Segmenting electronic documents for use on a device of limited capability

• US 7,613,810 B2
• Filed: 12/20/2000
• Issued: 11/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Nokia Corporation
• Original Assignee: Nokia, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Berger, Adam L., Romero, Richard D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Burgess; Barbara N
• Application Number:
  US09/745,289
• Publication Number:
  US 20020059367A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,240 Days
• Field of Search: 709/227, 709/203, 709/217, 709/219, 709/231, 709/246, 707/3, 707/5, 715/210, 715/234
• US Class Current: 709/227
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/04 specially adapted for terminals or networks with limited capabilities; specially adapted for terminal portability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/142 Managing session states for stateless protocols; Signalling session states; State transitions; Keeping-state mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/303 Terminal profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/565 Conversion or adaptation of application format or content adding application control or application functional data H04L67/561
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5651 Reducing the amount or size of exchanged application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/567 Integrating service provisioning from a plurality of service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/06 Optimizing the usage of the radio link, e.g. header compression, information sizing , discarding information system modifying transmission characteristic according to link quality by modifying frame length H04L1/0007; dynamic adaptation of the packet size for flow control or congestion control H04L47/365
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/00 Services specially adapted for wireless communication networks; Facilities therefor
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A method includes receiving a machine readable file containing a document that is to be served to a client for display on a client device, the organization of each of the documents in the file being expressed as a hierarchy of information, and deriving subdocuments from the hierarchy of the information, each of the subdocuments being expressed in a format that permits it to be served separately to the client using a hypertext transmission protocol, at least one of the subdocuments containing information that enables it to be linked to another one of the subdocuments.

Claims

1. A method comprising

receiving, from an origin server, a machine readable file containing a document that is to be served to a client for display on a client device, the file being expressed in a language that does not organize segments of the document in a hierarchy,

converting the file to a language that organizes segments of the document in a hierarchy,

traversing the hierarchy and assembling subdocuments from the segments, at least some of the subdocuments being assembled from more than one of the segments, the assembling conforming to an algorithm that tends to (a) balance the respective sizes of the subdocuments, (b) favor assembling the subdocuments from segments that have common parents in the hierarchy, and (c) assemble the subdocuments from segments for which replications of nodes in the hierarchy is not required,

at least one of the subdocuments being expressed in a format that permits it to be served separately to the client, at least one of the subdocuments containing information that enables it to be linked to another one of the subdocuments, and

serving the subdocuments to the client individually as requested by the client based on the contained information that enables it to be linked to another of the subdocuments.

2. The method of claim 1 in which the file is received from an origin server associated with the file.

3. The method of claim 2 in which the file comprises an electronic document.

4. The method of claim 2 in which the file comprises an email file.

5. The method of claim 2 in which the file is received from the origin server in the form of a webpage.

6. The method of claim 1 in which the subdocuments are served to the client using a hypertext transmission protocol.

7. The method of claim 1 also including

identifying a portion of the document that is to be displayed separately from the rest of the document,

the portion of the document that is to be displayed separately being excluded from the subdocument in which the portion would otherwise have appeared, the portion of the document that is to be displayed separately being included in at least one corresponding subdocument, and

when the subdocument in which the portion would otherwise have appeared is served to the client device, embedding a graphical device that can be invoked by the user to retrieve the subdocument that includes the portion of the document that is to be displayed separately.

8. Apparatus comprising:

a processor and memory including computer program code, the memory and the computer program code configured to, with the processor, cause the apparatus to perform;

receiving, from an origin server, a machine readable file containing a document that is to be served to a client for display on a client device, the file being expressed in a language that does not organize segments of the document in a hierarchy,

converting the file to a language that organizes segments of the document in a hierarchy,

traversing the hierarchy and assembling subdocuments from the segments, at least some of the subdocuments being assembled from more than one of the segments, the assembling conforming to an algorithm that tends to (a) balance the respective sizes of the subdocuments, (b) favor assembling the subdocuments from

segments that have common parents in the hierarchy, and (c) assemble the subdocuments from segments for which replications of nodes in the hierarchy is not required,

at least one of the subdocuments being expressed in a format that permits it to be served separately to the client, at least one of the subdocuments containing information that enables it to be linked to another one of the subdocuments, and

serving the subdocuments to the client individually as requested by the client based on the contained information that enables it to be linked to another of the subdocuments.

9. The apparatus of claim 8 in which the file is received from an origin server associated with the file.

10. The apparatus of claim 8 in which the subdocuments are of essentially the same length.

11. A machine-readable program stored on a machine-readable medium and capable of configuring a machine to:

receive, from an origin server, a machine readable file containing a document that is to be served to a client for display on a client device, the file being expressed in a language that does not organize segments of the document in a hierarchy,

convert the file to a language that organizes segments of the document in a hierarchy,

traverse the hierarchy and assemble subdocuments from the segments, at least some of the subdocuments being assembled from more than one of the segments, the assembling conforming to an algorithm that tends to (a) balance the respective sizes of the subdocuments, (b) favor assembling the subdocuments from segments that have common parents in the hierarchy, and (c) assemble the subdocuments from segments for which replications of nodes in the hierarchy is not required,

at least one of the subdocuments being expressed in a format that permits it to be served separately to the client, at least one of the subdocuments containing information that enables it to be linked to another one of the subdocuments, and

serve the subdocuments to the client individually as requested by the client based on the contained information that enables it to be linked to another of the subdocuments.