Compression of documents with markup language that preserves syntactical structure

摘要

Communication channels between mobile telephones and networks like the Internet have very limited bandwidths. The transmission of documents expressed in various forms like markup languages is made more efficient by compressing document elements into codes such that syntactical characteristics of the elements can be determined readily from the encoded representations. An indication of the presence of syntax information like markup language tag attributes and content is conveyed in a position relative to the code beginning that is predefined. Preferably, the position is independent of the type of element that is represented. In this manner, compressed or encoded representations of document elements can be processed efficiently without need for expansion or decoding. In addition, future extensions to the markup language can be processed efficiently by existing encoders and decoders that are not cognizant of the new extensions.