WO2001029636A2

WO2001029636A2 - Intelligent harvesting and navigation system and method

Info

Publication number: WO2001029636A2
Application number: PCT/US2000/041409
Authority: WO
Inventors: Mark Jamtgaard; Jacob Sullivan; Tyler Kohn
Original assignee: 2Roam, Inc.
Priority date: 1999-10-21
Filing date: 2000-10-21
Publication date: 2001-04-26
Also published as: WO2001029636A3; JP2003512666A; AU3266901A; US6430624B1

Abstract

A content delivery system (12) and method are provided in which different types of content (13) may be delivered to different information appliances (15) having different protocols and different browser specifications. The system permits internet content providers to create a single piece of content that is re-formatted automatically for the different information appliances (15).

Description

INTELLIGENT HARVESTING AND NAVIGATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

Background of the Invention

This invention relates generally to a system and method for delivering content

to information appliances and in particular to a system and method for permitting web

pages in different formats to be communicated to various different information

appliances having different display footprints.

Today, people have an unquenchable thirst for information that demands instant

access at any time or place to the information. There has been explosive growth in the

handheld computing market and in the cell phone market with over 300 million users

worldwide. In addition, there has been a continued increase in the number of people

with access to the Internet. These three different markets will soon converge as cell

phones and handheld computers will have web browsers ("mini browsers") integrated

therein. To promote the convergence, cell phone manufacturers and wireless data

network providers have attempted to standardize Internet content distribution with the

wireless application protocol (WAP). Internet content providers have been slow to

adopt these standards and now several major device manufacturers have begun to

create their own proprietary standards. Two factors hinder the extension of the Web and is content from the personal

computer (PC) environment with fairly standard display formats to the non-PC based

information appliances and devices. First, re-purposing and converting existing PC-

centric HTML web sites to the new breed of information appliances with drastically

varying screen sizes is very problematic. For example, it is not appropriate to put the

content of a PC-centric web site onto a small smart phone screen linearly. An

intelligent navigation scheme that automatically converts content intended for the PC

into content applicable to one or more different information appliances is needed. This

intelligent navigation scheme would optimally vary its output based on the screen size

of the particular information appliance. Second, most current wireless content delivery

solutions demand adherence to proprietary browsers, proprietary mark-up languages

and/or proprietary protocols.

As Figure 1 illustrates, there are currently multiple different mark-up languages

2, multiple different protocols 3 and different browsers 4. For example, Phone.com

has introduced both the HDML and the WML protocols for cellular telephones in the

United States, whereas Japan has adopted the I-mode protocol. Palm Pilot devices

support a variant of the HTML protocol that uses web-clipping, while Windows CE

devices support only a limited HTML protocol using special software such as Pocket

Explorer. To establish an effective wireless presence, a company with content must support the multitude of different information appliances 5, the different protocols 3,

the different markup languages 2 and the different browsers 4.

The number of devices, protocols and mark-up languages create a large matrix

of different combinations of devices, protocols and languages wherein each

combination requires a different web server. The rewriting of a site for each mark-up

language and for interfacing with each different protocol and screen size is expensive,

complicated and time consuming. In addition, because each different device may have

a different input/output format, such as a different screen size, the presentation of

information on any one device is not optimized, for example, for its screen size due to

the variety of formatting alternatives.

Most of the prior approaches to wireless content delivery have involved linking

a certain browser with a certain protocol and a certain mark-up language. There is not

a single standard that is pervasive throughout the multitude of wireless handheld

devices and information appliances. As a consequence of this lack of a standard,

content providers are forced to re-author and re-format their web pages in order to

generate content for each of these devices.

Compatible languages, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), a

software language designed especially for Web documents, have become much more

mature and permit re-formatting of HTML or XML web pages on-the-fly to formats that individual devices can utilize. However, none of these conventional systems and

solutions provide a single unified system that permits web pages having different

formats and mark-up languages to be delivered to different information appliances that

may use different protocols, different browsers, or have different input/output formats

(e.g., different screen sizes). Thus, none of the conventional systems provide an

intelligent navigation system wherein content may be delivered in a customized

manner to the different information appliances.

Another problem with the conventional systems is that content providers have

not been able to control the "look and feel" of their site using these other solutions so

that the site may look very different on different devices. It is desirable, however, to

provide a system that will allow these sites to customize the presentation of their site

web pages to the wide variety of information appliances. Thus, it is desirable to

provide a content delivery system and method that solves the above limitations and

problems with the conventional systems and it is to this end that the present invention

is directed.

Summary of the Invention

The content delivery system and method in accordance with the invention

solves the above problems and limitations with conventional systems and solutions by

providing a system and method that delivers Web-based content, commerce, enabling transactions, and services to a variety of information appliances and devices without

requiring the re-authoring of the content information for display on each of these

different devices.

In accordance with the invention, the system and method permits content to be

input into the system in a variety of different formatting languages. In addition, the

system permits the formatted content to be output in any mark-up language and

protocol, such as WML, HTML, HDML, XML, etc. Advantageously, each display

page on the device may be customized. To organize the content for display on the

devices, the received content information may be mapped into a hierarchy of groups so

that the content information can be optimally formatted for display on the devices

according to the input/output format, such as the display screen size parameters of the

devices.

In more detail, the method for content delivery may include intelligently

harvesting content from a web page to provide that content to a plurality of different

information appliances having different screen sizes. The intelligent harvesting may

convert the content into a proprietary relational markup language (RML) and generate

a tree and then a document object model from the RML content. The tree may then be

analyzed and searched using a set of processing rules in order to generate content

screens customized to each information appliance. A typical card builder may build the card corresponding to the customized content and a typical deck builder may build

a deck of cards corresponding to the one or more display screens that make up the

content for the particular information appliance. The deck of cards may then be

converted into a presentation format and protocol for the particular information

appliance and sent to that information appliance.

