Systems and methods for digital document processing

• US 20010042078A1
• Filed: 04/16/2001
• Published: 11/15/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Picsel (Research) Limited
• Inventors: Anwar, Majid
• Granted Patent: US 7,036,076 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/500
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1206 resulting in increased flexibility in input data format or job format or job type
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1228 Printing driverless or using generic drivers
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 15/00 3D [Three Dimensional] image rendering
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 15/005 General purpose rendering architectures
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2340/10 Mixing of images, i.e. displayed pixel being the result of an operation, e.g. adding, on the corresponding input pixels

Abstract

Display technologies that separate the underlying functionality of an application program from the graphical display process, thereby eliminating or reducing the application'"'"'s need to control the device display and to provide graphical user interface tools and controls for the display. Additionally, such systems reduce or eliminate the need for an application program to be present on a processing system when displaying data created by or for that application program, such as a document or video stream. Thus it will be understood that in one aspect, the systems and methods described herein can display content, including documents, video streams, or other content, and will provide the graphical user functions for viewing the displayed document, such as zoom, pan, or other such functions, without need for the underlying application to be present on the system that is displaying the content. The advantages over the prior art of the systems and methods described herein include the advantage of allowing different types of content from different application programs to be shown on the same display within the same work space.

Claims

1. A digital document processing system, comprising

an application dispatcher for receiving an input bytestream representing source data in one of a plurality of predetermined data formats and for associating the input bytestream with one of said plurality of predetermined data formats,

a document agent for interpreting said input bytestream as a function of said associated predetermined data format and for parsing the input bytestream into a stream of document objects representative of internal representations of primitive structures within the input bytestream, and

a core document engine for converting said document objects into an internal representation data format and for mapping said internal representation data to a location on a display.

2. A digital document system according to

claim 1

, further comprising

a shape processor for processing said internal representation data to drive an output device.

3. A digital document processing system as claimed in

claim 1

, wherein said source data defines the content and structure of a digital document, and wherein said internal representation data describes said structure in terms of document objects of a plurality of data types and parameters defining properties of specific instances of the document objects, separately from said content.

4. A digital document processing system according to

claim 3

, wherein the parameters defining properties of specific instances include properties selected from the group consisting of dimensional, temporal, and physical.

5. A digital document processing system as claimed in

claim 3

, further including a library of objects types, said internal representation data being based on the content of said library.

6. A digital document processing system as claimed in

claim 3

, wherein said core document engine includes a parsing and rendering module adapted to generate an object and parameter based representation of a specific view of at least part of said internal representation data, on the basis of a first control input to said parsing and rendering module.

7. A digital document processing system according to

claim 6

wherein said parameter based representation includes parameters selected from the group consisting of fill, path, bounding box and transparency.

8. A digital document processing system according to

claim 5

, further including a shape processing module adapted to receive said object and parameter based representation of said specific view from said parsing and rendering module and to convert said object and parameter based representation into an output data format suitable for driving a particular output device.

9. A digital document processing system according to

claim 8

, wherein said shape processing module processes said objects on the basis of a shape defining the shape of the object bounded by the boundary box, the data content of the object and the transparency of the object.

10. A digital document processing system according to

claim 8

, wherein said shape processing module processes said objects on the basis of a shape defining the shape of the object bounded by the boundary box representative of a defined area on a display on which an object may be rendered.

11. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, wherein the system employs a chrominance/luminance-based colour model to describe colour data.

12. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, wherein the system employs a universal text encoding model.

13. A digital document processing system according to

claim 12

, wherein unviersal text encoding includes unicode, shift-mapping and big-5.

14. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, further including a process for compacting an internal representation of a source document by combining document objects having similar attributes.

15. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, further including a process for compacting an internal representation of a source document by combining document objects having similar style attributes.

16. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, wherein the system is adapted for multiple parallel implementation for processing source data from one or more data sources and for generating one or more sets of output representation data.

17. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, further comprising a graphical user interface for generating internal representations of interactive visual displays to be employed by a user for controlling the digital document processing system.

18. A digital document processing system according to

claim 17

, comprising a data processing device incorporating a graphical user interface.

19. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, having a platform adapted for being embedded into a device selected from the group consisting of a hand held computer, a mobile telephone, a set top box, a facsimile machine, a copier, an embedded computer system, a printer, an in-car system and a computer workstation.

20. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, having a processor including a core processor system.

21. A digital document processing system according to

claim 20

, wherein said core processor is a RISC processor.

22. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, wherein the document agent includes an export process for exporting data in a selected format.

23. A digital document processing system according to

claim 1

, adapted for operating on a multiple processing system.

24. A method for displaying content, comprising

receiving a source of data representative of the digital content having a structure and data content,

processing the source of data to identify a file format associated therewith,

translating the source of data, as a function of its identified file format, into an internal representation that includes a first data structure for storing information about the structure of the digital content, and a second data structure for storing information about the data content contained in the digital content,

generating a content file representative of an internal representation of content to be presented to a user, by processing the first data structure to determine a structure for a portion of the content file and by processing the second data structure to determine data content for the respective portion of the content file.

25. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein

receiving a source of data includes receiving a stream of input data from a data source.

26. A method according to

claim 25

, wherein the data source is selected from the group consisting of a data file, a byte stream generated from a peripheral device, and a byte stream generated from a data file.

27. A method according to

claim 25

, wherein

processing the source of data includes presenting information about the source of data to a plurality of document agents, each being capable of translating a data source of a known file format into the internal representation.

28. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein

translating the source of data into an internal representation includes processing the source of data to identify data therein, and mapping the identified data to a set of object types representative of types of content that are present in a source of data.

29. A method according to

claim 28

, wherein mapping includes mapping identified data to a set of object types suitable for translating source data representative of a content selected from the group consisting of a digital document, an audio/visual presentation, a music file, an interactive script, a user interface file and an image file.

30. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein mapping includes mapping the identified data to a set of object types including a bitmap object type, a vector graphic object type, a video type, an animation type, a button type, a script type and a text object type.

31. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein translating the source of data includes filtering portions of the source data to create a filtered internal representation of the source document.

32. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein translating the source of data includes altering the first data structure to adjust the structure of the digital content.

33. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein translating the source of data includes the further act of substituting data content in the second data structure to thereby modify content presented within the internal representation.

34. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein translating the source of data includes translating the source of data into a set of document objects of known object types, wherein a document object includes a set of parameters that define dimensional, temporal and physical characteristics of the document object.

35. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein the process is adpated for running on multiple processors.

36. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein the process provided a text encoding process, for encoding in a format selected from the group consisting of unicode, shift-mapping and big-5.

37. A method according to

claim 24

, wherein generating a content data file includes parsing a set of document objects having associated parameters, to define a structure and content for the content data file.

38. A method according to

claim 37

, further including processing the structure and content of the content data file to create a set of objects that define the content data file and are capable of being rendered on an output device.

39. A method according to

claim 38

, wherein processing the document objects includes processing the associated parameters for flowing content into a structure defined by the document object.

40. A method according to

claim 38

, wherein the output device includes a display selected from the group consisting of a visual display, an audio speaker, a video player, a television display, printer, disc drive, network, and an embedded display.

41. A system for interacting with content in a digital document, comprising

a document agent for converting content in the digital document into a set of document objects representative of internal representations of primitive structures, and

a core document engine for rendering said document objects to generate a display representative of the digital content,

a user interface for detecting input signals representative of input for modifying the content of the digital document, and

a process for changing the internal representation of the content as a function of the input signals, to modify the display of the digital content.

42. A system according to

claim 41

, wherien the user interface includes an input device selected from the group consisting of a mouse, a touch pad, a touch screen, a joy stick, a remote control and a keypad.