> Slashdot just carried some information about US Patent 5,841,980,
> <URL:http://www.patents.ibm.com/patlist?icnt=3DUS&patent_number=3D58=
41980>.
> Claim 1 of this patent (included in this email) appears to cover IRC=
.
How creative. In the same style, I just learned Microsoft has patented
style sheets [1].
Abstract: The use of style sheets in an electronic publishing system =
is
described. A style sheet is a collection of formatting information,
such as font and tabs in a textual document. The style sheets
described herein are applied to individual display regions (controls)=
on a page. Unlike previous systems, the display regions in this syste=
m
do not contain any text at the time the style sheet is applied.
Rather, the text, or other media such as graphics, is poured into the=
display region when the title is rendered on the customer's computer.=
[1] http://www.patents.ibm.com/patlist?icnt=3DUS&patent_number=3D586007=
3
They make a point out of styling regions into which content is flowed,
rather than styling content itself. This distinguishes them from CSS,
but there should be plenty of prior art in FrameMaker and Quark
Xpress.
-h&kon
H =E5 k o n W i u m L i e
howcome@w3.org http://www.w3.org/people/howcome
World W i d e Web Consortium