Designing Electronic Forms

• US 20090177961A1
• Filed: 04/02/2008
• Published: 07/09/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/24/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Mohan, Bulusu Krishna, Paoli, Jean D., Mollicone, Laurent, Catorcini, Alessandro, Fortini, Christian
• Granted Patent: US 8,918,729 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/239
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• 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

Abstract

A system and method enabling a designer to build electronic forms from hierarchical data is described. Displays of hierarchical data, facilitation of selection of a portion of the hierarchical data, and displays of one or more transformation-language components associated with a selected portion of hierarchical data are described. From the transformation-language components selected by a designer, generation of an electronic form is also described.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

displaying a visual representation of markup-language data in a first area of a screen;

receiving input selecting a piece of the markup-language data;

identifying a transformation-language component based on the selected piece of markup-language data;

receiving input to place the transformation-language component on a second area of the screen; and

rendering the transformation-language component on the second area of the screen.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating a transformation-language document based on the rendering of the transformation-language component.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

receiving input to save the second area of the screen prior to generating the transformation-language document.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein rendering the transformation-language component on the second area of the screen further comprises:

creating a rendering-language document to aid in rendering the transformation-language component on the second area of the screen; and

annotating the rendering-language document to include a reference to the transformation-language component.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein annotating the rendering-language document further includes reference to a placement of the transformation-language component.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

accessing the transformation-language component referenced in the annotated rendering-language document; and

compiling the accessed transformation-language component into a transformation-language document.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying the transformation-language component based on the selected piece of markup-language data is based on a structure and data type of the piece of markup-language data.

8. A method comprising:

receiving input to select a node from a tree-arrangement of XML data;

identifying an XSLT component based on the selected node of the XML data;

annotating an XHTML document to include a reference to the XSLT component;

rendering the XSLT component based on the annotated XHTML document; and

generating an XSLT file based on the annotated XHTML document.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein identifying the XSLT component based on the selected node of the XML data is based on a schema governing the selected node of the XML data.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the XML data is part of a generalized instance.

11. A method comprising:

receiving a markup-language document having a structure;

inferring a markup-language schema based on the structure of the markup-language document; and

coupling portions of the markup-language document with fragments of the markup-language schema.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

presenting the coupled portions to a designer;

enabling the designer to select one or more of the coupled portions; and

creating an electronic form containing data-entry fields associated with the coupled portions.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the coupled portions contain information setting forth all possible documents for the coupled portion.

14. A method comprising:

receiving a markup-language schema;

inferring a markup-language document having a structure based on the markup-language schema; and

coupling portions of the markup-language document with fragments of the markup-language schema.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

presenting the coupled portions to a designer;

enabling the designer to select one or more of the coupled portions; and

creating an electronic form containing data-entry fields associated with the coupled portions.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the coupled portions contain information setting forth all possible documents for the coupled portion.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein the markup-language schema does not conform to a recognized standard.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein the markup-language schema defines an arbitrary syntax.

19. A method comprising:

receiving a markup-language document having a structure;

receiving a markup-language schema related to the markup-language document; and

coupling portions of the markup-language document with fragments of the markup-language schema.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

presenting the coupled portions to a designer;

enabling the designer to select one or more of the coupled portions; and

creating an electronic form containing data-entry fields associated with the coupled portions.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein the coupled portions contain information setting forth all possible documents for the coupled portion.

22. An apparatus comprising:

means for presenting markup-language data having portions, each of which has a structure;

means for selecting a piece of the markup-language data;

means for transforming the piece of markup-language data into a visual representation according to the structure of the portion;

means for displaying into an area of a screen the visual representation of the portion;

means for repeating the previous steps;

means for saving the area of the screen containing the visual representations of one or more of the portions into an electronic form.