Serial storage of ink and its properties

• US 20050103871A1
• Filed: 12/23/2004
• Published: 05/19/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Dresevic, Bodin, Bhattacharyay, Subha, Balaz, Rudolph, Karlov, Donald D., Haluptzok, Patrick Michael
• Granted Patent: US 7,317,834 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 235/487
• 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 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

Ink is stored in a data structure that permits later retrieval by applications. The ink includes stroke information and property information. Properties may be associated globally with the ink strokes and/or with each stroke individually. Aspects include a data structure that supports ink for multiple applications. Using the storage system, method, and data structure, various applications may expand on ink to include additional attributes while permitting the ink to be used in applications not supporting the additional attributes. When encountering an unknown tag, the applications will skip past the end of the tag and its associated data to start reading the next tag.

Claims

1. A method for creating a data structure for storing ink comprising the steps of:

receiving ink strokes;

determining at least one ink property associated with the ink strokes;

determining if the ink property applies to at least two ink strokes; and

,

creating a data structure with one representation of the ink property for said at least two ink strokes.

2. A system for creating a data structure comprising:

an input configured to receive ink strokes;

a processor configured to parse the received ink strokes and to determine at least one property associated with the ink strokes; and

a storage configured to store the ink strokes in a data structure with at least one tag identifying said at least one property.

3. A system for using a data structure comprising:

a storage configured to store ink strokes in a data structure with at least one tag identifying at least one property; and

,

a processor configured to retrieve the ink strokes and said at least one tag and apply said property to said ink strokes when rendering said ink strokes.