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We claim:
1. A method of styling document content, comprising the steps of:
creating a title including page layouts representing the appearance of pages of the title;
creating a first style sheet container storing a first plurality of styles;
creating a second style sheet container storing a second plurality of styles;
creating at least one content container for storing document content;
providing a first control on a first one of the page layouts for delineating a first page layout area where content is to be rendered;
providing a second control on a second one of the page layouts for delineating a second page layout area where content is to be rendered;
linking the content container with the first and second controls;
linking the first control to the first style sheet container;
linking the second control to the second style sheet container;
rendering content in the first page layout area according to at least one of the first plurality of styles; and
rendering content in the second page area according to at least one of the second plurality of styles.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the styles is selected from the group consisting of paragraph styles, character styles and wrap styles.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first and second style sheet containers comprise styles for image and textual content.
4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of providing each control with a setting corresponding to the location of content to be displayed by the control.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the steps of linking the first control to the first style sheet and linking the second control to the second style sheet further comprises the step of loading the respective style sheet from a
cache object store.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of linking the first control to the first style sheet and the step of linking the second control to the second style sheet comprise the step of associating with the respective control with a globally
unique identifier associated with the respective style sheet.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of creating a first and second control further comprises the step of creating a static story control.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of creating a first and second control further comprises the step of creating a dynamic story control.
9. A viewer for rendering a title, the title including at least one page layout representing a desired appearance of a respective page of the title, the title having at least one content object associated therewith representing content of at
least one document, the viewer comprising:
a computer, including a storage;
a display operatively associated with the computer;
the content object being stored in the storage;
at least one style sheet stored in the storage separately from the content object; and
a control stored in the storage, the control delineating an area of the page layout and being linked to at least one of the content objects and at least one of the style sheets such that content rendered in the delineated page layout area is
formatted according to the linked style sheet.
10. The viewer of claim 9, wherein the content object comprises text content.
11. The viewer of claim 9, wherein the content object comprises image content.
12. The viewer of claim 9, further comprising a second control stored in the storage, the second control delineating a second area of the page layout and being linked to at least a second one of the content objects and a second one of the style
sheets.
13. The viewer of claim 9, further comprising a second control stored in the storage, the second control delineating a second area of the page layout, the first and second controls being linked to the same content object.
14. The viewer of claim 9, wherein the style sheet includes styles from the group consisting of character styles, wrap styles or paragraph styles.
15. The viewer of claim 9, wherein the content object contains tagged content.
16. In an electronic publication system including a storage, a method of publishing and viewing a title, the method comprising the steps of:
creating a content object representing content of a document associated with the title;
creating at least one page layout representing a desired layout of a page of the title;
creating a control object delineating an area of the page layout where the content is to be rendered;
creating a style sheet object including at least one style sheet representing a desired format for the content;
linking the style sheet object to the control object;
linking the content object to the control object;
storing with a publishing workstation the page layout, content object, the style sheet object and the control object in the storage;
retrieving with a customer workstation the page layout, content object, style sheet object and control object from the storage; and
rendering the content on a display of the customer workstation, the content being rendered in the delineated page layout area according to the format represented in the linked style sheet.
17. In a publishing and distribution system including at least one publishing workstation for creating a title and at least one customer workstation for rendering the title, a publishing method comprising the steps of:
creating a content folder containing at least one content object, the content object representing the information associated with the title;
creating a title folder for containing the title;
creating at least one layout object on the publishing workstation, the layout object representing the layout of at least one page of the title, the layout object including a control object containing at least one control delineating a respective
area of the layout page in which content is to be rendered;
creating a style object containing at least one style sheet representing a desired format for the content;
linking the control object with a respective content object;
linking the style object with the control object;
storing the layout object in the title folder; and
rendering the page of the title on a display of the customer workstation by:
selecting the page; and
rendering the linked content in the respective page layout area delineated by the control in the format represented by the style sheet in the linked style object.
18. The method according to claim 17, wherein the step of creating a content folder further comprises the step of creating tagged content.
19. The method according to claim 17, wherein the step of creating a layout object further comprises the step of creating search objects for drawing content from the content object.
20. The method according to claim 17, wherein the step of creating a control object includes the step of creating a static story control.
21. The method according to claim 17, wherein the step of creating a control object includes the step of creating a dynamic story control.
22. The method according to claim 17, further comprising the step of modifying the style sheet on the publisher workstation after the step of rendering the title on a display of the customer workstation.
23. The method according to claim 17, wherein the step of rendering the title on the customer workstation further comprises the steps of:
parsing content represented in the content object to determine a tag identifier; and
determining a style property from the style sheet based on the tag identifier.