Brief Description of the Drawings

Figure 1 is a diagram illustrating examples of different conventional wireless

content delivery systems;

Figure 2 is a block diagram illustrating a content delivery system in accordance

with the invention;

Figure 3 is a functional diagram illustrating a content delivery system in

accordance with the invention;

Figure 4 is a diagram illustrating the translation server of the content delivery

system shown in Figure 2;

Figure 5 is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of the content delivery

system of the invention. Figure 6 is a diagrammatic view illustrating the content connection handler of

the translation server shown in Figure 4;

Figure 7 is a diagram illustrating an intelligent harvesting method in

accordance with the invention;

Figure 8 is a diagrammatic view illustrating the XML engine of the translation

server shown in Figure 4;

Figure 9 illustrates an example of the mapping of an HTML web page into an

RML object in accordance with the invention;

Figure 10 is a diagrammatic view of the layout engine of the translation server

shown in Figure 4;

Figure 11 illustrates an example of a portion of an HTML-based web page from

the E-TRADE website illustrating the grouping of different elements of the web page

in accordance with the invention;

Figure 12 is a diagrammatic view of a data structure tree for ordering the

different groups and atomics of the E-TRADE web page shown in Figure 11;

Figure 13 is a diagram illustrating a recursive tree analysis in accordance with a

preferred embodiment of the invention; Figure 14 is a diagrammatic view of the tree structure shown in Figure 12

illustrating a collapsing methodology for processing the tree in order to create cards in

accordance with the invention;

Figure 15 is a diagrammatic view illustrating an example of card formats that

are created in processing the tree structure shown in Figure 12;

Figure 16 is an example of a portion of an HTML-based web page from the

CitySearch.com website illustrating the grouping of different elements of the web page

in accordance with the invention;

Figure 17 is a diagrammatic view of a data structure tree for ordering the

different groupings and atomics of the CitySearch.com web page shown in Figure 16;

Figure 18 A is an example of a screen shot of a Palm Pilot device showing a

presentation page of the CitySearch.com website shown in Figure 16; and

Figure 18B is an example of a series of screen shots of a cellular telephone

device showing a presentation page of the CitySearch.com website shown in Figure 16.

Detailed Description of a Preferred Embodiment

The invention is particularly applicable to system and method for delivering

web content to a variety of different information appliances having different display

formats and different screen sizes and it is in this context that the invention will be described. It will be appreciated, however, that the system and method in accordance

with the invention has greater utility such as to systems for delivering other types of

content to devices having different input/output formats.

The content delivery system in accordance with the invention provides many

advantages over the conventional systems. As described below, the system permits

content in a variety of different formats, such as HTML, XML, raw data, etc., to be

input into the system and then permits the content to be output in a variety of different

output formats and protocols, such as WML, HTML, HDML, XML, etc so that the

same incoming content may be displayed on many different information appliances

and devices having different screen sizes. In a preferred embodiment, the system may

use an XML data structure and the system may include one or more different software

applications that may be based on the JAVA language.

In accordance with the invention, content providers do not have to change their

existing infrastructure or use multiple different web servers to send information to

various information appliances. In particular, the system receives incoming content

on-the-fly from an Internet content provider thereby allowing for dynamic information

generation. In more detail, the system in accordance with the invention manipulates

standard web pages into a relational markup language (RML) that permits, for each

information appliance, a "set" of pages that is more useful to the individual device and dependant on the device. Now, the content delivery system in accordance with the

invention will be described.

Figure 2 is a diagram illustrating a content delivery system 10 that may include

a translation system 12 in accordance with the invention. The translation system 12

may be any computer system, such as a server or workstation, with sufficient

computing power to handle the functions being performed as described below. In a

preferred embodiment, the translation system 12 may be a server computer that stores

one or more different software applications that may be executed by the CPU of the

server in order to implement the functions of the content delivery system described

below. The translation server 12 may allow content providers 13 to deliver their

content (in different formats as shown) to one or more different information appliances

15 without needing to reformat, re-author or rebuild an existing web site in order to

deliver it to the different information appliances 15 using different communications

formats as shown. It is desirable to provide an upwardly scalable robust server 12 so

that software can be coded without requiring updates as server loads increase. Rather,

such increased server loads may be handled by adding additional hardware

components, for example memory, to the server. It is also desirable that the server 12

be platform independent to support any operating system environment, such as UNIX,

Windows, Macintosh and any other operating system. In more detail, the translation server 12 may take information directly from an

Internet content provider's web site in various forms, such as HTML data, XML data,

or raw data feeds and then re-deliver it, via the translation server 12 and through a

telecommunications system 14, such as a wireless carrier base station that uses a

typical communications format such as CDPD, to information appliances 15 in a

format that is completely customized to the end user's device type and browsing

capabilities. Thus, the content delivery system and method may generate and output

WML, HDML, tiny HTML, compact HTML, HTML or XML data that is compatible

with the particular information appliance 15. The information appliances 15 may be

any type of device including WAP compliant cell phones, Windows CE devices, Palm

OS devices, and any other HTML browser based devices.

For each wireless device 15, there may be a separate telecom system 14, such

as different gateways or proxies to the different information appliances 15. Thus, in

accordance with the invention, the content provider 13 may create a single piece of

content in a single format and the telecom system 14 does not have to be modified in

order to provide the wireless content in accordance with the invention to each separate

wireless device 15. In addition, each Internet content provider 13 also has the ability to

customize the appearance of their web site pages using the system's web based GUI

tool. The GUI tool allows a web page producer or developer to create a set of rules

that are used by the translation server 12 to describe how a particular web page is to be translated by the system 10. In particular, the "drag and drop" functionality of the

GUI tool in a toolkit that allows a "producer" level employee to tailor the "look and

feel" of the site so that, when the web site is delivered to a wireless device 15 via the

system 10, the same "look and feel" can be delivered as well. Now, more details of the

wireless content delivery system will be described.

Figure 3 is a functional diagram of the content delivery system and in particular

the translation server 12 in accordance with the invention. In the example shown, the

content 20 may be an HTML web page. The translation server 12 may include an

intelligent harvester 22, a tree synthesizer 26, a tree analyzer 30, a card builder 32 and

a deck builder 38 that generate a presentation shoe 38 that may be sent to a particular

information appliance 15. To intelligently harvest an HTML web page not only

involves grabbing the content on the site (scraping), but also allows any functionality

on that site to be enabled on the target information appliance or device. This enabled

functionality may include, for example, forms, transactions, javascript, cookies, session

data and security measures. This enabled functionality is possible due to the virtual

browser (See Figure 7) that provides, for example, javascript and cookie proxy

engines, so that an information appliance that cannot support javascript may do so with

the javascript being eexecuted on the translation server. As another example, an

information appliance may not support persistent session that may be required by the

web site, but the virtual browser may enable a persistent session so that the web site thinks that it is interacting with an information appliance that has the persistent session

capability. This process also involves applying a set of rules describing the relational

context of the content (e.g., how a piece of, for example HTML code, relate to each

other).

In more detail, the intelligent harvester 22 may receive the content and generate .

a relational data structure 24 that corresponds to the content as described below in

more detail. The data structure containing the content in a relational format in

accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention is a proprietary relational

markup language known as RML. RML is an XML based language which has the

advantage of permitting the easy mapping of the content into a tree structure by the tree

synthesizer 26 so that the tree synthesizer may output a typical document object model

(DOM) 28. The DOM is a common object model used to manipulate markup such as

HTML such as it disclosed on the W3C web site at http://www.wc3.org . Although it

is typically used for manipulating HTML or XML, it also provides the tree structure

needed by the layout engine as described below during the tree analysis functions.

