Serial storage of ink and its properties

• US 7,397,949 B2
• Filed: 05/11/2001
• Issued: 07/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Haluptzok, Patrick Michael, Dresevic, Bodin, Bhattacharyay, Subha, Balaz, Rudolph, Karlov, Donald D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Bella; Matthew C.
• Assistant Examiner(s): PERUNGAVOOR, SATHYANARAYA V
• Application Number:
  US09/852,799
• Publication Number:
  US 20020013795A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,615 Days
• Field of Search: 382187-198, 382293-300
• US Class Current: 382/186
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

The present invention relates to storing electronic ink. Ink is stored in a data structure that permits later retrieval by applications. The ink includes stroke information and property information. Properties may be associated globally with the ink strokes and/or with each stroke individually. The disclosed embodiments include a data structure that supports ink for multiple applications. Using the disclosed storage system, method, and data structure, various applications may expand on ink to include additional attributes while permitting the ink to be used in applications not supporting the additional attributes. When encountering an unknown tag, the applications will skip past the end of the tag and its associated data to start reading the next tag.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having a data structure thereon, said data structure being read and processed by a computer, said data structure relating to storing a first stroke and at least a second stroke of handwritten ink information, said data structure comprising:

a first portion having a tag representing an identification of a type of tag data;

a second portion identifying a size of said tag data;

a third portion having a table, said table including global unique identifiers;

a fourth portion having the tag data, the tag data including an identifier means for referencing a first global unique identifier in the table associated with a first property of the handwritten ink information and a second global unique identifier associated with a second property of the handwritten ink information,

wherein the first property of the handwritten ink information associated with the first global unique identifier in the table is applied to the tag data and to the first stroke based on the referencing and wherein the second property of the handwritten ink information associated with the second global unique identifier in the table is applied to the tag data and to the second stroke based on the referencing.

2. The computer readable medium according to claim 1, wherein tags for said global unique identifiers are determined by the position of said global unique identifiers in said table.

3. The computer readable medium according to claim 1, wherein tags for said global unique identifiers are specified.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein the data structure further comprises a fifth portion describing an ink space rectangle.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein the data structure further comprises

a fifth portion having a first table, said first table describing metrics of properties.

6. The computer readable medium according to claim 5, further comprising:

a sixth portion comprising a second table, said second table describing properties of strokes in which said properties are related to the metrics of properties in said fifth portion.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein said data structure further comprises a fifth portion having a transform table, said transform table describing a transform for at least one ink stroke.

8. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein the data structure further comprises a fifth portion having an attribute table, said attribute table describing a drawing attribute for at least one ink stroke.