Providing a presentation engine adapted for use by a constrained resource client device

• US 20040133855A1
• Filed: 09/29/2003
• Published: 07/08/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Comcast Cable Communications Management LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Original Assignee: TVWorks LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Inventors: Flynn, David, Etheredge, Robert, Guerra, Christopher John, Carson, Neil, Blair, Robert Bruce
• Granted Patent: US 7,299,411 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/517
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2355 involving reformatting operations of additional data, e.g. HTML pages optimising the visualization of content for information retrieval from the Internet G06F16/9577; tracking of instant messages H04L51/234; media packet handling at the source H04L65/762
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4782 Web browsing , e.g. WebTV
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8543 using a description language, e.g. Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group [MHEG], eXtensible Markup Language [XML] information retrieval of semistructured data, the underlying structure being taken into account, e.g. mark-up language structure data G06F16/80
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17336 Handling of requests in head-ends

Abstract

A transcoder that converts text-based computer software instructions or code intended for use by a presentation engine into a binary code adapted for use by a constrained function presentation engine.

Claims

1. A method of propagating presentation code to a client, said client using a constrained function presentation engine, said method comprising:

identifying style information within the presentation code;

resolving said style information to a subset of style information adapted for use by said constrained function presentation engine, said resolved style information within said propagated binary file being adapted to enable client manipulation.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

compressing said presentation code including resolved style information to provide a binary file; and

propagating said binary file toward said client.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein:

said presentation code is substantially compliant with an HTML/CSS system.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein:

said presentation code comprises at least one of in-line XML styles and CSS style sheets.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

translating said binary file into a document tree containing a plurality of nodes, each of said nodes comprising at least one user manipulable property.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

validating said presentation code and resolved style information to enable non-validating parsing at said client.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

adapting the style resolving process in response to an indicium of capability of a client.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein said indicium comprises a control signal received from the client.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein:

said presentation code comprises a markup file and associated CSS style sheets.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein said resolving said style information comprises at least one of reducing the number of style properties, deleting style rules and simplifying style dependencies.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising compressing common resolved styles.

13. The constrained function presentation engine of claim 10, wherein said display objects are dynamically altered using a Document Object Model (DOM) API.

12. A constrained function presentations engine, comprising:

a non-validating parser for extracting presentation code including resolved style elements from a received file to provide a tree of nodes representing a document to be presented; and

a layout engine, for processing the tree of nodes to generate thereby a set of display objects having corresponding display properties including at least one user manipulable property.

14. A signal bearing medium including a representation of software instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform a method of propagating presentation code to a client, said client using a constrained function presentation engine, said method comprising:

identifying style information within the presentation code;

resolving said style information to a subset of style information adapted for use by said constrained function presentation engine, said resolved style information within said propagated binary file being adapted to enable client manipulation.