Patent ID: 7082436

Claim:
A computer implemented method for producing a visual form of data comprising: receiving data representing the visual form of data, the data received comprising content data and format data indicating a manner in which the content data is to be visually represented, wherein said format data is applied to said content data to produce said visual form of data, said visual form of data corresponding to one of a print format or a display format; receiving data indicating a location of selected data; forming an extraction instruction based on location data identifying the location of selected data; analyzing said visual form of data using a template and identifying at least some of the content data in accordance with said template after applying said format data to said content data to produce said visual form of data, said visual form of data being characterized by a plurality of dimensions represented using a coordinate system, said template including said extraction instruction used in identifying a location of a string included in said content data, said location of the string being represented using the coordinate system and corresponding to the location of the string as represented in the visual form of data, said extraction instruction including information with respect to a reference marker and a direction in one of the plurality of dimensions where identifying at least some of the content data includes searching in the direction for identifying at least some of the content data in the direction; extracting a tag value for at least one tag identified in said template; and storing the identified at least some of the content data.