Extracting a portion of a document, such as a web page

A computer-readable storage medium having contents configured to cause a computing system to perform a method for extracting a portion of a selected hierarchical document, the selected hierarchical document comprised of nodes in an arrangement in which a node may be a descendent of another node, each node having a type, a node and all of its descendent nodes collectively constituting a subtree of the document hierarchy, the method comprising:

• generating a list of nodes in a rendered version of a subject web page, each node having a respective location score having a value identical to other location scores of each node in the list;
• determining a location of a pointer displayed in relation to the rendered version of the subject web page according to scrolling adjusted coordinates of the displayed pointer, the location indicating a first node of the list of nodes, the first node having a first location score reduced by a factor;
• for each node of the list of nodes, updating the respective location score, the updated respective location score for each node having an updated value based on a distance of the pointer from a corner associated with the node and a square root of an area of the node;
• selecting, based on a lowest updated value of the updated respective locations, one of the nodes of the document hierarchy as the root of a subtree of the document hierarchy that corresponds to the portion to be extracted;
• establishing a reset node comprising a stylesheet specifying a predetermined standardized set of formatting attribute values inheritable by descendents of the reset node;
• for each of one or more of the nodes of the subtree defined by the selected node of the document hierarchy:
• establishing a descendent of the reset node having the same type as the node of the subtree;
• for each of a plurality of formatting attributes, determining calculated values of the formatting attributes in both the descendent of the reset node and the node of the subtree, the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the descendant of the reset node being inherited from the predetermined standardized set of formatting attribute values;
• for one or more of the plurality of formatting attributes, determining that the calculated value of the formatting attribute in the descendent of the reset node does not match the calculated value of the formatting attribute in the node of the subtree;
• and
• for only those formatting attributes of the plurality of formatting attributes for which the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the descendent of the reset node does not match the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the node of the subtree, explicitly specifying for the formatting attribute in the descendent of the reset node the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the node of the subtree.

A method for extracting a portion of a selected hierarchical document, the selected hierarchical document comprised of nodes in an arrangement in which a node may be a descendent of another node, each node having a type, a node and all of its descendent nodes collectively constituting a subtree of the document hierarchy, the method comprising:

• generating a list of nodes in a rendered version of a subject web page, each node having a respective location score having a value identical to other location scores of each node in the list;
• determining a location of a pointer displayed in relation to the rendered version of the subject web page according to scrolling adjusted coordinates of the displayed pointer, the location indicating a first node of the list of nodes, the first node having a first location score reduced by a factor;
• for each node of the list of nodes, updating the respective location score, the updated respective location score for each node having an updated value based on a distance of the pointer from a corner associated with the node and a square root of an area of the node;
• selecting, based on a lowest updated value of the updated respective locations, one of the nodes of the document hierarchy as the root of a subtree of the document hierarchy that corresponds to the portion to be extracted;
• establishing a reset node comprising a stylesheet specifying a predetermined standardized set of formatting attribute values inheritable by descendents of the reset node;
• for each of one or more of the nodes of the subtree defined by the selected node of the document hierarchy:
• establishing a descendent of the reset node having the same type as the node of the subtree;
• for each of a plurality of formatting attributes, determining the calculated value of the formatting attribute in both the descendent of the reset node and the node of the subtree, the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the descendant of the reset node being inherited from the predetermined standardized set of formatting attribute values;
• for one or more of the plurality of formatting attributes, determining that the calculated value of the formatting attribute in the descendent of the reset node does not match the calculated value of the formatting attribute in the node of the subtree;
• and
• for only those formatting attributes of the plurality of formatting attributes for which the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the descendent of the reset node does not match the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the node of the subtree, explicitly specifying for the formatting attribute in the descendent of the reset node the determined calculated value of the formatting attribute in the node of the subtree.