24. The method of claim 17, further comprising the step of providing each control with a setting representing the location of content to be displayed by that control.
25. The method of claim 17, wherein the step of rendering the title on the customer workstation comprises the step of loading the style sheet from a cache object store.
26. The method of claim 17, wherein the step of rendering the title on the customer workstation comprises the step of associating with the control with a globally unique identifier identifying the style sheet.
27. The method of claim 17, wherein the control object comprises two controls and wherein the step of rendering the title on the customer workstation comprises the step of rendering the same content with both controls.
28. In a publishing system including at least one publishing workstation for creating a title, a publishing method comprising the steps of:
creating a content folder containing at least one content object, the content object representing the information associated with the title;
creating a title folder for containing the title;
creating at least one layout object on the publishing workstation, the layout object representing the layout of at least one page of the title, the layout object including a control object containing at least one control delineating a respective
area of the layout page in which content is to be rendered;
creating a style object containing at least one style sheet representing a desired format for the content;
linking the control object with a respective content object;
linking the style object with the control object; and
storing the layout object in the title folder.
29. The method according to claim 28, wherein the content object represents tagged content.
30. The method according to claim 28, wherein the layout object comprises search objects for drawing content from the content object.
31. The method according to claim 28, wherein the control object includes a static story control.
32. The method according to claim 28, wherein the control object includes a dynamic story control.
33. The method according to claim 28, further comprising the step of modifying the style sheet after the step of storing the layout object.
34. The method of claim 28, wherein the style sheet is provided with a globally unique identifier.
35. The method of claim 28, wherein the step of creating a layout object comprises the step of creating a control object representing two controls and wherein the step of linking the control object to the content object comprises linking both
controls to the same content. |
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Description |
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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic publishing systems and, more specifically, to using style sheets in an on-line publishing system.
2. Description of the Related Technology
Many different systems exist for publishing documents on a computer system. These systems are used to, for example, create newsletters or brochures to promote a particular company. In addition, publications can be used to disseminate
information to a variety of customers. A number of programs exist for allowing a user to design complicated layouts for a particular application. Well-known programs such as Microsoft Publisher.RTM., Ventura Publisher.RTM., PageMaker.RTM., and
PrintShop.RTM. help a user to produce attractive newsletters and brochures.
These publication systems let the user define particular regions of every page for a specific purpose. For example, the user can place a graphic frame that runs along the top of the page to hold a particular image. Such an image may include the
title of the newsletter or another related aspect of the newsletter. In a similar way, the user may define other areas of the first page to include one or more text frames for holding text-based information such as the words from particular story. The
user designs the text frame to have certain properties, such as height, width, background color, foreground color and other such properties so that the text becomes attractively formatted for the customer. In addition, the user can format the text
information within the text frame to have desired font and paragraph characteristics. For example, the user can highlight the characters within the text frame and define that font to be, for example, bold-faced. The user can also choose to only apply a
character format to specific words or paragraphs within a text frame.
After defining an initial text frame in these publishing systems, the user can define additional text frames on the same page. For example, one text frame may hold the title of a story whereas the next text frame holds the name of the author and
the text of the story. Although this layout is straightforward to prepare, it is also very difficult to modify once it has been produced.
Some word processing programs such as Microsoft Word.RTM. and WordPerfect.RTM. have incorporated some publishing features into their software. One feature that has been incorporated into the Microsoft Word wordprocessor is the use of style
sheets to mark regions of documents with specific character or paragraph properties.
A style sheet, as used in Microsoft Word, is a compilation of character and paragraph styles, with each style containing properties for formatting marked text. These style sheets are associated with a particular document to define how marked
characters and paragraphs are displayed to the user. However, current word processing software only allows one style sheet to be applied to any document or to multiple documents. There is no provision for applying more than one style sheet to different
sections of the same document. Thus, all text in a document that is marked with a particular style will be formatted with the same character or paragraph properties defined by that style.
Microsoft Word also allows for limited customization of the colors that are used for displaying text in a document. The author of a document may choose any of the standard 16 colors for a piece of text, or may set the color to "Auto". Setting
the colors to "Auto" in Word will cause the selected text to be displayed in the standard "Window Text" system color. The system colors are designated by the Microsoft Windows.RTM. user in the control panel. However, the user is not able to set any
other part of the Word document to default to system colors other than "Window Text".
