, discloses a novel technique for dynamically determining one or more transformations that may be used to transform an input document in a first notation into a document in a different notation, where the output notation is tailored to (among other things) the target environment where the document will be rendered for presentation. The second related invention, “Retrieval of Style Sheets from Directories Based Upon Partial Characteristic Matching”, discloses a novel technique for retrieving style sheets from a directory or other repository, based upon a pattern-matching process which uses the characteristics of the style sheets. However, a number of areas remain which need to be addressed in order for style sheets to be used optimally for transcoding purposes.
One issue that remains
Boag Scott A.
Hind John R.
Topol Brad B.
Wesley Ajamu A.
Doubet Marcia L.
Hong Stephen S.
Huynh Thu V.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Ray-Yarletts Jeanine S.
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