Document editor for linear and space efficient representation of hierarchical documents

Claim 1

A computer system for editing a document, the computer system comprising: a memory to store a data structure representing the document as a hierarchical document, the hierarchical document comprising starttags and endtags and leaf contents between ones of the starttags and endtags, the data structure including an array of items, each of the items representing a corresponding one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf contents; each of the items having a corresponding index associated therewith, said data structure further including an index offset for each of the starttag and endtag items, each said index offset indicating an offset to a corresponding complementary starttag or endtag item in said hierarchical document; a user interface to display the hierarchical document and to issue commands for editing the hierarchical document; and a hierarchical document editor to edit the hierarchical document in response to the issued commands, said hierarchical document editor including instructions for traversing the data structure, both forward and backward, using said index offsets to skip over ones of said items in the data structure without having to inspect the contents of the skipped items.

Claim 6

A method for editing a document in a computer system, the steps of the method comprising: storing in a memory a data structure representing the document as a hierarchical document, the hierarchical document comprising starttags and endtags and leaf contents between ones of the starttags and endtags, the data structure including an array of items, each of the items representing a corresponding one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf contents; each of the items having a corresponding index associated therewith, said data structure further including an index offset for each of the starttag and endtag items, each said index offset indicating an offset to a corresponding complementary starttag or endtag item in said hierarchical document; displaying the hierarchical document and issuing commands for editing the hierarchical document; and editing the hierarchical document in response to the issued commands, including traversing the data structure, both forward and backward, using said index offsets to skip over ones of said items in the data structure without having to inspect the contents of the skipped items.

Claim 7

A method for editing a document in a computer system, the steps of the method comprising: storing in a memory a data structure representing the document as a hierarchical document, the hierarchical document comprising starttags and endtags and leaf contents between ones of the starttags and endtags, the data structure including an array of items, each of the items representing a corresponding one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf contents; each of the items having a corresponding index associated therewith, said data structure further including an index offset for each of the starttag and endtag items, each said index offset indicating an offset to a corresponding complementary starttag or endtag item in said hierarchical document; displaying the hierarchical document and issuing commands for editing the hierarchical document; and editing the hierarchical document in response to the issued commands, including traversing the data structure, both forward and backward, using said index offsets to skip over ones of said items in the data structure without having to inspect the contents of the skipped items.

Claim 15

A method for editing a hierarchical document in a computer system, said computer system connected to at least one remote data processing system by a communication link, said remote data processing system including a storage medium for storing a plurality of hierarchical documents and a document editor for editing the hierarchical documents, said method comprising the steps of: retrieving the hierarchical document and the document editor from the remote data processing system, said hierarchical document comprising starttags, endtags, and leaf items, each starttag being paired with a matching endtag, the leaf items occurring between ones of the starttags and endtags; establishing a data structure in a memory device to represent the hierarchical document, the data structure comprising a table of elements and an indexing table, each element corresponding to one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf items, the indexing table having a plurality of indices and index offsets, each index and index offset associated with one of the elements, each index offset indicating an offset to the respective matching starttag and endtag, said index offset used for accessing matching elements of the data structure without accessing elements in between; and utilizing the data structure to edit elements of the data structure by accessing the edited elements using the associated index offsets.

Claim 16

A method for editing a hierarchical document in a computer system, said computer system connected to at least one remote data processing system by a communication link, said remote data processing system including a storage medium for storing a plurality of hierarchical documents and a document editor for editing the hierarchical documents, said method comprising the steps of: retrieving the hierarchical document and the document editor from the remote data processing system, said hierarchical document comprising starttags, endtags, and leaf items, each starttag being paired with a matching endtag, the leaf items occurring between ones of the starttags and endtags; establishing a data structure in a memory device to represent the hierarchical document, the data structure comprising a table of elements and an indexing table, each element corresponding to one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf items, the indexing table having a plurality of indices and index offsets, each index and index offset associated with one of the elements, each index offset indicating an offset to the respective matching starttag and endtag, said index offset used for accessing matching elements of the data structure without accessing elements in between; and utilizing the data structure to edit elements of the data structure by accessing the edited elements using the associated index offsets.

Claim 18

A method of distributing a document in a data processing system, said data processing system comprising a network of computer systems including at least one client computer system, said method comprising the steps of: transmitting the document to the client computer system, the document represented as a hierarchical document by a data structure stored in a memory device of the client computer system, the hierarchical document comprising starttags and endtags and leaf contents between ones of the starttags and endtags, the data structure including an array of items, each of the items representing a corresponding one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf contents, each of the items having a corresponding index associate therewith, said data structure further including an index offset for each of the starttag and endtag items, each of said index offset indicating an offset to a corresponding complementary starttag or endtag item in said hierarchical document; and transmitting a document editor, for use in editing the hierarchical document, to the client computer system, the document editor traversing the data structure, both forward and backward, using said index offsets to skip over ones of said items in the data structure without having to inspect the contents of the skipped items.

Claim 19

A method of distributing a document in a data processing system, said data processing system comprising a network of computer systems including at least one client computer system, said method comprising the steps of: transmitting the document to the client computer system, the document represented as a hierarchical document by a data structure stored in a memory device of the client computer system, the hierarchical document comprising starttags and endtags and leaf contents between ones of the starttags and endtags, the data structure including an array of items, each of the items representing a corresponding one of the starttags, endtags, and leaf contents, each of the items having a corresponding index associate therewith, said data structure further including an index offset for each of the starttag and endtag items, each of said index offset indicating an offset to a corresponding complementary starttag or endtag item in said hierarchical document; and transmitting a document editor, for use in editing the hierarchical document, to the client computer system, the document editor traversing the data structure, both forward and backward, using said index offsets to skip over ones of said items in the data structure without having to inspect the contents of the skipped items.