Another category of publication systems include software for electronically publishing stories across on-line networks such as CompuServe, America On-Line, or the Internet. Most of these systems create and display stories that are formatted in a
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Both the HTML and SGML are standards for tagging text in documents to be displayed in an on-line network. Documents that are formatted in HTML or SGML can be viewed by
several widely distributed browsers such as Mosaic and NetScape for the Internet. These browser programs read SGML and HTML tagged documents and display them with proper formatting.
Several programs exist for producing documents that are tagged in either the SGML and HTML format. Programs such as Interleaf's WorldView 2 allow a user to create an SGML document with, for instance, bold-face text and hyperlinks to other
documents. Once a document has been saved in an SGML format, it can be read by either the Mosaic or NetScape browser. Unfortunately, all of the formatting commands for text or graphics in an SGML or HTML document are embedded within the document. The
Mosaic or NetScape browsers do not reformat these tagged documents, but rather only display the commands embedded in the SGML or HTML documents to a user. For this reason, the designers that produce the SGML and HTML documents must add formatting
commands to every new document. In addition, there is little flexibility to change the document's formatting once the tagged document has been produced. Therefore, the process of creating documents for display using SGML or HTML is very inefficient for
the document designer.
Other commercially available software programs for producing on-line publications are available in the marketplace. One type of electronic publisher that generates its own specific format of text while retaining the specific layout of the
document is the Adobe Acrobat.TM. software package. Acrobat.TM. reads and stores documents in a specialized format known as the Portable Document Format (PDF) for use on the Internet. Other electronic publishing programs are produced by Interleaf,
Inc. (Waltham, Mass.), Farallon Computing (Alameda, Calif.) and Common Ground Software (Belmont, Calif.).
Another on-line information system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,632 by Filepp et al. This patent discusses an interactive computer system network which enables a user to display news information and perform transactional services through
a personal computer. However, in the Filepp system the news information is integrated into the display regions.
The invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,632 includes procedures for formulating objects that have been specially structured to include display data, control data and program instructions. Unfortunately, this system does not provide a
separation of the content being displayed from the design. Therefore, the same design layout cannot be shared among disparate pieces of content.
The content displayed in this system is therefore difficult to modify because new design layouts must be transmitted to the users across slow communications lines for every piece of information viewed on the computer monitor. If the content of
the information was separated from the design layout, the design layout objects could reside locally on the user's computer and be available whenever required by a specific piece of content. Similarly, it is difficult to update the character and
paragraph styles of the objects in this system because the content of the information is not separated from the design layout. These disadvantages are overcome by the present invention.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A style sheet is a collection of formatting information, such as fonts and tabs in a textual document, that can be manipulated and applied as a single unit. Presently known style sheets, such as those used in Microsoft Word, are associated with
particular documents. In contrast, style sheets of the present invention are applied to individual display regions (controls) on pages within titles (e.g., the Wall Street Journal is an example of a title). The display regions in a page do not contain
any text at the time the style sheet is applied. Rather, the text is poured into the region when the title is displayed (also termed rendered) on the customer's computer.
More than one display region, on the same page or on different pages within a title, may use the same style sheet. A title may also contain more than one style sheet, and the publisher is free to associate each display region on the page with
any particular style sheet in the title. Additionally, style sheets can be shared between titles. Important benefits derived from this invention include efficient delivery and personalization of the published title.
One embodiment of the present invention is a method of styling content, comprising the steps of creating a first style sheet container storing a plurality of styles, creating a second style sheet container storing a plurality of styles, creating
a content container storing content and a plurality of tags, each tag identifying a portion of the content, linking the content container with the first and second style sheet containers, linking each tagged content portion to a selected one of the
styles, applying each selected style to each tagged content portion, and displaying the styled content.
Another aspect of the present invention is a viewer for viewing titles, comprising a content object, a style sheet stored separately from the content, a first control linking to the style sheet and displaying styled content, a second control
linking to the style sheet and displaying styled content.
Yet another aspect of the present invention is a method of publishing and viewing titles in an electronic publication system including a storage, comprising the steps of creating a content object, creating a style sheet object independent of the
content object, linking the style sheet object to a control object, linking the content object to the control object, storing the objects in the storage, retrieving the objects from the storage, applying the linked style sheet to the content, and
displaying the styled content with the control.
Still another aspect of the present invention is an electronic publication system, comprising a publication storage, a content editor generating one or more documents containing content, a project editor generating a title layout, wherein the
content documents are linked to the title layout in a title, wherein the title layout includes the setting of system colors, and wherein the title is released to the publication storage as separately stored title layout and content documents, and a
viewer retrieving the separately stored title layout and content documents from the publication storage, wherein the viewer renders the title layout and content documents as a displayable title, and wherein the system colors set in the title layout are
associated with colors set external to the viewer.
