Multisource composable projection of text

• US 7,675,527 B2
• Filed: 01/26/2007
• Issued: 03/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Tilford, John Sells
• Primary Examiner(s): GOOD JOHNSON, MOTILEWA
• Application Number:
  US11/698,357
• Publication Number:
  US 20080183765A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,138 Days
• Field of Search: 345/467, 345/537, 345/545, 382/187
• US Class Current: 345/619
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities

Abstract

Embodiments consistent with the subject matter of this disclosure may transparently project text fragments from one or more buffers into one or more projection buffers by reference, instead of by copying. Clients or applications, such as, for example, compilers, language services, an editor'"'"'s rendering system, or other client or application, may transparently process the projected text fragments projected into the projection buffers as if processing simple text files. In some embodiments, text of a first language, embedded in a document having text of one or more other languages, may be projected to a projection buffer and provided to an application, which may process text of the first language. In other embodiments, text may be elided from a document by projecting to a projection buffer only text not to be elided from the document.

Claims

1. A method, implemented on a processing device, for projecting data to a first buffer for use by an application, the method comprising:

projecting a portion of data from a second buffer to the first buffer the first buffer being a projection buffer;

projecting a portion of data from a third buffer to the first buffer, as a result of the projecting of the portion of the data from the second buffer and the portion of the data from the third buffer, the first buffer does not include any data projected from the second buffer and the third buffer, but instead includes an ordered list of source spans describing a span of the portion of the second buffer and a span of the portion of the third buffer; and

providing, to an application, the portions of the data projected to the first buffer, the portion of the data from the second buffer and the portion of the data from the third buffer appearing to the application as if included in the first buffer, wherein

the method is performed by the processing device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein a change to the portion of data in the second buffer or to the portion of data in the third buffer is projected to a corresponding portion of data in the first buffer.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein when a change is made to the first buffer and the change includes at least one of the portion of data projected from the second buffer or the portion of data projected from the third buffer, then the change is applied to the at least one of the portion of data of the second buffer or the portion of data of the third buffer.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

inserting or deleting a source span with respect to the first buffer, the inserted or the deleted source span appearing to the application as if text corresponding to the source span is inserted or deleted, respectively, with respect to the first buffer.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the portion of the data included in the second buffer includes embedded programming language code, and the method further comprises:

processing of the embedded programming language code in the second buffer by a development tool to produce an output; and

providing output produced by the development tool to a buffer other than the second buffer, the output including visual adornments.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

projecting a portion of data from another buffer to the second buffer.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the data includes at least one of text or metadata.

8. A processing device comprising:

at least one processor;

a memory including instructions for the at least one processor; and

a bus providing a communication link between the at least one processor and the memory, the memory comprising;

instructions for projecting at least one portion of a text buffer to a first projection buffer such that a first ordered list of one or more source spans describing one or more spans of the at least one projected portion of the text buffer is included in the first projection buffer and no textual data from the at least one projected portion of the text buffer is included in the first projection buffer,

instructions for projecting at least one portion of the first projection buffer, including the at least one portion of the text buffer, to a second projection buffer such that a second ordered list of one or more source spans describing one or more spans of the at least one portion of the first projection buffer is included in the second projection buffer and no textual data from the at least a portion of the first projection buffer is included in the second projection buffer; and

instructions for an application to receive data associated with the second projection buffer.

9. The processing device of claim 8, wherein the at least one portion of the text buffer projected to the first projection buffer appears to a second application as if included in the first projection buffer.

10. The processing device of claim 8, further comprising:

instructions for eliding one or more regions of text from display by an editor, wherein;

the instructions for eliding one or more regions of text from display by an editor comprise instructions for projecting to the first projection buffer only a portion of the text buffer to be accessed by the application, and

the application includes the editor.

11. The processing device of claim 8, wherein a change to any portion of the text buffer that is projected to the first projection buffer and subsequently projected from the first projection buffer to the second projection buffer is reflected in the first projection buffer and the second projection buffer.

12. The processing device of claim 8, wherein:

the memory further comprises instructions for concatenating a plurality of documents such that the concatenated plurality of documents appear to be a single document, and

the instructions for concatenating a plurality of documents further comprise instructions for projecting portions of a plurality of text buffers to the first projection buffer or to the second projection buffer.

13. The processing device of claim 8, wherein the memory further comprises:

instructions for projecting at least one region of text including only embedded language code to the first projection buffer;

instructions for projecting prefix and suffix boilerplate text to a position within the first projection buffer being before and after the embedded language code, respectively; and

instructions for providing data represented by the first projection buffer to a compiler to process the embedded language text.

14. A tangible machine-readable medium having instructions recorded thereon for at least one processor, the tangible machine-readable medium comprising:

instructions for projecting a portion of text data from at least a portion of a source buffer to a plurality of projection buffers such that, as a result of the projecting, the plurality of projection buffers include an ordered list of one or more spans describing the projected portion of the source buffer and do not include the portion of the text data projected; and

instructions for providing at least portions of at least two of the plurality of projection buffers, including the projected portion of text data, to one or more applications.

15. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 14, wherein no portion of any of the plurality of projection buffers is its own source, directly or indirectly.

16. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 14, further comprising:

instructions for inserting or deleting source spans with respect to at least one of the plurality of projection buffers, any inserted or deleted source spans with respect to the at least one of the plurality of projection buffers appearing to the one or more applications as if text was inserted or deleted, respectively, with respect to the at least one of the plurality of projection buffers.

17. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 14, further comprising:

instructions for projecting a portion of a second source buffer including embedded language code in a first language to one of the plurality of projection buffers, other portions of the second source buffer including text other than the embedded language code in the first language;

instructions for providing the one of the plurality of projection buffers to an application for processing;

instructions for projecting output of the application to another one of the plurality of projection buffers, the output including visual adornments.

18. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 14, further comprising:

instructions for applying changes made to any of the plurality of projection buffers to corresponding portions of source buffers projected to the changed plurality of projection buffers.

19. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 14, further comprising:

instructions for applying changes made to one or more source buffers to portions of one or more of the plurality of projection buffers to which the changed one or more source buffers are projected.