Method of and system for displaying mobile messages in unsupported formats
The present invention is directed to methods of and systems for converting data that is in a format unsupported by a recipient device into images that are supported and can thus be accurately rendered by the recipient device. Thus, recipient devices, such as mobile phones and text messengers, all of which are able to display images, are all able to render characters in languages not supported by the recipient device. A method of the present invention converts data for display on a receiving device configured to accurately render data in one or more supported formats. The method includes determining whether a first format of the data is a supported format, and automatically converting the data into a second format supported by the second device if the first format is not a supported format. Preferably, the first format is defined by a character set and the second format is a binary image format.
1. A method of converting a message transmitted from a sending device for display on a receiving device comprising:
receiving a message transmitted from a sending device to a receiving device, the message being a Short Message Service (SMS) or a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) message, the message having a header block, a label block, and a data block, wherein the label block indicates that the message contains text data and the data block contains the text data;
identifying a text data in the data block of the message;
determining a first character set of the text data in the Short Message Service (SMS) or a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) message;
identifying a second character set supported by the receiving device;
comparing the first character set against the second character set to determine whether the first character set matches the second character set; and
responsive to determining that the first character set does not match the second character set, generating an image depicting the text data; and
generating a converted message containing the image, the label block of the converted message indicating that the message contains image data.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the image has a binary image format.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first character set or the second character set is selected from the group consisting of an English font, a Chinese font, a Korean font, a Japanese font, a Spanish font, a Cyrillic font, and a Baltics font.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein a format of the image is selected from the group consisting of Device-Independent Bitmap format, Graphics Interchange Format, Portable Document Format, Joint Photographic Experts Group format, Portable Networks Graphics format, and Tagged Image File Format.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the receiving device is any one of a cell phone, a text messenger, a pager, and a personal digital assistant.
6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
storing the converted message on a storage node for retrieval by the receiving device;
generating a notification alert containing access information for accessing the message on the storage node; and
transmitting the notification alert to the receiving device.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the access information comprises a user name and a passcode.
8. The method of claim 6 , wherein the converted message stored on the storage node is a Multimedia Message Service message and the notification alert is a Short Message Service message.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the converted message is a Multimedia Message Service message.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least the first character set or the second character set is identified based an international area code or a domain associated with a mobile phone number of the receiving device.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of generating the converted message comprises the steps of:
creating an output container for the converted message;
generating a new header for the label block, the header indicating that data within the output container is the image data; and
copying the new header and the image to the output container.
12. A message hub for forwarding Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages from a sending device to a recipient device, the message hub having a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions for converting a message transmitted from a sending device to a receiving device, the instructions comprising:
receiving a message transmitted from a sending device to a receiving device, the message being a Short Message Service (SMS) or a Multimedia Messaging Service (MIMS) message, the message having a header block, a label block, and a data block, wherein the label block indicates that the message contains text data and the data block contains the text data;
identifying a text data in the data block of the message;
determining a first character set of the text data in the Short Message Service (SMS) or a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) message;
identifying a second character set supported by the receiving device;
comparing the first character set against the second character set to determine whether the first character set matches the second character set; and
responsive to determining that the first character set does not match the second character set, generating an image depicting the text data; and
generating a converted message containing the image, the label block of the converted message indicating that the message contains image data.
13. The message hub of claim 12 , further comprising a text-to-image converter.
14. The message hub of claim 13 , wherein the text-to-image converter is configured to generate an image in Device-Independent Bitmap format, Graphics Interchange Format, Portable Document Format, Joint Photographic Experts Group format, Portable Networks Graphics format, or Tagged Image File Format.
15. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein the image has a binary image format.
16. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein the first character set or the second character set is selected from the group consisting of an English font, a Chinese font, a Korean font, a Japanese font, a Spanish font, a Cyrillic font, and a Baltics font.
17. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein a format of the image is selected from the group consisting of Device-Independent Bitmap format, Graphics Interchange Format, Portable Document Format, Joint Photographic Experts Group format, Portable Networks Graphics format, and Tagged Image File Format.
18. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein the receiving device is any one of a cell phone, a text messenger, a pager, and a personal digital assistant.
19. The message hub of claim 12 , the instructions further comprising:
storing the converted message on a storage node for retrieval by the receiving device;
generating a notification alert containing access information for accessing the message on the storage node; and
transmitting the notification alert to the receiving device.
20. The message hub of claim 19 , wherein the access information comprises a user name and a passcode.
21. The message hub of claim 19 , wherein the converted message stored on the storage node is a Multimedia Message Service message and the notification alert is a Short Message Service message.
22. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein the converted message is a Multimedia Message Service message.
23. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein at least the first character set or the second character set is identified based an international area code or a domain associated with a mobile phone number of the receiving device.
24. The message hub of claim 12 , wherein the instruction of generating the converted message further comprises the following instructions:
creating an output container for the converted message;
generating a new header for the label block, the header indicating that data within the output container is the image data; and
copying the new header and the image to the output container.