Patent ID: 7680333

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for storing electronic ink recognition data in a compact binary lattice structure, the method comprising: receiving digitized ink stroke inputs to generate raw ink of an electronic ink document; parsing the electronic ink document to generate a tree-structure hierarchy having a plurality of hierarchical nodes; generating a recognition lattice that correlates to at least one node of the free-structure hierarchy generated from the parsing of the electronic ink document, wherein generating the recognition lattice includes: generating a lattice size field, wherein the lattice size field stores an identifier that indicates the size of the recognition lattice, generating a lattice descriptor field, wherein the lattice descriptor field includes a plurality of settable flag fields, wherein the plurality of settable flag fields of the lattice descriptor field include: a single column flag field for indicating a single recognition column of alternative character combinations generated from the recognized ink stroke inputs, a multiple column flag field for indicating multiple recognition columns of alternative character combinations generated from the recognized ink stroke inputs, a left separator flag field for indicating a left separator for separating multiple recognition columns of alternative character combinations generated from the recognized ink stroke inputs, and a right separator flag field for indicating a right separator for separating multiple recognition columns of alternative character combinations generated from the recognized ink stroke inputs, generating a recognition column number field, wherein the recognition column number field includes a value of the number of recognition columns of the lattice, and generating a recognition column field for each recognition column indicated by the number of recognition columns in the recognition column number field; and persisting the generated recognition lattice in a binary format to facilitate the regeneration of the electronic ink document from the binary persistence of the recognition lattice.