When a retrieval condition including a first desired word and a first desired component including a value in which the first desired word is included, is inputted, a first detecting device detects second desired components each being similar to the first desired component, an acquiring device acquirers second desired words each being similar to the first desired word, a first retrieving device retrieves first structured documents each including a first component including a value in which one of the first desired word and the second desired words is included, a second retrieving device retrieves second structured documents each including a second component corresponding to one of the first desired component and the second desired components and including or corresponding to the first component.

Described is a system and method by which a unique and permanent identifier is added to tags in hierarchically-arranged data (e.g., an XML or XAML file) by a first tool. The data with the unique and permanent identifiers is processed by a second tool into a flat file of key-value pairs, with the key being constructed from the identifier and attribute names, and the value comprising the corresponding value for that attribute. When the flat file from the new data file is compared to a flat file from an earlier version of the file, a standard merge program is able to better detect the differences, including differences caused by complex edits. The comparison is more granular than it would be if simply comparing the hierarchically-arranged file versions, thereby providing significant benefits in localization and other version tracking scenarios.

A system and methods for comparing a plurality of documents comprising graphic elements is described. Attributes of graphic elements amongst the documents are examined to identify sufficiently similar graphic elements. A merged document can be automatically produced based on the comparison. Graphic elements in the resulting document may be associated with a document layer. Methods may advantageously be applied to a plurality of documents representing different versions of a document.

Techniques for extensible stylesheet designs using meta-tag and/or associated meta-tag Information are described. To generate a proper stylesheet (e.g., an XSL or XSLT file) from a source file (e.g., an XML file), all meta-tag and/or associated meta-tag Information are differentiated by attaching respectively unique identifiers to those that are otherwise identical. To facilitate user required operations on certain data in the source file, a document source path for the data is identified and inserted with one or more operators thus to form document source path information. The differentiated meta-tag and/or associated meta-tag Information and source path information are relied upon to generate one or more stylesheets.

A shared workspace is associated with a group of users who share the workspace, which isolates a set of shared resources from other resources stored in a repository that supports versioning of resources. The content of a shared workspace is maintained using a set of shared references, to the set of resources associated with the shared workspace. A virtual workspace is created for a user by generating a personal mapping for the user, where the personal mapping indicates which resources from the set of shared resources the user has made personal, e.g., by checking out such resources from the repository. If the user submits a query on the repository, the particular version of each resource involved in the query is readily determinable from the shared workspace and the user's virtual workspace.