Generally, a tree data structure is a method for representing a hierarchy of data using

tree diagrams formed from nodes and line segments between the nodes. This may be a

bit confusing because the DOM's tree structure may be used for both its intended

purpose of storing the HTML markup contained in atomics, but also as a way of

storing relational information about those atomics as described below in more detail. The tree analysis function 30 may receive the DOM and then dynamically

generate pages for a variety of different target screen sizes. In more detail, a typical,

well known depth-first tree search algorithm, such as that described in the CRC

Dictionary of Computer Science, Engineering and Technology, is used to recurse

through the atomics and groups with complicated rules as described below for

optimally filling pages with content while creating an intelligent navigation scheme in

accordance with the invention. The Card Builder function 32 may apply the protocol

specific syntax needed by the particular target device and output a presentation card 34.

In accordance with the WAP protocol, the Deck Builder 36 is needed to put the cards

into decks and into a presentation shoe 38 to optimize transmission latency through

wireless networks. The system also permits the intelligent interaction of the

information appliance with the web site since the system may enable functionality not

typically supported by the information appliance via the virtual browser. The

functionality of the content delivery system will be described in more detail below.

Now, a preferred hardware implementation of the content delivery system in

accordance with the invention will be described.

Figure 4 is diagram illustrating a preferred implementation of the translation

server 12 of the content delivery system 10 in accordance with the invention. In

particular, the server 12 may include a content connection handler 40, a layout engine

42, an appliance connection handler 44 and an XML engine 46. The translation server 12 may also include a database 47 that may contain XSL rules used by the XML

engine 46 for converting XHTML pages into RML, one or more URL Ids and various

device information. In accordance with the invention, each XSL rule may be indexed

in the database based on an ID (the ID may contain a URL, a name/value pair and

cookie information) so that the system may determine which rule applies to which

incoming URL. The device information may be used by the layout engine 42 in order

to convert the RML data into one or more cards in a deck that may be displayed on the

particular device. For example, the information may indicate the amount of

information that may be fit on each screen. The translation server 12 may also include

a long term database 48 that may contain cookies so that the system knows which

pages have been processed previously and a session database 50 that stores a

presentation shoe for each device.

Web page requests made by an information appliance 15 to an Internet content

provider 13 may occur using, for example the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), a

wireless data transmission standard described in the WAP 1.2 Specification Suite

located at http://www.wapforum.org , incorporated herein by reference. Generally, in

accordance with the WAP protocol, an information appliance 15 may initiate a request

in WML (Wireless Markup Language), a language derived from XML especially for

wireless network characteristics. This request is passed to a WAP gateway that then

retrieves the information from the Internet. The requested information is then sent from the WAP gateway to the WAP client (the device 15), using whatever mobile

network bearer service is available and most appropriate.

The data transmitted over the telecommunications network 14 (See Figure 2) is

represented as a group of data packets and electronically routed over the

telecommunications network 14 to an appropriate destination node, such as an

appropriate information appliance 15. The packets of data include header information

that describes the information contained in the data packets, such as the type of data

contained in the packet, i.e. HTML, voice, ASCII, etc., and origination and destination

node information, and is used by the system 10 to route and configure the data packets

for transmission through the wireless network 14, according to well known network

routing techniques.

In accordance with the invention, when an information appliance 15 requests a

web page from the content provider 13, the content provider 13 examines the header

information contained in the data packets and redirects any non-PC requests to the

translation server 12. In accordance with the invention, content from an Internet

content provider 13 is received by the content connection handler 40. The content

connection handler 40 mimics a standard HTML browser, such as Internet Explorer or

Netscape, and functions as the interface with a content provider's web site. Non-PC

requests are redirected to the translation server 12 so that the web page information can be translated into a data format appropriate for and recognizable by the destination

information appliance 15. Desktop PC requests do not need to be redirected to the

translation server 12 since these devices are able to display web pages in standard

HTML or other similar formats and do not require customized web page information.

The appliance connection handler 44 operates as a Web server for a requesting

information appliance 15. The appliance connection handler 44 brokers and controls

the entire transaction between the requesting device 15 and the translation server 12.

For example, the appliance connection handler 44 may handle the session with each

telecom system 14 or wireless device 15 and may perform various functions such as

establish a session with the information appliance or wireless device 15, retrieve page

information from the content connection handler 40, translate received pages using the

XML engine 46 and the layout engine 42 as described below, and transmit the

translated page information to a requesting information device 15 with appropriate

header information. The appliance connection handler 44 may also determine state

information of the devices 15, synchronize the devices 15, determine browser and

protocol information and perform various security operations.

The XML engine 46 converts the XHTML page, generated by the content

connection handler 40, to a proprietary markup language, RML - the Relational

Markup Language, using a rule-set that may be stored in a database 47. RML is a markup language written in XML. Each page-type may include 1) a XSL rule-set that

specifies what pieces of content to display on vary appliances as well as the relational

structure amongst those pieces of content; and 2) a perl script. XSL is a language for

transforming an XML document into another XML document as described at the W3C

website located at http://www.w3c.org . The XSL rulesets used by the XML engine 46

may be stored in a database 47 indexed by ID page-type identifiers. The XSL rule-set

may be used to process hierarchical elements of the content while the perl script may

be used to process unstructured markup in the content. In accordance with the

invention, a unstructured tag may be used to mark the markup that may be processed

using the perl script. Each page-type has a rule-set and possibly a perl script associated

with it. In accordance with the invention, the XSL rule-set and the perl script may be

generated manually or may be automatically generated. The information stored in the

database 47 can be used by the XML engine 46 when converting page information.

The layout engine 42 processes the content to convert the relational RML

content, received from the XML engine 46, into device and protocol specific mark-up

language formats. Formatted output provided by the layout engine 42 will be referred

to herein as a "presentation shoe." For purposes of this description, a presentation shoe

consists of "decks" and "cards." A deck is the smallest unit of content that is sent to a

device. In certain protocols, such as WML and HDML, a deck can contain multiple

cards. The presentation shoe thus contains the original HTML content of a webpage that is reformatted into an appropriate format language and targeted at an information

appliance 15. The presentation shoe is formatted specifically for the target appliance's

screen size, user interface and protocol. Advantageously, the presentation shoe is

created dynamically in accordance with relational information in the RML data, which

will be described in detail herein. Information about the presentation shoe can be

stored in a session database 50 that may be in communication with the layout engine

42. Now, the details of the operation of the translation server will be described.

Figure 5 is a block diagram illustrating operation of the wireless content

delivery system 10 of the invention. As described above and shown in Fig. 5, an

information appliance 15 may request page information of a particular URL website

from a content provider 13. The request by the information appliance 15 may be

redirected, for example, via a JAVA servlet 60, to the translation server 12. The

appliance connection handler 44 examines header information from the requesting data

in order to determine a target device 15, protocol and browser configuration. The

appliance connection handler 44 then requests the desired URL information from a

content connection handler 40. The appliance connection handler 44 may relay

information about the requesting wireless device 15 to the content connection handler

40 such as a requested URL address of a content provider 13, a session ID, a user ID

and a wireless device's browser capabilities. The content connection handler 40

retrieves the requested information from the content provider 13, renders any JavaScript, stores any cookies and returns the requested information as XHTML data

to the appliance connection handler 44.

