Method and apparatus for generating instances of documents

• US 20060136809A1
• Filed: 12/17/2004
• Published: 06/22/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/17/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Fernstrom, Christer
• Granted Patent: US 8,108,773 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/255
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

A composition model, which specifies a set of all possible facets that may be used to render a composition template, is used to bind unresolved elements in the composition template with a set of document components in a container. Different instances of a rendered document are produced by altering the set of document components in the container and using the composition model to re-bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the document components in the altered set of document components in the container.

Claims

1. A method for generating instances of documents, comprising:

defining a container with a set of document components;

defining a composition template that specifies one or more unresolved elements;

defining a composition model that specifies a set of all possible facets that may be used to render the composition template;

using the composition model to bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the set of document components in the container;

producing different instances of a rendered document by (i) altering the set of document components in the container and (ii) using the composition model to re-bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the document components in the altered set of document components in the container.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the set of documents in the container is altered by performing one or both of adding document components to the container and removing document components from the container.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising accessing the rendered document in response to a user-specified operation directed at the rendered document.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein a user specified operation is one of printing, viewing, and archiving.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein each document component exports provisions through a common interface that are associated with facets in the composition model.

6. The method according to claim 1, further comprising registering the documents components of the container in a component registry using a lookup service, wherein the composition model is used to bind the unresolved elements by querying the lookup service to identify facets specified in the composition model that are registered in the component registry.

7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising associating the composition model, the composition template, and the container with an object.

8. The method according to claim 7, further comprising adding or removing the document components in the container depending on whether component parts are added or removed from the object.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein said associating is performed by marking the object with an identifier or a description of the composition model, composition template, and components container.

10. The method according to claim 8, wherein said associating is performed by recording in a smart tag an identifier to or a copy of, the composition model, composition template, and components container.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein at least one document component in the set of document components in the container records data related to the object'"'"'s use or performance.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein said using the composition model to bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the set of document components in the container further comprises:

adding additional unresolved elements to the composition template;

recursively resolving the additional unresolved elements with the set of document components in the container.

13. The method according to claim 1, wherein said using the composition model to bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the set of document components in the container further comprises:

inserting content from document components in the container into the rendered document.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein the different instances of a rendered document are produced using linguistic processing to identify spelling errors, grammatical errors, anaphoric errors or semantic incoherence.

16. The method according to claim 1, wherein binding unresolved elements in the composition template further comprises providing transitive closure from the composition template by dereferencing unresolved elements therein using the document components in the container.

17. The method according to claim 1, further comprising using one or more elements stored in a header of the composition template to identify the composition model and the facets defined therein that are used for binding unresolved elements in the composition template.

18. The method according to claim 1, wherein the document components define variable data by exporting one or more anchor points that may be referenced by other document components.

14. The method according to claim 14, wherein said inserting further comprises inserting selected parts of the content in document components by referencing anchor points in the document components.

19. An apparatus, comprising:

a memory for storing processing instructions for generating instance of documents; and

a processor coupled to the memory for executing the processing instructions;

the processor in executing the processing instructions;

defining a container with a set of document components;

defining a composition template that specifies one or more unresolved elements;

defining a composition model that specifies a set of all possible facets that may be used to render the composition template;

using the composition model to bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the set of document components in the container;

producing different instances of a rendered document by (i) altering the set of document components in the container and (ii) using the composition model to re-bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the document components in the altered set of document components in the container.

20. An apparatus for generating instances of documents, comprising:

means for defining a container with a set of document components;

means for defining a composition template that specifies one or more unresolved elements;

means for defining a composition model that specifies a set of all possible facets that may be used to render the composition template;

means for using the composition model to bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the set of document components in the container;

means for producing different instances of a rendered document with (i) means for altering the set of document components in the container and (ii) means for using the composition model to re-bind the unresolved elements in the composition template with the document components in the altered set of document components in the container.