User interface systems and methods for viewing and manipulating digital documents

1. A method for providing a user-interface, comprising:

i. receiving by a document processing system a plurality of content documents associated with respective application programs in file formats associated with the respective application programs;

ii. deriving by the document processing system, internal representations of the plurality of content documents, wherein the internal representations a) are in a common format other than the file formats associated with the respective application programs and b) describe the respective documents as collections of objects and parameters defining properties of the objects within each document;

iii. providing a tool document file, representative of a graphical tool that performs a user interface function in relation to content documents received from a plurality of application programs, wherein the document tool file stores information about the graphical tool in the internal representation used to describe the plurality of content documents;

iv. providing tool code associated with the tool document file;

v. generating a screen document for display that is an aggregation of the internal representation of at least one of the plurality of content documents and internal representation of the graphical tool; and

vi. rendering by the document processing system the screen document to create a single output display that integrates the at least one content document with the graphical tool that performs the user interface function.

2. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the tool code comprises a script.

3. A method according to any one of claims 1 and 2 , wherein the graphical tool is selected from the group of a user interface control tool and window/desktop furniture.

4. A method according to any one of claims 1 and 2 , wherein the graphical tool is selected from the group consisting of a button, an icon, a pull down menu, a switch, and a slider control.

5. A method according to any one of claims 1 and 2 , wherein the graphical tool is selected from the group consisting of a magnifying glass, a ruler, a text entry cursor, a thumbnail navigation control, and a query tool.

6. A method according to claim 1 , wherein:

i. the tool code associated with the tool document file, upon execution, processes the internal representation of the at least one content document to create a derived document which forms part of the screen document;

ii. the derived document presents the content in a manner that achieves a display effect associated with the tool; and

iii. the display effect is portrayed in a rendered screen document.

7. A method according to claim 6 , wherein the derived document changes according to a contextual relationship among the graphical tool, the content document, and an application program in which the tool document file is used.

8. A method according to claim 7 , wherein the contextual relationship is selected from the group consisting of a relative rendered position of the graphical tool and rendered portions of the content document, a time at which the graphical tool acts on rendered portions of the content document, and a state of rendered portions of the content document.

9. A method according to claim 1 , further comprising:

i. providing a means to move the graphical tool to a selected position over a portion of the rendered content document, and

ii. processing the portion of the content document file associated with the selected position with the tool code.

10. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the tool code comprises code for creating a display effect by altering at least one of the objects and parameters of the internal representation of at least one of the content documents.

11. A method according to claim 10 , wherein altering at least one of the objects and parameters comprises modifying the internal representation of the at least one content document to add content to the screen document.

12. A method according to claim 1 , wherein rendering the screen document comprises generating a view of the screen document expressed in terms of primitive figures and parameters.

13. A method according to claim 12 wherein the primitive figures are defined in terms of a bounding box, a shape, a transparency, and a data content of the figure.

14. A method according to claim 12 , wherein the tool code, upon execution, processes the generated view of the screen document to create a display effect by altering the parameters of the primitive figures that make up the view of the screen document.

15. A method according to claim 14 wherein altering the parameters of the primitive figures comprises altering parameters selected from the group consisting essentially of a scale, a transparency, and a color of selected primitive figures within the screen document.

16. A method according to claim 14 wherein processing the generated view of the screen document comprises clipping selected primitive figures within the view of the screen document to a clipping area associated with the tool document file.

17. A method according to claim 1 wherein rendering the screen document comprises receiving a view control input that defines a viewing context and related temporal parameters to generate a context-specific view of the screen document.

18. A method according to claim 17 wherein the context-specific view is selected from the group consisting of all of the document objects within the screen document, a whole document object, parts of one or some of the document objects within the screen document.

19. The method according to claim 17 wherein the view control input is interpreted to determine which parts of the internal representation of the screen document are required for the context-specific view.

20. A method according to claim 17 wherein the view control input is interpreted to determine how, when and for how long the view is to be displayed.

21. A method according to claim 1 wherein:

i. the graphical tool is included in the screen document in response to the activation of a tool button by a user, and

ii. activation of the tool button by the user results in processing of the tool document file to include the graphical tool within the screen document.

22. A method according to claim 21 , wherein:

i. the tool code associated with the tool document file, upon execution, processes at least one of the content documents or the tool document file to create a derived document which forms part of the screen document,

ii. the derived document presents at least a portion of the at least one content document in a manner that achieves a display effect associated with the tool, and

iii. the display effect is portrayed in the rendered screen document when the user activates the tool button.

23. A method according to claim 1 wherein the objects of the internal representations of the content documents and the tool document file are selected from the group consisting essentially of a text object, a bitmap graphic object, and a vector graphic object.

24. A method according to claim 23 , wherein at least one of the objects are animated.

25. A method according to claim 23 , wherein at least one of the object are not animated.

26. A method according to claim 23 , wherein at least one of the object are two-dimensional.

27. A method according to claim 23 , wherein at least one of the object are three-dimensional.

28. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the objects are selected from the group consisting of a video object, an audio object, and an interactive object.

29. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the objects are selected from the group consisting of a button, an icon, a pull down menu, a switch, and a slider control.

30. The method of claim 1 , wherein deriving the internal representations of the plurality of content documents comprises selecting the objects used to describe the respective content documents from a common library of document objects.