The appliance connection handler 44 then requests the XML engine 46 to

convert the received XHTML data to RML data and assign atomics into the relational

structure according to page type so that presentation cards can be created and placed in

a presentation shoe so that the cards can be transmitted to the target device 15. The

XML engine 46 will be described in more detail below with reference to Figures 7- 9.

The application connection handler 44 then conveys the RML data output from

the XML engine and device information (stored in the database 47 shown in Figure 4)

to the layout engine 42 so that the layout engine 42 can generate a device and protocol

specific set of cards that are served to the requesting appliance 15 by the appliance

connection handler 44, via the presentation shoe.

In more detail, the layout engine 42 may include a layout processor 62, a

preprocessor 64, a recursenode module 66, a card formatter 68, a deckbuilder 70, a

contentcutter 72, a ordernodes module 74, a guidehandler 76, a recursenode and

recurse atomic module 78, 80, a navigation builder 82 and a shoebuilder 84. The

layout processor 62 may receive the XML DOM, the device information from the

database 47 and the shoelD and may forward the shoe information to a preprocessor

64. The preprocessor may forward the XML DOM and class information to a content cutter 72 that operates on the RML data to remove any classes of information that

cannot be displayed on the particular information appliance or wireless device 15 based

on the device information from the database 47. Once the classes are removed, an

ordered structure of atomics is generated from the RML data by the OrderNodes

module 74 so that, for example, a tree structure describing the relation of different

portions of the content information to be displayed on the device 15, can be created. A

GuideHandler module 76 permits the system to put a template on each card of the first

card in a shoe delivered to an information appliance. For example, the logo of a

company may be displayed in the corner of each page displayed to the information

appliance. The navigation builder 82 may permit links between cards and other items

to be placed on a card. For example, a particular web page may always have one or

more navigation links on each page (e.g., support, products, etc.) that may be placed on

each card by the navigation builder.

The RecurseNode module 66 and 78 may then operate on the tree structure to

group related content information so that appropriate cards can be created for

presentation on the wireless device 15. The recursion of the nodes in the tree is

described in more detail below with reference to Figure 14. In processing the tree

structure, the card formatter module 68 may generate presentation cards that include

the appropriately grouped atomics as determined by the recursenodes and

recurseatomic modules 66, 78, 80. The deck builder module 70 may then groups the plurality of presentation cards into decks so that the deck can be organized into an

appropriate presentation shoe to optimize the wireless link between the system and the

information appliance. To perform the above function, the deckbuilder 70 may include

the navigation builder 82 that builds the navigation path between the cards in the deck

and the shoebuilder 84 that actually builds the presentation shoe.

Once the presentation shoe is completed by the layout engine 42, it returns the

presentation shoe to the appliance connection handler 44. The appliance connection

handler 44 then may relay the presentation shoe, for example via the JAVA servlet 60

to the appropriate requesting wireless device 15 so that the content information from

the content provider 13 can be displayed in a format appropriate for the wireless device

15.

Figure 6 is a diagrammatic view illustrating the function of the content

connection handler 40. The content connection handler 40 establishes an on-line

session with a web site in order to receive webpage content to be converted. In a

preferred embodiment, HTML pages are retrieved from a specified URL website and

the retrieved HTML information is formatted as XHTML, an XML compliant HTML

format utilized by the translation server 12 and represented by a document object

model (DOM). A DOM is a common object model used to manipulate markup. This

structure is used to translate the HTML page information to a format that can be translated by the XML engine 46 to be described in detail below. The content

connection handler 40 may communicate with a long-term database 48 (See Figure 4)

that is configured to store cookie information about the web sites from which page

information is retrieved.

As described above, the content connection handler 40 functions as the

interface with a content provider's website. In a preferred embodiment, it acts as a

virtual browser, proxying browser functionality on behalf of the information appliance.

This function is performed by an HTTP client connection module 90. The HTTP

client connection module 90 functions to maintain a communication session with the

content provider 13 and handle cookie and security (SSL) information. An HTML

data processor 92 may render JavaScript data in a proxy fashion for the requesting

information appliance 15. With a scripting language, such as JavaScript, the client-

side source code is embedded directly into the HTML page and a client-side software

plug-in that interprets that language is automatically activated while the HTML page is

being displayed. This client-side software is not available on most information

appliances, requiring our servers to proxy this function. An HTML cleanup module 94

may generate XHTML page information so that the translation server 12 can translate

the received HTML page information to a format readable by and appropriate for an

information appliance 15. Now, a method for intelligent harvesting in accordance with

the invention will be described that includes some of the elements described above. Figure 7 is a diagram illustrating a method for intelligent harvesting of web

pages in accordance with the invention that uses the elements shown in Figures 3 and

4. In particular, the content 20 is fed into a virtual browser 100 as described briefly

above which passes on the content to the XML engine 46. Using the particular page-

type rules sets stored in the database 47 , the XML engine 46 may convert the content

into relational markup language (RML) format 24. In more detail, a session on the

Internet is handled by the virtual browser 100 located on the translation server 12.

This virtual browser provides the important functionality of proxying javascript (using

a Javascript proxy engine 102) and cookies (using a cookie proxy engine 104) for the

target devices. For each page-type, an XSL rule-set is stored (See the W3C

specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-xsl-20000112 ) in the database 47.

This rule-set contains information about the division of content into atomics, content

classification, and the relationships amongst these atomics for the particular page. The

XML Engine 46 uses these XSL rule-sets to translate the HTML into RML. The

division of content into atomics can be generated either automatically or by a producer

using a tool set. The content classification information is used to determine what

content and functionality are appropriate for which classes of devices. The content

classification information may be generated either manually or automatically. Now,

more details of the XML engine in accordance with the invention will be described. Figure 8 is a diagrammatic view illustrating more details of the XML engine

46. As described above, the XML engine 46 extracts content from dynamically

changing XHTML information and generates a corresponding file, for example, an

RML file, in accordance with predetermined rulesets. XSL rulesets define the

transformation algorithms used to convert between formats, such as between XHTML

and RML. An example of an XHTML document being converted into RML using an

XSL rulesets is described below.

