System and method for creating an online table from a layout of objects

Abstract

The objects are arranged into overlap groups. Each overlap group is bound by a rectangle (perimeter) and contains objects that, as a group, overlap each other while each overlap group does not overlap any other overlap group. Thus, the page is divided into distinct regions within each non-overlapping rectangle that contain the objects as laid out on the page. The boundaries of each rectangle provides the location for horizontal and vertical lines. These lines define rows and columns of a framework. The intersection of each row and column is a cell, used as a cell in the table representing the page. HTML elements are emitted into an HTML stream in order to define the layout of cells in the table and to populate each cell as either empty or with HTML elements representing the overlap group corresponding to the location of the cell. The HTML elements representing non-empty cells are either native text elements (if possible) or image elements (if native text does not preserve the layout of the overlap group corresponding to the non-empty cell). Therefore, the HTML elements represent and preserve the layout of objects within each overlap group in a memory efficient manner. Additional HTML elements can be added to a cell to preserve existing hyperlinks. Furthermore, nested tables can be created within a single cell of a larger table in order to provide text adornments associated with objects on the page in an efficient manner