Clipboard Augmentation with References

• US 20080109832A1
• Filed: 01/09/2007
• Published: 05/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Naravanan, Raman, Augustine, Matthew S., Ozzie, Jack E., Ozzie, Raymond E., Suthar, Paresh S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,453,066 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/329
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/048 Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/543 User-generated data transfer, e.g. clipboards, dynamic data exchange [DDE], object linking and embedding [OLE]

Abstract

Systems, methods, and data structures for augmenting data placed on the clipboard with additional data are disclosed. Where the data placed on the clipboard may include one or more references to other information, such systems, methods, or data structures may retrieve data referred to by a reference and place such data, or data associated with the retrieved data, on the clipboard.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving a notification that data conforming to a data format and including a reference has been placed on a computer-implemented clipboard;

identifying augmented data that has an augmented data format and is associated with the data by retrieving referenced data associated with the reference; and

adding the augmented data to the clipboard.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the augmented data comprises the referenced data.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the reference is of one of the following types:

a URL, a local file system path, a networked file system path, and a memory location.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the clipboard maintains the data and the augmented data as alternate data formats for a single clipboard data item.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the reference is a single reference that is associated with two or more pieces of referenced data and identifying further comprises retrieving the two or more pieces of referenced data associated with the reference.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein adding the augmented data to the clipboard further comprises adding each of the two or more pieces of referenced data to the clipboard as a new clipboard data item that is not specified to comprise an alternate data format for a single clipboard data item.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying further comprises transforming at least one of the data and the referenced data using a transform specification.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying further comprises generating the augmented data using executable code associated with at least one of the data format, the augmented data format, and the referenced data.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the data format comprises a structured data item that uses a structured data format.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the data format comprises:

a structured data item that uses a structured data format;

a feed data item; and

a presentation data item.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

registering for paste processing.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein identifying and adding are not performed until a paste operation is initiated.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying and adding are only performed when a registered converter exists for the data format.

14. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

identifying second augmented data that has a second augmented data format and is associated with the data wherein the second augmented data format is different from the augmented data format; and

adding the second augmented data to the clipboard.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein the data is placed on the clipboard by a first application and the receiving, identifying, and adding are performed by a second application, and the first application and the second application are different applications.

16. A system, comprising:

a computer-implemented clipboard;

a source application configured to place data conforming to a data format and including a reference on the clipboard; and

an augmentation module configured to;

receive a notification when the data has been placed on the clipboard by the source application;

identify augmented data that has an augmented data format and is associated with the data by retrieving referenced data associated with reference; and

add the augmented data to the clipboard.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising:

a clipboard converter used by the augmentation module and configured to retrieve the referenced data associated with the reference and produce the augmented data.

18. The system of claim 16, further comprising:

a destination application configured to receive the augmented data using a paste operation.

19. The system of claim 16 wherein the source application and the augmentation module are implemented in different applications.

20. One or more computer-readable media containing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, implement the following operations:

receiving a notification at a first application that data conforming to a data format and including a reference has been placed on a clipboard by a second application;

registering for paste processing;

identifying augmented data that has an augmented data format and is associated with the data by retrieving referenced data associated with the reference and making the augmented data comprise the referenced data; and

adding the augmented data to the clipboard, wherein identifying and adding are performed by the first application, identifying and adding are performed only after a paste operation is initiated, and the first application and the second application are different applications.