Systems and methods for automatically converting web pages to structured shared web-writable pages

• US 20040261023A1
• Filed: 01/07/2004
• Published: 12/23/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/20/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Bier, Eric A.
• Granted Patent: US 7,703,004 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/239
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/88 Mark-up to mark-up conversion conversion for visualization in web browsing G06F16/9577
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

A system and method for an automatic conversion of web pages to shared structured web pages. An input web page is augmented with syntactic elements of a server-based software tool to create and customize group-writeable web pages. Sub-regions of the web page that are to be individually-editable items are identified, and syntactic elements are added to show where these editable regions begin and end, and where clickable buttons will appear that trigger the editing of an individual item, the addition of a new item, or other editing features. Also, syntactic elements are added that act as templates for the layout of any item to be added or modified. The conversion process includes parsing the Web page into an intermediate structure, adding information to individual tokens about the structures in which the tokens play a part, and them generating the new page while making one or more final passes through the intermediate structure from beginning to end.

Claims

1. A method for automatically converting documents expressed in a markup language to structured shared writeable editable documents, comprising:

inputting a first document having a first document coding expressed in the markup language;

converting the first document into a second document having a second document coding expressed in the markup language;

constructing a template describing how each of at least one editable item in the second document will be formatted and displayed, and which user interface interactors will be provided to edit fields of that editable item; and

outputting the second document, containing content similar in appearance to the first document, wherein a region of content of the first document is identified as the at least one editable item, and at least one sub-region of the at least one region is identified as an editable field within that editable item.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein outputting the second document comprises:

identifying at least one of at least one beginning and at least one ending of at least one sequence of editable items; and

adding, removing, or modifying markup language elements at at least some of the at least one beginning and the at least one ending of the at least one sequence.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein adding, removing, or modifying the markup language elements comprises inserting a user-selectable icon that causes new editable items to be added to at least some of the at least one sequence.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising inputting conversion parameters usable to convert the first document into the second document.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein inputting the conversion parameters comprises selecting which types of content regions in the first document are to become sequences of editable items.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein inputting the conversion parameters further comprises selecting options that determine the content of the templates that will be constructed and applied to the editable items.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein inputting the conversion parameters further comprises inputting a new source location for the output document.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein selecting the content regions comprises:

determining a type of item content to be converted that includes a sequence of parts; and

setting a conversion flag to indicate the type of item content to be converted.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the type of content is a table, a list, or a sequence of paragraphs.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein constructing a template comprises positioning a user-selectable editing icon in the template that will appear in each editable item formatted using the template.

11. The method of claim 5, wherein inputting the conversion parameters further comprises selecting options that determine the content of the templates that will be constructed and applied to the editable items, and selecting options that determine the content of the templates comprises selecting a location in the template for the editing icon relative to other visible elements of the template and setting an editing icon placement flag according to the selected location.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein selecting a location for the editing icon comprises selecting the location before or after the other visible elements of the template.

13. The method of claim 5, wherein inputting the conversion parameters further comprises selecting options that determine the content of the templates that will be constructed and applied to the editable items, and selecting options that determine the content of the template comprises selecting which content fields within each item will become editable.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein selecting which types of content fields within each item will become editable further comprises specifying a list of tags in the markup language of the input document that delineate the beginning and ending of the types of fields that should be made into editable fields.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein outputting the second document further comprises:

adding distinct mark-up language tags at at least one of a beginning and an ending of at least some identified editable items; and

adding distinct mark-up language tags at at least one of a beginning and an ending of at least some identified editable fields within each editable item.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the distinct mark-up language tags are HTML comment tags.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the distinct mark-up language tags comprise tags beginning with “

<

” and

ending with “

>

”

that are ignored or not displayed by HTML-compliant browsers.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein converting the first document into the second document further comprises:

detecting, and, if necessary, revising the first document coding;

parsing the first document coding, as revised if necessary, into tokens;

marking as editable at least some of said tokens of the parsed first document coding based on the value of the conversion flag and on the relative order of the markup language elements;

determining which of the at least one sub-region of the at least one region is the editable field within the at least one editable item based on determined factors;

constructing at least one template for the at least one editable item based on the determined editable field and determining how new editable items having the same type of item content to be converted will be formatted and displayed when the new editable items are created;

placing the editing icon in the at least one template based on the value of the set placement flag; and

generating the second document based on the at least one constructed template.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein marking as editable some number of the tokens comprises:

labeling the token according to the type of item sequence to be converted and a location of the token within the type of item sequence, where the type of item sequence to be converted includes at least a table, list, sequence of paragraphs, or other type of document regions;

counting children of item sequences that are of the type to be converted;

propagating child counts of the item sequences;

marking, as non-editable, some of the lists, tables, and paragraphs based on the content and relative order of the respective lists, tables, and paragraphs; and