In operation, the XML engine 46 may receive a page-type designated by URL,

name/value pairs, and cookie information and pages of XHTML information from the

content connection handler 40. A URL/Rule hashtable module 112 may receive

certain XSL rulesets from the database 47 that define how the information from the

URL website is to be converted. Different XSL rulesets may be used depending on the

format of the particular URL website from which original HTML page information has

been received. In conjunction with the rulesets determined by the hashtable 112, an

XSL transform processor 110 may convert the received XHTML information to RML

information that is provided to the layout engine 42 so that it can be converted into

device and protocol specific mark-up language formats. Additionally, the XSL rulesets

may permit the Internet content provider 13 to control the look and feel of the content

(e.g., the location and/or inclusion of certain elements of the content together on a

single card) regardless of the wireless device 15 on which the content is being displayed. Now, an example of an HTML page prior to conversion, an XSL ruleset

that may be used to convert the particular HTML page and the resulting RML page in

accordance with the invention will be described.

Below is an example of an HTML web page that may be converted in

accordance with the invention into RML.

SAMPLE HTML CODE FOR WEB PAGE

<html>

<head>

<title>Welcome to Foo.com! </title> </head> <body>

<pχa href="http: //www. foo.com/login/ ">Log In</aχ/p> <pχa href="http: //www. foo. com/signup/ ">Sign Up</aχ/p> <hl align= "center" >Foo . com</hl> <h4 align="center">Your source for all things foo!</h4>

<table>

<tr>

<th colspan="2" align="center">Foo Products</th> </tr>

<tr>

<td>Foo Fighter</td> <td>$19.95</td> </tr> <tr>

<td>Foo Peacemaker-;/td> <td>$29.95</td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2">

<a href="http: www. foo. com/buy" >Buy these wonderful Foo'sk/a?

</td> </tr> </table>

Now, a XSL ruleset that may be used to convert the above HTML page into

RML in accordance with the invention is set forth below. <xsl : stylesheet xmlns :xsl="http: //www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

</head> <guide>

</xsl : for-each> </pane> </navigation> </guide> <group name="Main" class="l" sequential="sequential">

<bχxsl :value-of select="h4"/x/b> </atomic> <xsl :apply-templates select="table"/>

</xsl : template>

<bχxsl : value-of select= "tr/th" /χ/b> </atomic> <xsl : for-each select= " tr [td [not (©colspan) ] ] " >

</xsl : for-each> </group> </xsl : for-each> </ roup> </xsl : template>

</xsl : stylesheet>

The resulting RML code in accordance with the invention is set forth below:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" > <rml>

<head>

<title>Welcome to Foo.com! </title> </head> <guide> <navigation> <pane>

<b>Your source for all things foo!</b> </atomic> <group name="Toy Table" class="l">

<b>Foo Products</b> </atomic>

<group name="Toy" class="l"> <atomic name="Entry">Foo Fighter</atomic>

<atomic name="Entry" >Foo Peacemaker</atomic> <atomic name="Entry">$29.95</atomic> </group> </group> </group> </rml>

The above RML code may also include the unstructured tag as described above

that m surrounds a particular portion of the mark up language that is unstructured and

may be processed using a perl script. Now, a graphical example of HTML content

being converted into the RML in accordance with the invention will be described.

Figure 9 is a diagram illustrating an HTML page 120 being converted into an

RML page 122 in accordance with the invention. For purposes of the conversion, each

piece of discrete content with presentation structure or no structure 124 is mapped into

an atomic 126 in the RML code. It should be noted that the hyperlinks within a piece

of content are maintained in the atomics. In addition to the atomics, groups of content

128 in the HTML page may be converted into a group 130 in RML. In this example,

the group is non-sequential (e.g., the content in the group does not need to be displayed

sequentially). Now, an example of the division of a graphical web page into atomics

and groups in accordance with the invention and the layout engine 42 will be described

in more detail .

Figure 10 is a diagram of the layout engine 42 in accordance with the invention.

As described above, the layout engine 42 formats a content source for a specific device's screen and inherent capabilities. The layout engine 42 may include the

content cutter 72, the layout processor 62, the card builder 68, and the deck builder70.

The content cutter 72 cuts all the content of format and content classes not appropriate

for the specific device from the received HTML page to create an XML representation

of the received original webpage. The layout processor 62, using prior knowledge of

the device type and the content, dynamically devises an optimal layout and navigation

structure for the particular device 15. Thus, the output of the layout engine 42 is a

presentation shoe in the appropriate presentation protocol for a particular appliance 15.

Presentation shoes are built from the bottom-up, resulting in the highest priority

"atomic" being placed on a card first. An atomic is the smallest unit of a web page that

encapsulates an idea. For example, an atomic may be a paragraph of text, a heading, a

link to a news story, a picture, etc. Atomics may be grouped together to reveal

relationships between them. Groups may be nested to form a complex relational

hierarchy. These groups can be placed on cards so that customized presentation pages

can be transmitted to a device 15.

In operation, an RML document is received by the layout engine 42 from which

the content cutter 72 cuts data classes that are not appropriate for the requesting device

15 to generate an XML document containing the cut content, device information that

specifies the target device, and protocol information that specifies the target protocol. Card creation will be described with reference to Figures 11-13. An example of

a portion of an HTML web page 170 from the E-TRADE website is shown in Figure

11. In the Figure, the innermost dashed boxes designate atomics while the boxes

enclosing them constitute groups. At the top portion of the page 170 is a quote look-up

form 171. The quote look-up form 171 is made up of three atomics, a "Quotes" title

portion 171a, an entry box 171b and a "Go" submission button 171c. Further, the

market graph 172a, table 172b, and Fool.com advertisement 172c are each related

atomics and are grouped together to constitute group 172. In addition, each element in

the market graph 172a may also be an atomic so that "NASDAQ" is an atomic,

"2756.27" is an atomic, the down arrow is an atomic and "-5.48" is an atomic. Finally,

the TheStreet.com logo 173a, and the four news stories 173b-e are each related atomics

and are grouped together as group 173. All of the groups 171, 172, 173 make up the

root group 170. These groups constitute the relational hierarchy for this portion of the

E-TRADE website.

To display this website on a display device 15, such as a Palm Pilot or a

Windows CE device, the groups and atomics need to be organized and placed on cards

that make up the presentation shoe. Cards are created by examining how groups best

fit onto the cards. A tree data structure can be generated from the RML object. As

described above, nesting groups describe the relational context of content contained in

a webpage. In RML formatting, each group typically has three primary attributes: name, class and priority. The name attribute is used during a navigation pass through

the tree as a link description to the group if needed. The class attribute is used by the

content cutter 72 to determine the content in the webpage that is appropriate for a

specific device's capabilities. Thus, the class attribute allows different levels of

content to be presented to different classes of devices. For example, the general classes

of devices are shown in the following table, but the number of classes may be

increased or decreased.

