Electronic document conversion

• US 20070038927A1
• Filed: 08/15/2005
• Published: 02/15/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 08/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Roberts, Scott, Teutsch, Brian, Jin, Jun, David, Willson, Lai, Shuk-Yan, Bell, Joshua, Tsybert, Aleksandr, Snow, David, Dallett, Nicholas
• Granted Patent: US 7,613,996 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets

Abstract

Systems and/or methods (“tools”) are described that convert or present conversion problems for electronic documents. The tools may convert a generally unstructured electronic document to a generally structured electronic document using non-visual textual and layout information of the unstructured document. The tools can also present possible problems with this or other types of conversion. And the tools can enable a user to alter an electronic document'"'"'s schema without altering its visual layout.

Claims

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

receiving non-visual textual and layout information for an electronic document having data not linked to a structured schema;

recognizing, based on the information, a field of the electronic document to provide a recognized field; and

inferring a structured schema governing the recognized field.

2. The media of claim 1, wherein the information comprises non-visual textual information for an arbitrary human language and the act of inferring the structured schema builds the structured schema having the arbitrary human language.

3. The media of claim 1, further comprising building a second electronic document having data linked to the structured schema.

4. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises a short string of text followed by a colon and one or more spaces.

5. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises any combination of three or more of the following characters:

( )/_.

6. The media of claim 5, further comprising recognizing a text data-entry field or a rich text data-entry field and wherein the act of inferring infers structured schema governing the text data-entry field or the rich text data-entry field.

7. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises a table cell that is empty and has four borders.

8. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises a table cell that has a short piece of text, four borders, and a large number of spaces or two or more lines.

9. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises two or more rows of fields having a similar or same size, orientation, and content.

10. The media of claim 9, wherein the act of recognizing recognizes a repeating table and wherein the act of inferring infers structured schema capable of governing the repeating table.

11. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises an open bracket and a closed bracket with a space or line between them.

12. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of recognizing analyzes the information to determine if the electronic document comprises a word-processing form field.

13. A method comprising:

presenting a visual construct of an electronic form, the visual construct capable of being governed by a first schema part or a second schema part, the first schema part and the second schema part enabling different functionality for the visual construct;

enabling a user to select the first schema part or the second schema part to provide a selected schema part; and

adding the selected schema part to the electronic form, the selected schema part governing the visual construct.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the act of adding the selected schema part is effective to replace a non-structural schema part with a structural schema part.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the act of presenting renders the first schema part, the act of enabling enables the user to select the second schema part, and the act of adding replaces the first schema part with the second schema part effective to alter the electronic form'"'"'s schema but not a layout of the visual construct.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein one of the first and second schemas enables a fixed-cell table and the other enables a repeating table.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein one of the first and second schemas enables check-box fields and the other enables radio-button fields.

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

presenting indicia of a conversion problem between a pre-converted electronic document and a converted electronic document;

presenting a visual representation of at least a portion of the converted electronic document, the visual representation having a visual construct associated with the conversion problem; and

visually indicating a correlation between the indicia and the visual construct.

19. The media of claim 18, wherein the act of presenting the indicia presents the indicia in a first region of a user interface and the act of presenting the visual representation presents the visual representation in a second region of the user interface.

20. The media of claim 18, further comprising presenting instructions indicating one or more actions selectable by a user and capable of eliminating a conversion problem.