Another embodiment of the present invention is a method of styling content in an electronic publishing system, comprising defining a control region, linking the control region to a style sheet object, wherein the style sheet object includes a
plurality of styles, associating the control region with content, and displaying a portion of the content, wherein the displayed content portion is styled with at least one of the styles.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the basic system configuration of the multimedia publishing system (MPS), which is the presently preferred underlying architecture for the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a diagram of the major system components of the MPS shown in FIG. 1.
FIG. 3 is a diagram of an exemplary on-line system, for publication storage and distribution.
FIG. 4 is block diagram of a hierarchy of containers or folders for a plurality of publishers using the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.
FIG. 5 is an overview flow diagram of the MPS processes performed using the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.
FIG. 6 is an exemplary screen display of one page of a title as displayed by the viewer of FIG. 2.
FIG. 7 is an exemplary screen display of the parts of the content and layout for the title displayed in FIG. 6.
FIG. 8 is a block diagram of the interaction of page layouts, controls, style sheet and content objects at the viewer of FIG. 2.
FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating the internal structure of a style sheet object such as shown in FIG. 8.
FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of the process used to add style sheets to a control region of a page which is a process in the flow diagram shown in FIG. 5.
FIG. 11 is a flow diagram of the process used to create new style sheets with an editor as illustrated in FIG. 10.
FIG. 12a is a flow diagram of the process performed by the viewer as shown in FIGS. 2 and 5 to gather style information from tagged content and format the content based on a style sheet.
FIG. 12b is a diagram illustrating an exemplary Multimedia Publishing Markup Language (MPML) parse tree.
FIG. 12c is a diagram of the process that a control uses to retrieve style properties from a style sheet.
FIG. 13a is a diagram of multiple controls on a page referencing one style sheet.
FIG. 13b is a diagram of multiple controls on a page referencing two different style sheets.
FIG. 14 is a block diagram illustrating the process of displaying the same tagged story by applying two different style sheets.
FIG. 15 is a flow diagram of the wrap edit process performed by the designer to include a wrap style in a style sheet using the style sheet editor shown in FIG. 2.
FIG. 16 is a diagram of various positions for an embedded object that a designer can set by choosing wrap styles in a style sheet as shown in the flow diagram of FIG. 15.
FIG. 17 is a flow diagram of the wrap process of applying a wrap style to an embedded object in the viewer shown in FIG. 2.
FIG. 18 is a flow diagram of the process used by the designer to assign colors to elements in the control.
FIG. 19 is a flow diagram of the process used by the viewer to render colors according to instructions set by the designer.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
Reference is now made to the drawings wherein like numerals refer to like parts throughout. For convenience, the following description will be organized into the following seven principle sections: Acronyms, Advantages of the Multimedia
Publication System, Multimedia Publishing System Overview, Style Sheet Overview, Style Sheet Object, Applying Style Sheets to Content, Displaying the Styled Content, Assigning Colors in a Control and Summary.
The discussion in the first three sections is general background of the preferred Multimedia Publication System (MPS). The remaining sections focus on the preferred implementation of style sheets within the MPS.
I. ACRONYMS
The following list of acronyms is provided as a reference in reading the remaining sections.
AVI--Advanced Video Imaging.
BBS--Bulletin Board System.
MPML--Multimedia Publishing Markup Language
CF--Component Forms
COS--Caching Object Store
DBM--Database Management System
DLL--Dynamic-link Library
GUID--Globally Unique Identifier
HTML--HyperText Markup Language
ICP--Independent Content Provider
IP--Information Provider
LAN--Local Area Network
MP--Multimedia Publishing
MPC--Microsoft Network Procedure Call
MPS--Multimedia Publishing System
MFC--Microsoft Foundation Class
MSN--Microsoft Network
OCX--OLE Control
OFS--Object File System
OLE--Object Linking and Embedding
PDA--Personal Digital Assistant
RGB--Red, Green, Blue
RPC--Remote Procedure Call
RTF--Rich Text Format
SGML--Standard Generalized Markup Language
VBA--Visual Basic for Applications
WAN--Wide Area Network
WWW--World-Wide Web
II. ADVANTAGES OF THE MULTIMEDIA PUBLICATION SYSTEM
The present invention can perhaps provide the most benefit by using an on-line network. Therefore, this and the following sections present background information on a preferred on-line publication system which is a foundation upon which the
present invention can reside.