The priority attribute indicates the importance of each portion of the content

and is used by the layout generator 42 during preprocessing to order the content into

appropriate groups. To further organize the groups, each group also has Boolean

attributes, such as columnize, sequential and other attributed such as association. The

association attribute may have the values of keep together (keep the atomics together),

isolate (isolate the atomic on its own card) or null. The columnize attribute indicates

whether an atomic/group should be placed adjacent another atomic/group on a card.

The sequential attribute specifies how the navigation structure should be designed. For

example, atomics containing paragraphs of a story would be grouped as sequential

information. In contrast, a list of links to news stories would be grouped as non- sequential information. The keep together attribute indicates to the layout engine 42 to

keep children of a node together on the same card if possible. The isolate attribute

specifies that the group is be placed onto its own card.

In addition to the above, knowledge of the number of characters and pixels

horizontally and vertically on the target wireless device 15 is desirable. In addition, for

devices 15 that allow fonts, a font width calculation may need to be made. A

bandwidth and screen dependent variable may be assigned to determine how much

content is allowed to scroll before a new presentation page is created vertically and a

link created to subsequent presentation pages. Another variable may store the

minimum container width (how narrow the text container can be made so that another

container can be put along side it).

Figure 12 illustrates the relational structure of the groups in the E-TRADE web

page shown in Figure 11 that may be represented in a tree structure. This separation of

content from style in a relational way that can be represented in a tree allows for the re-

formatting of the content in accordance with the invention. In the Figure, a root

element node 180 refers to the outermost group of the tree and indicates the E-TRADE

web page 170. The nodes 182 - 186 (roman numerals I, II, and III) are the "children"

of the root node and refer to the atomics 171a, 171b, 171c of the Quotes portion 171 of

the E-TRADE web page 170. A node 188 (roman numeral IV), another child of the root node, refers to the market group 172 and includes children nodes A-C (market

graph 172a, table 172b and Fool.com advertisement 172c of Figure 11). Similarly, a

node 190 (roman numeral V) refers to the news section 173 and includes children

nodes A-E (the news story links 173a-e of Figure 11). The flexibility of trees and

directed graphs allows them to represent any structure found in a web site. Thus, the

trees provide a method to organize the complicated relationships amongst content in a

web page for formatting as well as provide navigation links between cards in a

presentation shoe.

To provide a simple tree structure that can be efficiently navigated, the tree is

sorted by priority. This pre-processing reorders the tree to put the content that will

appear on the device 15 first in the left-most nodes of the tree. After the tree has been

sorted, the groups and content are evaluated in order to assign the content to one or

more cards using the attributes described above. A depth-first search algorithm as

described above, using a recursion technique that considers outgoing edges of a vertex

before any neighbors of the vertex, may be used to implement this evaluation as

described below with reference to Figure 13. As this search evaluates each vertex, it

attempts to optimally fit the atomics onto cards.

Figure 13 is a flowchart illustrating a method 200 for recursing through the tree

generated by the XML engine in order to generate customized panes and cards that may be displayed on an information appliance or wireless device 15 in accordance with

the invention. The recursive method starts with the root node - the top node in the tree

(See Figure 12). In this case, the root node is the top-level group node that

encompasses all of the content that shall be placed into cards. The goal of the

recursion is to place content into cards in such a manner that the context of the content

remains while creating an intelligent manner of accessing the content (an intelligent

navigation scheme) for each different information appliance or wireless device that

may have different display capabilities. As described above, all of the content resides

in atomic nodes and all atomic nodes are children of groups. An example of the groups

and atomics are illustrated in Figure 11. Groups can contain other groups or atomics

while atomics can only contain content, for example, HTML.

Figure 13 is an example of how the recursion method may be accomplished but

many other implementations are possible. Recursion through the tree representation of

the web site begins at the root node. The depth-first search proceeds to the first node

without any children. This is the first atomic having the highest priority. In addition

to the previously described attributes, two additional attributes are relevant to the

creation of cards that are placed in the presentation shoe., "panes" and "frames."

Multiple atomics can be placed, top to bottom, into a pane. Panes can be assigned to

cards adjacently (columnized) by placing them into two frames side-by-side on the

card. The recursion for the tree starts by passing the root node to the Recurse node

object 202 which determines what kind of node (e.g., a group or an atomic) is being

manipulated in step 204. In the root node's case, the passed node is a group and it is

passed to the Recurse Group object 206. The Recurse Group object iterates through

the node's children, passing each of them back to Recurse Node 202. In the case where

the node Recurse Node receives an atomic, the node is passed to Recurse Atomic step

208. In Recurse Atomic, an atomic object is created using the node's contents. This

Atomic is then placed on to the current pane in step 210.

There are certain circumstances, such as columnizable atomics, where the

current pane is added to the card and the current atomic is placed in a new pane. A

columnizable atomic is one that can be placed adjacent to another atomic. When all of

the children of a group have been passed to Recurse Node in step 212, Recurse Group

206 then tries to add the current pane to the current card in step 214. If the pane fits on

the card (the test occurs in step 216), then Recurse Group returns in step 218 to

Recurse Group 206 and the recursion continues. If the pane doesn't fit on the card, an

exception is handled in Recurse Group where one of two things can happen. If the

pane contains sequential atomics (as tested in step 220), then the pane is split, and as

many of its atomics that can fit on the current card are placed into a new pane and put

onto the card (steps 222. A link to the next card is placed at the end of the full card

and then the card is placed in the shoe and a new card is created 224. The new pane with the remaining cards is put onto the new card in step 226 and the recursion

continues in step 228.

If the pane contains nonsequential atomics (as tested in step 220), then the

current node is cloned (duplicated). Then, sequential atomic nodes that are links to the

original children are created in step 230 and added as children to the original node

while the original children are removed. The cloned node contains the original

children. The Recurse Group step 206 then iterates through these original children by

passing them to the Recurse Node object 202. If no exceptions occur, Recurse Group

206 then iterates through the original node's new children. This iteration is handled in

the same manner as the original iteration through the group's children. Once all of the

atomics have been placed in panes and these panes placed in cards, the recursion

should return to the root node and the recursion ends.

Figure 14 illustrates a collapsing methodology for processing the tree to create

cards that can be transmitted to a device 15. The recursion of the tree as described

above begins at the root node and proceeds to its first child node 182 (node I), the

"Quotes" text 171a. A new columnizable pane is created and atomic I (171a in Figure

11) is added to it. This pane, as it is closed, is added to a newly created card. The

recursion process then continues to the next node 184 (node II), the entry box 171b,

and adds this atomic to a new columnizable pane. Similarly, node III, the "Go" submission button 171c, is added to a new columnizable pane. These panes are passed

back to the root node and a card 240 is created that includes the three panes.