marking existing forms, within the first document, as document regions with preserved existing functionality.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein counting children comprises:

counting, for each table, a number of rows in that table and, for each list, a number of list items in that list;

storing the number of rows in a start tag token of that table or the number of list items in a start tag token of that list as a child count for that table or that list, respectively;

marking start row tags in each table with a number of columns in each of the rows;

extracting a string representation of each column tag;

attaching, to each start row tag token, a list of the string representations for the column tags that occur within that start row tag token'"'"'s corresponding table row;

finding, for each token, the maximum child count of all of the child counts stored in the start tag token of each of the tables that include that token and storing the maximum child count as that token'"'"'s parent table count;

finding, for each list, all tables that contain that list, and storing as the child list count of each such table the child count of that list, but only if doing so will make the child list count of the table larger;

finding, for each nested table, all surrounding tables that contain that table, and storing as the child table count of each such surrounding table the child count of the nested table, but only if doing so will make the child table count of the surrounding table larger;

counting, for each paragraph, a number of non-empty text tokens in that paragraph; and

marking a paragraph start tag for that paragraph with the number of non-empty text tokens.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein propagating child counts comprises:

selecting, in turn, each of the tokens of the page;

storing, with each token that is part of a list, the child count that has been computed for the start tag token of that token'"'"'s tightest enclosing list;

storing, with each token that is part of a table, the child count, child table count, and child list count that has been computed for the start tag token of that token'"'"'s tightest enclosing table; and

storing, with each token that is part of a paragraph, the child count that has been determined for the start tag token of that paragraph;

22. The method of claim 19, wherein marking, as non-editable, some of the tables, lists, and paragraphs comprises:

finding all tokens that are in a table and are marked editable, and selecting, in turn, each such token;

marking the token as non-editable if that token'"'"'s child count is less than 2;

marking the token as non-editable if that token'"'"'s child table count is greater than 1; and

marking the token as non-editable if both that token'"'"'s child list count is greater than 1 and a user has requested that lists should be made editable in preference to tables.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein marking, as non-editable, some of the tables, lists, and paragraphs further comprises:

determining the value of the set conversion flag;

selecting, in turn, all tokens that are part of a list if the value indicates that tables and lists with tables preferred is the type of item content to be converted; and

marking the token as non-editable if that token'"'"'s parent table count is greater than 1 and the value indicates that tables and lists with tables preferred is the type of item content to be converted.

24. The method of claim 19, wherein marking the existing forms includes:

finding all tokens that are inside of an initial form, including the start tag tokens and end tag tokens of each such form; and

marking all such tokens as non-editable.

25. The method of claim 19, wherein determining the templates includes:

finding each item, in turn, that is marked as editable;

determining variable parts of the template that should be editable by examining the current text and the tags of the item;

determining fixed parts of the template that should remain non-editable by examining the text and the tags of the item;

determining a unique identifier, the variable contents and the fixed parts of the template;

determining if a template has already been associated with that unique identifier in a template table of previously computed templates; and

determining a new template based on the variable contents and the fixed parts, if no previously computed template is found for this unique identifier, and associating the newly determined template with the unique identifier in the template table.

26. A method for automatically converting documents expressed in a markup language to structured writeable documents, comprising:

inputting a first document expressed in a markup language;

extracting a content of the first document; and

converting the first document into an output document based on the extracted content.

27. A method for automatically converting documents expressed in a markup language to structured shared writeable documents, comprising:

inputting a first document expressed in a markup language;

identifying a region of a content of the first document as an editable item;

identifying a sub-region of the region as an editable field within the editable item; and

converting the first document into an output document based on the identified editable item and the identified editable field.

28. A system that automatically converts documents expressed in a markup language to structured shared writeable documents, comprising:

an editable item/field determining circuit, routine or application that converts a first document to a second document, and that determines a region of the second document as an editable item and a sub-region of the region as an editable field to be edited;

a sequence determining circuit, routine or application that determines beginning points and ending points of a sequence of the same type of editable items of the second document; and

a template constructing circuit, routine or application that creates a template for the editable item and the editable field.

29. The system that automatically converts documents expressed in a markup language to structured shared writeable documents according to claim 28, wherein the sequence determining circuit, routine or application includes additional circuits, routines or applications that allow the second document to be further edited.

30. A storage medium storing a set of program instructions executable on a data processing device and usable to convert a document expressed in a markup language to a structured shared editable document, the set of program instructions comprising:

instructions for inputting a first document including a first document coding expressed in the markup language;

instructions for converting the first document into a second document including a second document coding expressed in the markup language;

instructions for constructing a template describing how each editable item of at least one editable item in the second document will be formatted and displayed, which user interface interactors will be provided to edit fields of that editable item; and

instructions for outputting the second document, containing content similar in appearance to the first document, wherein a region of content of the first document is identified as the least one editable item, and at least one sub-region of the at least one region is identified as an editable field within that editable item.