Document re-authoring systems and methods for providing device-independent access to the world wide web

Claim 2

The method of claim 1, wherein: parsing the document comprises generating an abstract syntax tree from the document; and transforming the parsed document comprises transforming the abstract syntax tree into at least one transformed abstract syntax tree.

Claim 3

The method of claim 1 or claim 2, wherein transforming the parsed document comprises: selecting a transform; determining if the transform can properly be applied to the parsed document; if the transform can properly be applied, transforming the parsed document into the transformed document using the selected transform; and if the transform cannot properly be appliet, repeating the selecting and determining steps for a different transform.

Claim 5

The method of claim 4, wherein: outlining sections ofthe document preferably comprises: identifying sections within the document, identifying a section header and a document portion for each section, placing each identified document portion into a separate subpage, removing the identified document portions from the parsed document to form a transformed document containing only the identified sections headers, converting each of the identified section headers into a link to the corresponding subpage, and linking the separate subpages together and to the transformed document; reducing a size of at least one image within the document preferably comprises: identifying at lead one image within the document, placing each identified image into a separate subpage, generating a reduced version of each identified image, removing each identified image from the document and inserting the reduced version of each removed image to form the transformed document, and adding, for each removed image, a link into the reduced version of that image to the subpage containing that removed image; removing at least one image from the document preferably comprises one of removing all images from the document, removing all but the first image from the document, and removing all but the first and last images from the document; removing at least one table cell from the document preferably comprises: determining if the table contains any sidebars of links, if the table contains any sidebars, converting the sidebars into a list of links as a last cell of the table, identifying all but the first cell of the table, adding each identified cell to a separate subpage, replacing the table with the first cell to form the transformed document, and linking the separate subpages together and to the transformed document, and removing at least one table cell from the document preferably further comprises: determining if that cell is a nested table, if that cell is not a nested table, adding that cell to the separate subpage, and if that cell is a nested table, repeating the determining, converting, identifying, adding, replacing and linking steps; and removing contentless portions from the document preferably comprises at least one of replacing sequences of page breaks or paragraph breaks with a single page break or paragraph break, removing indenting from the document; converting text strings of the document to at least one of a single font and font size, removing bullets from the document, removing background space from the document and removing banner images from the document.

Claim 8

The method of claim 1, further comprising, after parsing the document: optionally removing contentless portions from the document to form a pre-transformed document generating an evaluation value from the document or the pre-transformed document; determining if the evaluation value meets at least one evaluation criterion; if the evaluation value for the document or the pre-transformed document does not meet the at least one criterion, performing the transforming, generating and determining steps using a first one of the transforms; and if the evaluation valve for the document or the pre-transformed document meets the at least one criterion, outputting the document or the pre-transformed document without removing any content from the document.

Claim 10

A document re-authoring system that automatically re-authors a document, comprising a parse tree generating circuit that parses the document to generate a parse tree; a transform circuit that transforms the parse tree using a first transform to generate a transformed parse tree representing a transformed document, and that preferably transforms the parse tree or the transformed parse tree using another transform to generate another transformed parse tree representing another transformed document; and a document size evaluation circuit that evaluates the parse tree or the another transformed parse tree to determine if the document, the transformed document or the another transformed document meets at least one evaluation criterion; wherein, when the document, the transformed document or the another transformed document meets the at least one evaluation criterion; the document, the transformed document or the another transformed document is output to a display device.