The recursion process continues to node 188 (node IV), the market group 172,

and immediately to leaf node A, the market graph 172a. A new pane is opened and

atomic A is added to it. The process continues to leaf node B, the market table 172b.

Atomic B is added to the pane, as is atomic C, according to the same processing, and

the recursive process continues through the tree to node 190 (node V), the "News"

section 173. A new card 242 is created that includes atomics A-C of group IV.

Similarly, atomics A-E (news stories 173a-e of Figure 11) are placed on a third card

80c and the recursive process completes.

The output of the card generation is shown in Figure 15. Each of the cards 240,

242, 244 is shown. As shown in the Figure, the first card 240 includes atomics 171a,

171b, 171c from Figure 11 wherein each atomic is in an individual pane. The second

card 242 includes atomics 172a, 172b, 172c from Figure 11 all grouped as a single

pane on the card 242. The third card 244 includes atomics 173a-e grouped as a single

pane. Whether atomics may be grouped on a card as a single pane or in individual

panes or any combination thereof depends primarily on the contextual information

relating to the atomic. Navigation amongst these cards is determined by the sequential attribute of the

root node. Thus, in the non-sequential case, a card with links to the three cards 240 -

244 shown in Figure 15 would be created. In contrast, for a sequential case, navigation

between the cards 240- 244 would begin at the first card 240 and links at the bottom of

the first and second cards 240, 242 would lead to the next successive card (e.g., the

second card 242 and the third card 244) respectively. As mentioned above, the

navigation between cards can be determined from the tree.

The recursive process described above was simplified because each child of the

root node fit on an individual page. The following description, with reference to

Figures 16 - 18, illustrates a more complicated card creation process in which the

dynamic feature of the layout engine 42 are shown.

Figure 16 illustrates an example of a web page 290 from the CitySearch.com

website. In the Figure, two different groupings are indicated. The first grouping 291

includes the "Review of the Week" contextual information. In the group 291, four

atomics 291a-d are shown that reference the title 291a, text 291b, picture 291c and

mini review 29 Id. The second grouping 292 includes the "New Releases" contextual

information. In the group 292, there are different numbers of atomics for different sub¬

groups. Each of the sub-groups 293-296 are grouped according to the different

movies. Atomics within these subgroups represent the names 293a, 294a, 295a, 296a of the movies, pictures 293b, 294b, 295b, 296b of the movies and mini reviews 293c,

294c, 295c, 296c of the movies. Sub-group 293 also includes another atomic 293d

referring to the title "New Releases." These groups and sub-groups constitute the

relational hierarchy for this portion of the CitySearch.com website as determined by

the XML engine 46 in accordance with the invention using the XSL rule set and perl

script for the particular web page.

The tree structure for the CitySearch.com web page 290 is illustrated in Figure

17. In the Figure, the root node 300 ("1") indicates the CitySearch.com website group.

Child nodes 302, 304 (Nodes 2 and 3) indicate the two groups "Review of the Week"

291 and "New Releases" 292. The atomics a-d of node 2 refer to the title 291 a, text

291b, picture 291c and mini review 29 Id of the "Review of the Week" group 291 of

Figure 16. The child nodes 306- 312 of node 3 (nodes 4-7) and their associated

atomics a-c of the tree represent the different movie sub-groups 293-296 included in

the "New Releases" group 292.

In accordance with the invention, the layout engine 42 recursively iterates

through the relational tree structure, dynamically building cards for an appropriate

screen size of a target device 15. As described above, the recursive process may

incorporate a depth-first recursive algorithm to implement processing of the tree

structure. For example, recursion begins at node 1, the root node of the tree and proceeds to node 2, the "Review of the Week" group 291, to search for the highest

priority node that does not have any associated children. The process continues to

node 2a, the title portion 291a of the group 291. Atomic 2a is placed onto a pane and

the pane state is set to non columnizable. Next, the recursion process proceeds to node

2b, the text portion 291b of the group 291. The atomic state of the text portion 291b is

compatible with that of the title portion 291a so the atomic 291b is added to the current

pane. This process continues, as described above, until the entire tree has been

processed and the atomics have been placed in panes on cards.

Depending on the target device 15 screen size capability, different presentation

screens may need to be generated by the system 10 so that the information may be

viewed on the device 15. For example, for a Palm Pilot device, the contextual

information associated with node 2, the "Review of the Week" group 291, may fit

entirely on the display screen so that the associated atomics may be included on a

single card. However, the "New Releases" group 292 and its associated subgroups

293-296 may not fit on the card and new cards may need to be created in order to

display this information on the Palm Pilot. Since node 3, the "New Releases" group

292, is a non-sequential group, new cards for each of the subgroups 293-296 may be

created and the appropriate links may be inserted into the cards so that a viewer of the

information on the device can navigate between display pages. An example of the presentation information of the CitySearch.com web page 290 shown on a Palm Pilot

device is shown in Figure 18A.

In contrast, for a cellular telephone device that has a limited display screen size,

a different alternative of displaying presentation information is possible and

automatically generated by the system. In particular, depending on the size of the

display screen, the system 10 may determine that cards are divided at different points

along the creation process and the appropriate links inserted thereon so that a viewer of

the presentation information on the phone device can navigate between the different

display pages. Figure 18B shows an example of the presentation information of the

CitySearch.com web page 290 shown on a cellular telephone device. In particular, the

information displayed on the full screen display of the Palm Pilot (See Figure 18 A) are

broken into one or more smaller screens wherein, for example, the user of the phone

must select the "Go" button to move down through the various titles of the movies that

are reviewed.

While the foregoing has been with reference to a particular embodiment of the

invention, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes in this

embodiment may be made without departing from the principles and spirit of the

invention and defined by the appended claims.

Claims

WHAT IS CLAIMED IS:

1. A system for intelligently harvesting information from a data source for

one or more different information appliances having different input/output formatting

capabilities, comprising:

means for receiving web-based content information of a first input/output

format;

means for translating the received content information from the first

input output format to a different input/output format that is recognizable by a specific

device; and

means for providing the translated content information to the device.

2. The system of Claim 1 wherein the device is a wireless device having a

predetermined display screen size.

3. A system for translating content information from a first formatting

language to a second formatting language, comprising:

a host system including content information of a first formatting language; a translation server remotely connected with the host system, the translation

server configured to receive the content information of a first formatting language and

translate the received content information from the first formatting language to a

second formatting language; and

a device remotely connected with the translation server, the device configured

to receive the content information of the second formatting language and display the

content information.

4. The system of Claim 3, wherein the device is a wireless device having a

predetermined display screen size.

5. The system of Claim 3, wherein the host system comprises an Internet

web server that includes at least one web page thereon, the web page having a specific

URL Internet address and including the content information of the first formatting

language.

