Patent ID: 7703004

Claim:
A method for automatically converting documents expressed in a markup language to structured shared writeable and editable documents, comprising: inputting, using a computer, a first document having a first document coding expressed in a markup language; inputting, using the computer, conversion parameters usable to convert the first document into a second document by selecting which types of content in the first document are to become sequences of editable items, selecting options that determine the content of a template that will be constructed and applied to the editable items by selecting a location in the template for an editing icon relative to other visible elements of the template and setting an editing icon placement flag according to the selected location; converting, using the computer, the first document into the second document having a second document coding expressed in a markup language by identifying at least one region of content of the first document as an editable item and identifying at least one sub-region of the at least one region as an editable field; constructing, using the computer, a template describing how each editable item in the second document will be formatted and displayed; outputting, on the computer, the second document containing content of the first document and one or more selected content icons by identifying at least one beginning and at least one ending of at least one sequence of editable items and adding, removing, or modifying markup language elements at at least some of the at least one beginning and the at least one ending of the at least one sequence, wherein the converting of the first document into the second document includes: detecting, and, if necessary, revising the first document coding on the computer; parsing the first document coding, as revised if necessary, into tokens on the computer; marking as editable at least some of said tokens of the parsed first document coding based on the value of the conversion flag and on the relative order of the markup language elements on the computer; determining which of the at least one sub-region of the at least one region is the editable field within the at least one editable item based on determined factors on the computer; constructing at least one template for the at least one editable item based on the determined editable field and determining how new editable items having the same type of item content to be converted will be formatted and displayed when the new editable items are created on the computer; placing the editing icon in the at least one template based on the value of the set placement flag on the computer; and generating the second document based on the at least one constructed template on the computer.