Template for rendering an electronic form

• US 20060294451A1
• Filed: 06/27/2005
• Published: 12/28/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kelkar, Amol S., van Velzen, Danny, Rivers-Moore, Jonathan E.
• Granted Patent: US 7,543,228 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/235
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

Systems and/or methods are described that enable an electronic form to be rendered using a template. The template may be independent of the electronic form'"'"'s current state or instance. In one embodiment, the systems and/or methods build a rendering file to render a current instance of an electronic form using the template and a view tree associated with the current instance.

Claims

1. A template for an electronic form comprising:

a representation of the electronic form; and

pieces of rendering data mapped to the representation effective to enable the pieces of rendering data to be associated with multiple data instances of the electronic form.

2. The template of claim 1, wherein the pieces of rendering data are usable to render an arbitrary data instance permitted by the electronic form.

3. The template of claim 1, wherein the pieces of rendering data are associable with a data instance of the electronic form using a view tree, the view tree associated with that data instance and capable of being mapped to the representation.

4. The template of claim 1, wherein the representation is oriented to views permitted by the electronic form.

5. The template of claim 1, wherein one of the pieces of rendering data may be used more than once to render multiple nodes of a particular data instance.

6. The template of claim 1, wherein the pieces of rendering data are in total smaller than any rendering file by which any data instance permitted by the electronic form may be rendered.

7. A method comprising:

receiving a user-initiated request capable of altering an existing data instance of a network-enabled electronic form;

altering the existing data instance based on the user-initiated request to provide an altered data instance; and

building a view tree based on the altered data instance, the view tree indicating pieces of rendering data that are capable of rendering the altered data instance.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising building a rendering file comprising the pieces of rendering data indicated as those capable of rendering the altered data instance.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the act of building the rendering file comprises traversing the view tree and a template having the pieces of rendering data.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the act of building the rendering file is performed by a network computer and further comprising communicating the rendering file to a local computer from which the user-initiated request is received.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising communicating the view tree, a template having the pieces of rendering data, and a software module to a local computer from which the user-initiated request is received, the software module capable of building a rendering file comprising the pieces of rendering data indicated as those capable of rendering the altered data instance.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the software module is further capable of building the rendering file by traversing the view tree and the template.

13. The method of claim 7, wherein the user-initiated request is capable of altering a structure of the existing data instance.

14. The method of claim 7, wherein the user-initiated request requires performance of an operation at a network computer to effectuate the altering of the existing data instance.

15. The method of claim 7, wherein the act of altering the existing data instance comprises performing a logic operation on the existing data instance.

16. The method of claim 7, wherein the act of altering the existing data instance comprises altering the existing data instance'"'"'s structure.

17. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions therein that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising:

receiving pieces of rendering data capable of rendering multiple data instances of a network-enabled electronic form, the pieces of rendering data mapped to a representation of the network-enabled electronic form;

sending a user-initiated request requiring alteration to an existing data instance of the network-enabled electronic form;

receiving a view tree based on a data instance reflecting an alteration to the existing data instance required by the user-initiated request, the view tree indicating nodes of the representation in which pieces of rendering data capable of rendering the data instance are mapped; and

building a rendering file having the pieces of rendering data capable of rendering the data instance.

18. The media of claim 17, further comprising rendering the rendering file.

19. The media of claim 17, further comprising receiving a software module capable of building the rendering file.

20. The media of claim 17, wherein the act of receiving pieces comprises receiving a stateless view template having the pieces of rendering data and the representation.