File formats, methods, and computer program products for representing presentations

• US 20060136827A1
• Filed: 12/20/2004
• Published: 06/22/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/20/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Villaron, Shawn A., Garg, Sharad K.
• Granted Patent: US 7,614,000 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/730
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/4393 Multimedia presentations, e.g. slide shows, multimedia albums
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces

Abstract

File formats, methods, and computer program products are provided for representing a presentation in a modular content framework. The modular content framework may include a file format container associated with modular parts. A file format includes logically separate modular parts that are associated with each other by one or more relationships where each modular part is associated with a relationship type. The modular parts include a presentation part representing a start part for the presentation, a slide master part associated with the presentation part, and a slide layout part associated with the slide master part. The modular parts may also include a document properties part containing built-in properties associated with the file format, a thumbnail part containing associated thumbnails, and a slide part containing a slide in the presentation. Each modular part is capable of being interrogated separately, extracted from the presentation, and/or reused in a different presentation.

Claims

1. A file format for representing at least one of a presentation and a presentation template, the file format representing at least one of the presentation and the presentation template in a modular content framework implemented within a computing apparatus, the file format comprising:

modular parts logically separate but associated by one or more relationships wherein each modular part is associated with a relationship type and wherein the modular parts include;

a presentation part representing a start part for at least one of the presentation and the presentation template; and

a slide master part associated with the presentation part and operative to specify main components of at least one of the presentation and the presentation template;

wherein each modular part is capable of being interrogated separately without other modular parts being interrogated.

2. The file format of claim 1, wherein the modular content framework includes a file format container associated with the modular parts wherein the modular parts further include:

a document properties part containing built-in properties associated with the file format; and

a thumbnail part containing thumbnails associated with the file format.

3. The file format of claim 1, wherein the modular parts further include at least one of the following:

a slide layout part associated with the slide master part and operative to specify a structure of the presentation; and

a slide part containing a slide in the presentation;

wherein a modular part along with associated modular parts identified by traversing relationships of the modular part are capable of being one of extracted from and copied from the presentation and reused in a different presentation.

4. The file format of claim 3, wherein the modular parts further include at least one of the following:

a style sheet part containing data associated with a style of a referring modular part;

a handout master part containing data associated with defining a style of handouts associated with the presentation;

a notes slide part containing notes associated with the slide;

a notes master part containing data associated with defining a style of a note slide associated with the notes;

a comments part containing comments associated with the presentation;

a thumbnail part containing thumbnails associated with the presentation;

a mail envelope part containing envelope data where a user of the presentation has sent the presentation via electronic mail; and

a code file part containing code associated with the presentation.

5. The file format of claim 4, wherein the modular parts further include at least one of the following:

an image part containing image data associated with the presentation;

a sound part containing audio data associated with the presentation;

a movie part containing movie data associated with the presentation;

an embedded object part containing an object associated with the presentation;

a user data part containing customized data capable of being read into the presentation and changed;

a font part containing data that defines fonts associated with the presentation; and

a drawing object part containing an object built using a drawing platform.

6. The file format of claim 5, wherein at least some of the modular parts are organized in collection types and wherein the collection types include at least one of the following:

a comments collection wherein the comments collection includes the comments part;

a drawings collection wherein the drawings collection includes the drawing object part;

a fonts collection wherein the fonts collection includes the font part;

a subdocument collection wherein the subdocument collection includes a modular parts that contain embedded documents associated with other modular parts in the presentation;

an images collection wherein the images collection includes the image part;

a slide layouts collection wherein the slide layouts collection includes the slide layout part;

a handout masters collection wherein the handout masters collection includes the handout master part;

a slide masters collection wherein the masters collection includes the slide master part;

a notes masters collection wherein the masters collection includes the notes master part;

a media collection wherein the media collection includes the movie and the sound parts;

a notes slides collection wherein the notes slides collection includes the note slides part;

a slides collection wherein the slides collection includes the slide part;

a styles collection wherein the styles collection includes the styles sheet part; and

an embeddings collection wherein the embeddings collection includes the embedded object part and the user data part.

7. The file format of claim 3, where the relationship types associated with the modular parts comprise at least one of a font relationship, a code file relationship capable of identifying potentially harmful code files, a user data relationship, a style sheet relationship, a comments relationship, an embedded object relationship, a drawing object relationship, an image relationship, a sound relationship, a movie relationship, a mail envelope relationship, a document properties relationship, a thumbnail relationship, a slide relationship, a notes slide relationship, a slide master relationship, a slide layout relationship, and a file format container embedded object relationship.

8. The file format of claim 3, wherein content of the slide is capable of being one of extracted from and copied from the presentation and reused in a different presentation.

9. The file format of claim 3, wherein each modular part is capable of being locked separately while the other modular parts remain available for locking whereby multiple editors may each concurrently edit a modular part of the file format.

10. The file format of claim 3, wherein the modular parts are capable of providing semantics about content within the presentation when a modular part is interrogated.

11. The file format of claim 3, wherein the slide is authored in an authoring context of the presentation and wherein the slide is capable of being one of extracted from and copied from the presentation and moved to a different presentation and wherein the slide is further capable of being altered to appear as though the slide was authored in an authoring context of the different presentation.

12. The file format of claim 4, wherein the file format is capable of providing a high-resolution thumbnail preview of each slide in the presentation.

13. The file format of claim 1, wherein the file format is formatted according to at least one of a markup language format and a binary format.

14. A method for representing a presentation in a file format wherein modular parts associated with the presentation include each part written into the file format, the method comprising:

writing a presentation part of the file format;

querying the presentation part for a slide master relationship type;

writing a slide master part of the file format separate from the presentation part;

establishing a relationship between the slide master part and the presentation part;

writing a slide layout part separate from the slide master part; and

establishing a relationship between the slide layout part and the slide master part.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising establishing a relationship between the presentation part and a file format container wherein the file format container includes:

a document properties part containing built-in properties associated with the file format; and

a thumbnail part containing thumbnails associated with the file format.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising writing a slide part separate from the slide master part and containing a slide for the presentation and establishing a relationship between the slide part and the slide layout part.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

writing modular parts associated with relationship types wherein the modular parts that are to be shared are written only once; and

establishing relationships to the modular parts written.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein writing the modular parts associated with the relationship types comprises at least one of the following:

writing a style sheet part containing data associated with a style of the presentation and establishing a relationship between the style sheet part and the slide master part;

writing a notes slide part containing notes associated with the slide and establishing a relationship between the notes slide part and the slide part;

writing a mail envelope part containing electronic mail envelope data and establishing a relationship between the mail envelope part and the presentation part; and

writing a code file part containing code associated with the presentation and establishing a relationship between the code file part and the presentation part.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein writing the modular parts associated with the relationship types comprises:

a) examining data associated with the presentation;

b) determining whether the data examined has been written to a modular part;

c) when the data examined has not been written to the modular part, writing the modular part to include the data examined, examining other data associated with the presentation, and repeating b) through d); and

d) when the data examined has been written to the modular part, examining other data and repeating b) through d).

20. A computer program product comprising a computer-readable medium having control logic stored therein for causing a computer to represent a presentation in a file format wherein modular parts of the file format include each part written into the file format, the control logic comprising computer-readable program code for causing the computer to:

write a presentation part of the file format;

query the presentation part for a slide master relationship type;

write a slide master part of the file format separate from the presentation part;

establish a relationship between the slide master part and the presentation part;

write a slide layout part separate from the slide master part; and

establish a relationship between the slide layout part and the slide master part.