Dynamic anchoring of annotations to editable content

• US 20070061704A1
• Filed: 09/14/2005
• Published: 03/15/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ruiz, Rafael, Simova, Svetlana
• Granted Patent: US 8,015,482 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/210
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

Described is the annotating of computer document content, particularly editable content, by saving annotations in a separate annotation store, and mapping the annotations back to the content. By mapping, no data are added to the original content at runtime, and only minimal data need be added to the content when persisted. An annotation is anchored to a piece of runtime content, such as upon creation of the annotation, by maintaining annotation data as well as start and end pointers mapped to the annotated piece. Upon saving the content, information (e.g., an anchor marker including an identifier) is persisted with the piece of content to allow the annotation to be re-anchored to the piece upon subsequent reload. For example, when loading content from persistent storage that includes an annotation identifier, the annotation identifier is processed to locate a start and end of the portion and an annotation in the annotation store.

Claims

1. At least one computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform steps, comprising:

anchoring an annotation to a piece of runtime content without substantially altering the runtime content from the perspective of a program that has loaded the content; and

persisting information in association with the piece of content on saving the content, the information allowing the annotation to be re-anchored to the piece of content upon a subsequent reload into a subsequent instance of runtime content.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein anchoring the annotation to the piece of runtime content comprises associating start and end pointers that indicate the piece relative to at least one other piece of the content.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising, dynamically updating at least one of the start and end pointers as the content is edited.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein associating the start and end pointers with the piece comprises accessing an annotation store based on an identifier corresponding to the piece.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the identifier is maintained with a previously persisted instance of the content, and further comprising, resolving the identifier into the start and end pointers.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein the identifier is generated upon creation of the annotation, and wherein anchoring the annotation to a piece of runtime content comprises maintaining the start and end pointers in association with the identifier.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein persisting the information in association with the piece of content comprises writing the information to a store that is separate from the content.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein persisting the information in association with the piece of content comprises adding pointer data to the content that includes an identifier corresponding to the annotation.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein adding the pointer data comprises surrounding the piece of content with a XAML start tag including the identifier and a XAML end tag including the identifier.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising, maintaining the annotation as annotation information in an annotation store.

11. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

loading content from persistent storage, the content including a portion thereof that is associated with an annotation identifier;

processing the annotation identifier to indicate a start and end of the portion; and

associating an annotation with the portion, the annotation corresponding to the start and end of the portion.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein processing the annotation identifier comprises using the annotation identifier to locate in an annotation store a set of annotation information that corresponds to the annotation.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising, maintaining data for the start and the end of the portion in a dynamic anchor table.

14. The method of claim 12 wherein maintaining the data for the start and the end of the portion comprises dynamically adjusting the data as the content is edited.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein location data corresponding the start or end of the portion, or both, changes after loading the content, and further comprising, upon saving the content, persisting the location data as changed, and persisting the annotation identifier in association with the piece of content.

16. In a computing environment, a system comprising:

an annotation store that maintains a plurality of sets of annotation information;

a dynamic anchor manager that converts an identifier associated with a piece of content that is annotated into a mechanism that anchors annotation data associated with one of the sets in the annotation store to the piece of runtime content without substantially altering the runtime content from the perspective of a program that has loaded the content.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein the mechanism that anchors the annotation data to the piece of content comprises start and end pointers that are dynamically maintained by the dynamic anchor manager such that the annotation data remain anchored to the piece of content as the content is edited.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein the dynamic anchor manager communicates with a dynamic selection processor to resolve the identifier into the start and end pointers upon loading the content.

19. The system of claim 16 further comprising means for serializing the content including means for associating the identifier with the piece of content upon serialization, and means for persisting the annotation data.

20. The system of claim 19 wherein the means for persisting the annotation data comprises means for storing the annotation data separate from the content.

21. The system of claim 19 wherein the means for persisting the annotation data comprises means for storing the annotation data integrated with the content.