6. The system of Claim 3, wherein the translation server comprises means

for establishing a communications session with the host system so that information

content of the first formatting language can be received by the translation server;

means for receiving the information content of the first formatting language; means for

converting the information content of the first formatting language to information

content of an intermediate formatting language recognized by the translation server; means for translating the information content of the intermediate formatting language

to information content information of the second formatting language; means for

formatting the content information of the second formatting language so that the

content information can be transmitted to and displayed on the device.

7. The system of Claim 6 wherein the information content of the first

formatting language comprises HTML.

8. The system of Claim 6, wherein the intermediate formatting language is

XHTML.

9. The system of Claim 6, wherein the session establishing means

comprises a content connection handler.

10. The system of Claim 9, wherein the content connection handler

comprises a client connection module configured to establish and maintain a

communications session with the host system; a data processor configured to receive

the content information of the first formatting language from the host system; and a

cleanup module configured to convert the content information of the first formatting

language to content information of the intermediate formatting language.

11. The system of Claim 6, wherein the translation means comprises an

XML engine.

12. The system of Claim 11, wherein the XML engine comprises a

hashtable module for comparing the URL Internet address of the received content

information with a group of predetermined rulesets that define a criteria for translating

the content information to the second formatting language; and a transform processor

configured to convert the received content information of the intermediate formatting

language to content information of a second intermediate formatting language.

13. The system of Claim 12, wherein the second intermediate formatting

language comprises RML.

14. The system of Claim 12, wherein the group of predetermined rulesets

define a branding criteria for the content information of the second formatting language

so that the content information of the second formatting language displayed on the

device is similar in appearance to that of the content information of the first formatting

language received from the webpage.

15. The system of Claim 14, wherein the group of predetermined rulesets

comprise XSL rulesets defined by the host system.

16. The system of Claim 6, wherein the formatting means comprises a

layout engine.

17. The system of Claim 16, wherein the layout engine comprises a content

cutter for extracting portions of the content information of the second intermediate

language that are not compatible with a display capability of the device so that the

content information of the second formatting language can be generated from the

remaining content information of the second intermediate language; a layout processor

for dynamically generating a layout format for the content information of the second

formatting language that is optimized for the display screen size of the device; and a

protocol processor for generating the content information of the second formatting

language.

18. The system of Claim 17, wherein the layout format comprises a

presentation shoe that includes at least one presentation card, each presentation card

representing a display page of the device, each presentation card including at least a

portion of the content information of the second formatting language, wherein

subsequent presentation cards in the presentation shoe are linked so that the content

information of the second formatting language can be selectively viewed on the device.

19. The system of Claim 18, wherein the presentation cards include at least

one pane portion thereon and wherein the content information is separated into atomic

groups of content information, the atomic groups of content information being organized and assigned to the pane portions of the presentation card so that formatting

of the content information can be optimized for the display screen on the device.

20. The system of Claim 19, wherein the presentation cards in the

presentation shoe are transmitted to the device so that the content information of the

second formatting language can be displayed on the device.

21. A method for intelligently harvesting information from a data source for

capabilities, comprising:

receiving content information of the first formatting language from an Internet

web server;

converting the received content information of the first formatting language to

an intermediate formatting language so that the received content information can be

processed and formatted in accordance with a display capability of a device;

translating the processed content information from the intermediate formatting

language to content information of the second formatting language; and

transmitting the content information of the second formatting language to the

device so that the content information can be displayed on the device.

22. A method for creating a presentation card that is transmitted to a device,

the presentation card including content information received from a host system, the

formatting language of the content information on the presentation card being

compatible with the formatting language of the device, the method comprising the

steps of:

grouping the received content information into relational portions of content

information;

generating a data structure tree to order the relational portions of the content

information;

sorting the data structure tree according to a priority of each of the groups; and

processing the data structure tree to construct the presentation cards from the

groups of received content information.

23. The method of Claim 22, wherein the processing step comprises the

steps of:

recursively evaluating the data structure tree using a depth-first recursion

process to determine a leaf node of the tree having a highest priority of any non-

processed leaf nodes of the tree; and generating a presentation card having at least one pane portion thereon and

assigning the content information of the processed leaf node to the pane of the

presentation card.

24. The method of Claim 23, wherein the generation and assigning step

includes assigning content information of subsequently processed leaf nodes to

adjacent panes on the presentation card.

25. The method of Claim 23, wherein a presentation card is generated for

every parent node of the data structure tree.

26. A system for translating content information from a first formatting

language to a second formatting language so that the content information can be

displayed on a device, comprising:

a hashtable module for comparing a URL Internet address of a web page

including the content information of the first formatting language with a group of

predetermined rulesets that define a criteria for translating the content information to

the second formatting language;

a transform processor configured to convert the received content information of

the intermediate formatting language to content information of a second intermediate

formatting language; and a layout engine configured to translate the content information to the second

formatting language and to optimally format the content information for display on the

device.

27. The system of Claim 26, wherein the layout engine comprises a content

content information of the second formatting language can be generated from the

language.

28. The system of Claim 27, wherein the layout format comprises a

portion of the content information of the second formatting language, wherein

29. The system of Claim 28, wherein the presentation cards include at least

groups of content information, the atomic groups of content information being

organized and assigned to the pane portions of the presentation card so that formatting

30. The system of Claim 29, wherein the presentation cards in the

second formatting language can be displayed on the device.

31. The system of Claim 26, wherein the group of predetermined rulesets

language received from the webpage.

32. The system of Claim 31, wherein the group of predetermined rulesets

comprise XSL rulesets defined by the host system.

33. A method for intelligently harvesting information from a data source for

display on one or more different information appliances, comprising: receiving the information from the data source is a first predetermined format

wherein the information has predetermined hierarchical relationships;

storing the received information is a relational markup language wherein the

content of the received information is separated from the relationships between the

received information; and

outputting information to a particular information appliance having a particular

display format.

34. A layout engine for processing incoming information and for generating

information that is displayed on one or more different information appliances,

comprising:

receiving information to be distributed to the one or more information

appliances, the received information having relationships embedded into the content;

mapping the receiving information into a relational hierarchy based on the

relationships embedded into the content, the relational hierarchy including one or more

atomics containing the content of the receiving information linked to each other based

on the relationships in the received information; and processing the relational hierarchy based on the display format of a

predetermined information appliance in order to generate a series of displays

appropriate for the predetermined information appliance.

35. A method for processing incoming information having content and

relationships embedded into the content, comprising:

separating the incoming information into one or more pieces of content having

no relationship information;

generating an atomic for each piece of content in the incoming information; and

generating a relational hierarchy connecting the atomics to each other in a

hierarchical relationship based on the relationships embedded into the incoming

information,