Apparatus and method for retrieving information using standard objects

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENT As a general overview, document manager uses a standard-set of objects.
The document manager runs at a client computer and retrieves documents downloaded from a server computer across a communications medium The documents can contain embedded links to objects, which are building blocks that make up or are associated with the documents.
The client computer keeps a local copy of a standard-set of objects or a portion thereof, so that when the client computer needs to present the linked objects to the user, the linked objects that are part of the standard-set do not need to be retrieved from the server by the client.
When a linked object is needed, the document manager parses the embedded link to the object and extracts the file name of the object.
The document manager then searches a name list, which contains all the names of objects in the standard-set.
If the file name from the link is in the name list, the document manager uses the object of the same name in the local copy of the standard-set.
If the file name is not in the name list, the document manager retrieves the linked object using the full embedded link.
With reference now to the figures and in particular with reference to FIG.
1, there is depicted a block diagram of a data processing system in which a preferred embodiment may be implemented.
Computer 100 functioning as a client is shown connected via network 200 to document-server computer 150 and to standard-set server computer 175.
In the preferred embodiment, network 200 is the Internet, although it could be another kind of network such as a Local Area Network (LAN) or an Intranet.
Client computer 100 contains Central Processing Unit (CPU) 102, which is a processor connected via bus 112 to input device 104, display device 106, network connection 108, and memory 110.
Input device 104 can be any suitable device for the user to give input to client computer 100; for example: a keyboard, keypad, light pen, touchscreen, button, mouse, trackball, or speech recognition unit could be used