Data processing: presentation processing of document – operator i – Presentation processing of document – Layout
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-11
2003-05-06
Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2178)
Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator i
Presentation processing of document
Layout
C715S252000, C345S215000, C717S110000, C717S112000, C717S113000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06558431
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This application relates in general to the Internet web pages, and in specific to a visual web authoring tool.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In order to have complete control over their web site designs, web authors have been creating web sites by writing HTML source in text editors. Recently, visual HTML editors have been introduced with the intention of improving web authoring productivity. These visual editors haves not found much success with professional web authors since they completely re-write the HTML source document when the document is loaded into the visual editor. Note that HTML authors prefer to be able to edit code by hand even while using a visual editor, or after the code has been edited visually by someone else.
FIG. 1
depicts the operations of a prior art editor on HTML document
101
. The HTML document
101
includes HTML mark up tags, such as paragraph tags
102
and bold tags
103
. Note that these tags are by way of example only as other tags exist, such as size, color, font, etc. These tags indicate to the browser the manner in which to display the text
104
or other objects to the browser user. The editor begins by loading the document into memory, and parsing the document
101
into an internal data structure
105
, which may be a tree structure. The nodes in the tree
105
represent the HTML tags, while the children
107
of the nodes are either other nodes or text. The editor then displays or renders the tree to the editor user as it would be viewed on a browser. This view
108
is known as the rendered view or WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view. The text that is marked with bold tags
103
is displayed in bold format
109
.
The editor allows a user to edit the HTML document as displayed in the rendered view
108
. For example, suppose the user edits the document to remove the bold format from the text. The user selects the rendered word bold
109
, and selects the unbold button
110
. The editor then changes the tree
105
by discarding the bold (b) node and making the text “bold” a child of the paragraph (p) node
106
. The editor then renders the tree into the WYSIWYG view
108
with the text unbolded
111
. Note that the tree
105
is stored in memory and is not viewed by the user. At the conclusion of editing, the user is prompted as to whether to save the changes. If the user decides to save the changes, the editor regenerates the HTML document
113
from the tree
105
.
The prior art approach as depicted in
FIG. 1
has several problems.
FIG. 2
depicts the problem of preservation of format. As shown in
FIG. 2
, the HTML document
201
, as created by the author, does not have each paragraph end with a </p>. During editing, the document
201
would be parsed into tree
202
. At the conclusion of editing, the HTML document
203
would be regenerated. However, during regeneration, the editor would reform the document with the </p> at the end of each paragraph. The editor does not track the format of the tags by the author. Thus, when the editor reforms the document, the editor makes assumptions as to the use of tags. Therefore, whereas the original document lacked the ending </p> tags, the reformed document has the ending </p> tags. Moreover, the editor places the opening and ending paragraph tags on separate lines. Note that this problem arises because the editor does not preserve any of the formatting information from the original document. Consequently, HTML authors do not have control over their documents, as the document that they created will appear different from the edited, reformatted document. This makes reading, reviewing, and making further changes to the document difficult, since the document does not appear to be the same document as that created by the author.
FIG. 3
depicts another problem with the prior art approach shown in
FIG. 1
, the preservation of structure. As shown in
FIG. 3
, the author has bolded several paragraphs by placing the appropriate tags so as to surround the desired paragraphs
301
. However, the HTML language standard only allows nested tags to appear in a particular order, e.g. block tags must surround character tags. Thus, the bold tag cannot be placed around a paragraph tag, but rather should be placed inside the paragraph tags. Note that HTML browsers would tolerate such an error, and would render the web page in a correct manner. However, the editor would correct the error during parsing the document
301
into the tree
302
. Note tree
302
corresponds to the source document as if the editor did not correct the error. The editor would not have placed the bold tags from the parent node position of the paragraph nodes, and instead create new bold nodes as child nodes of the paragraph nodes
303
. During regeneration, the reformatted document
304
would have multiple bold tags that are located within the paragraph tags, instead of a single set of bold tags surrounding the paragraph tags. Thus, upon a subsequent edit, if the author desires to remove the bold tags, then the author will have to remove each of the newly created tags from within each paragraph, instead of removing only a single bold tag.
FIG. 4A
depicts another aspect of the problem shown in
FIG. 3
, i.e. the structure of the original document is not well preserved. In
FIG. 4A
, overlapping tags
401
are corrected by the editor, so that tags are in order
402
from the inside out.
FIG. 4B
depicts a list item that is not in the list
403
. In this case, the editor will place UL tags
404
around the item. Thus, again the author has lost control over the created document, which has been altered by the editor.
FIG. 5
depicts a prior art editor that maintains a copy
502
of the original document
501
during a portion of the processing. After the editor loads and parses the document
501
into tree
503
, the editor maintains copy
502
. However, when edited
504
, the document
502
is reformatted and restructured.
FIG. 6
depicts the problem of modal editing of the prior art editor of FIG.
1
. Some prior art editors do not allow for editing of the document. In other words, all editing is performed in the visual editor, and the source document is hidden from the author. Thus, the only mode of editing is in the visual editor. However some prior art editors allow editing of the source document, but it is model: either the source document or renderer version can be edited, but not both at the same time. In switching back and forth between the two modes
601
,
602
, the document would be reformatted and restructured such that it would be unrecognizable by the author.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an editor that allows web authors to edit HTML visually while preserving the HTML source document. This would preserve the structure and the format of the HTML document, while allowing modeless editing.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
These and other objects, features and technical advantages are achieved by a system and method which allows web authors to edit HTML visually while preserving the HTML source document. Thus, the structure and format of the HTML document is preserved, and modeless editing is permitted. The invention preserves the source document exactly as it is written when it is opened in the visual editor. Moreover, when an edit is made with the invention, only a portion of the HTML source document around that edit is updated, rather than rewriting the whole HTML source document. Furthermore, when an edit is made, the new HTML source code in the edited range is outputted in a format that is specified by the user.
In order to preserve the format of the document, format information is stored in the parsed tree. Thus, each node in the tree includes information on the format of the text and objects of the node. Note that formatting information may also be stored in the text in the tree. Any edits on that particular node will result in changing the information of that node only (if possible). Other nodes will not be reformatted unless necessary. Moreover, the
Edelstein Hava B.
Fuller Benjamin G.
Jaramillo Narciso B.
Lynch Kevin M.
Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.
Hong Stephen S.
Macromedia, Inc.
Paula Cesar B.
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