To enable a new generation of on-line, multimedia applications, an end-to-end system has been invented for developing and using applications and services. The system, called the Multimedia Publishing System (MPS or MP system), preferably uses
the Microsoft Network. As an open, turnkey system, MPS includes components for design, authoring, distribution, viewing, search, personalization, and billing of on-line services and multimedia applications. The MP system allows content providers to
offer rich, interactive multimedia applications and services, providing users a compelling and exciting on-line experience. The MP system provides the key to overcoming the previously described hurdles facing the on-line industry.
The Microsoft Network removes the primary barriers to on-line service use. These barriers include cost, difficult user interfaces and lack of inertia. Access to The Microsoft Network is provided by Windows 95, the most recent version of the
Microsoft Windows operating system thereby making it accessible to millions of customers. The Microsoft Network is designed to make accessing electronic information easy and inexpensive for any user of Windows 95.
In the MP system, Independent Content Providers (ICPs), also known as publishers, supply the system with stories, publications, newspapers, sounds, graphics movies and much more. The MP system is designed to take projects (e.g. stories,
publications, etc) produced by the publishers and make them accessible to millions of users on the Microsoft Network. Thus, the basic components of the MP system are a project designer component, a public distribution site, and a viewer component.
These components of the MP system are described in detail below.
One unique concept that permeates the MP system is the clean separation of content and design. In this context, content is defined as the actual data that is to be displayed to the user. The design of a project is how that information gets
displayed to the user (e.g., its format on the computer screen). An illustrative example would be an electronic newspaper, wherein the content is the text and graphics of the stories, while the design is the layout and style of that data. The design of
the electronic newspaper is what makes it look like a newspaper on a computer monitor, whereas the content is the data that makes up the designed screens.
In the MP system, the content and the design are stored as separate objects in the public distribution site so that many different pieces of content can be viewed with the same appearance. An object can be defined as a discrete data item or data
structure which can be stored in persistent storage or in memory. The object may include computer instructions for manipulating data. Once a designer, using the project designer component at the publisher site, has created a particular page layout that
is attractive, many pieces of content can be viewed from within that layout because of the separation of content from design in the MP system. The system keeps track of links between a piece of content and its associated page layout, but does not
actually format the data in the content with a particular style.
As will be discussed in more detail below, the designer creates projects with design and content information for a particular publisher. Continuing the example from above, a project could correspond to an entity that owned a series of newspapers
and other media businesses. Within each project, one or more titles would correspond to the actual newspaper. Each title has one or more sections, and can be thought of as similar to the sections in a standard, printed daily newspaper or other
periodical such as a magazine.
Within each section are pages that define the information that is displayed to a single screen on the customer's computer visual display. When viewing a particular title, the customer will normally look at only one page of information at a time. On each page are controls which contain instructions for gathering, formatting and displaying the linked content onto the page. When a customer looks at information on a page that is provided by a publisher, the customer is really looking at content
that has been formatted within pre-defined control regions on the page.
One important facet of this invention is the concept of viewing the same content objects in many different ways. As discussed above, content objects are viewed after being formatted by a particular linked control. The control knows how to
format a particular piece of content by looking at the style that has been defined for that content by the designer and then comparing that style to a linked style sheet. Because each control on a page can have a different associated style sheet,
different controls on the same page can each display the same linked content in varying formats. In one control, the title might be displayed using a 14 point font and bold emphasis, whereas the same piece of content in a different control on the page
can be displayed in a 12 point font and italic emphasis. The ability of each control on a page to have its own associated style sheet is a powerful tool for the designer to use to format attractive content on a page.
Unlike prior publishing systems, content (such as text or graphics) in the MP system is never reformatted into the marked style. The content is only displayed to the user in the chosen style. Therefore, should the designer choose to change a
particular style, only the style sheet property of that style needs to be altered. The next time that the content is displayed using the altered style sheet, the content will be displayed with the properties of the new style.
A further advantage of the MPS is that it provides the designer with the flexibility to allow customers to choose their own color schemes. Designers can choose a specific color for controls and other displayed objects, or can specify one of the
system colors the end-user has customized in the Windows.RTM. Control panel. This flexibility allows the designer to give the customer the ability to adjust the color of various chosen title elements. Thus the customer can choose a combination of
colors which suit their individual needs. Customers with vision deficiencies which do not allow them to view certain colors or combinations of colors will be able to display titles in specific color combinations. The system also allows the designer to
assign permanent colors to controls and objects when a particular "look and feel" is important to a title. Other advantages and benefits of the MP system are discussed in detail below.
To provide more detail on the advantages of the MP system, the follo | | |
