Patent ID: 7370060

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for preserving unrepresented data in a document exchanged between a first application and a second application for editing and displaying the document with distinct editing capabilities, comprising: enabling the document to be edited by a user through the first application, wherein editing the document through the first application includes displaying the contents of the document; parsing the document to generate a tree representation of the document, wherein a root of the tree corresponds to the document and nodes of the tree correspond to one of elements and properties of the document; associating a size with each node of the tree, wherein a size of a leaf node corresponding to an element is determined by a number of document units associated with the element, and a size of a branch node is determined by an aggregate of leaf node sizes underneath the branch node; flagging a node when the node corresponds to unrepresented data, wherein the unrepresented data is a portion of contents in the document editable by the first application but not editable by the second application; enabling the document to be edited by a user through the second application, wherein editing the document through the second application includes displaying the contents of the document but not allowing editing of the unrepresented data; receiving edits on the document from the second application; and maintaining unrepresented data for subsequent editing through the first application by observing the flagged node when exchanging the edited document between the second application and the first application.