Patent ID: 7721206

Claim:
A method for viewing a layout at a client location, the method comprising: obtaining information about a page set at the client location; communicating a layout view rawest to a server location based on the information about a page set; generating a partial layout image at the server location based on the layout view request; communicating the partial layout image to the client location; displaying the partial layout image at the client location; wherein the page set comprises a plurality of page descriptions accessible at the server location; wherein the page set comprises an ordered plurality of page positions wherein each page position is capable of being associated with a page description of the plurality of page descriptions; wherein communicating a layout view request comprises communicating: information about the page set; information identifying adjacent page positions in the page set for a layout; information about a part of the layout to be viewed; wherein generating the partial layout image comprises: determining a reader-spread layout of page descriptions based on the information identifying adjacent page positions in the page set; processing the reader-spread layout to produce the partial layout image; wherein determining the reader-spread layout comprises: obtaining page descriptions associated with the identified adjacent page positions in the page set; determining a layout dimension based on the page descriptions; determining a positioning of the page descriptions in relation to the layout dimension wherein the positioning is consistent with a reader-spread arrangement; wherein processing the reader-spread layout to produce the partial layout image comprises: identifying a part of each page description based on the information about the part of the layout to be viewed and the positioning of the page descriptions in relation to the layout dimension; rendering the part of each page description to produce partial page images; and assembling the partial page images according to the reader-spread layout to produce the partial layout image.