WO2021073076A1 - Method, apparatus and device for visualizing spreadsheet, and storage medium - Google Patents

Abstract

A method, apparatus and device for visualizing a spreadsheet, and a storage medium. The method comprises: obtaining a hierarchical structure of a spreadsheet, the hierarchical structure comprising one or more hierarchies having a plurality of nodes (S210); extracting metadata of each of the plurality of nodes (S220); establishing the dependency among the plurality of nodes at least on the basis of the computing relation among the plurality of nodes in the hierarchical structure (S230); and generating a hierarchical visual representation of the spreadsheet on the basis of the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet, the metadata, and the dependency among the plurality of nodes (S240).

Description

Method, device, equipment and storage medium for visualizing electronic form

Cross-references to related applications

This application claims the priority of the Chinese patent application No. 201910977985.6 filed on October 15, 2019, and the content disclosed in the above Chinese patent application is quoted here in full as a part of this application.

Technical field

The present disclosure relates to methods, devices, equipment, and storage media for visualizing electronic forms.

Background technique

In many industries, it is often necessary to build complex spreadsheet models. A spreadsheet model is a spreadsheet that can include numerical values, text, formulas, etc., to calculate the value of one or some variables. For example, in the process of financial analysis, financial analysts usually need to build a spreadsheet model for finance to calculate the intrinsic value of financial assets. The spreadsheet model used for finance usually includes dozens of pages, thousands of rows, and tens of thousands of cells. There are complex mutual calculation relationships between cells, and most of the cells may be calculated based on other cells. The cells in the spreadsheet can store text, time, numbers, or formulas. If a formula is stored in a cell, the spreadsheet usually displays the calculation result of the formula by default. The formula is hidden or displayed in another area, which makes the user need to perform further operations to track the cell referenced by the formula . The complexity of the spreadsheet model and the non-explicit calculation relationships between cells make the spreadsheet model very error-prone, difficult to debug, and difficult to understand or change by others except the spreadsheet model builder. Therefore, there is a need for an improved method, device, device, and storage medium for visualizing electronic forms.

Summary of the invention

An embodiment of the present disclosure relates to a computer-implemented method for visualizing an electronic form, the method comprising: obtaining a hierarchical structure of the electronic form, wherein the hierarchical structure includes one or more levels, and the one or more levels have multiple nodes, Each level has at least one node and has a corresponding level type, and each node corresponds to one or more cells in the spreadsheet, where the hierarchy structure also includes the affiliation relationship between the multiple nodes; extracting the multiple Metadata of each node in the node; establish the dependency relationship between the multiple nodes based at least on the calculation relationship between the multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure; and based on the spreadsheet-based hierarchy, metadata, and the multiple nodes The dependencies between the nodes are used to generate a visual representation of the hierarchy of the spreadsheet.

Another embodiment of the present disclosure relates to a device for visualizing electronic forms. The device includes: at least one processor; and at least one storage device. The at least one storage device stores instructions, which when executed by at least one processor causes At least one processor executes the above method.

Yet another embodiment of the present disclosure relates to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores instructions that when executed by a processor causes the foregoing method to be performed.

Yet another embodiment of the present disclosure relates to an apparatus for visualizing electronic forms, which includes components for performing the steps of the above-mentioned method.

Other features and advantages of the present disclosure will become clear from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Description of the drawings

The drawings incorporated in the specification and constituting a part of the specification illustrate the embodiments of the present disclosure, and together with the specification are used to explain the principle of the present disclosure without limitation. In each figure, similar reference numerals are used to indicate similar items.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an exemplary apparatus for visualizing electronic forms according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method for visualizing an electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

Figure 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

4A and 4B are schematic diagrams illustrating an exemplary spreadsheet hierarchy and dependency relationships between nodes according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method for establishing a dependency relationship between nodes according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing nodes in an exemplary spreadsheet hierarchy structure according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

7A-7C show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

8A-8C show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

Figure 9 shows a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary spreadsheet according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10 shows a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

11A-11B show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

12A-12C show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 13 is a schematic diagram showing additional information in a visual representation of an exemplary electronic form's hierarchy according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 14 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method for modifying an electronic form through a visual representation according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 15 shows a general hardware environment in which the present disclosure can be applied according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

Detailed ways

In the following detailed description, many specific details are set forth to provide a thorough understanding of the described exemplary embodiments. However, it is clear to those skilled in the art that the described embodiments can be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In the described exemplary embodiments, in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the concept of the present disclosure, well-known structures or processing steps are not described in detail.

The blocks in each block diagram shown below can be implemented by hardware, software, firmware or any combination thereof to implement the principles of the present disclosure. Those skilled in the art should understand that the blocks described in each block diagram can be combined or divided into sub-blocks to implement the principles of the present disclosure.

The steps of the method presented in this disclosure are intended to be illustrative. In some embodiments, the method can be completed with one or more additional steps not described and/or without the one or more steps discussed. Furthermore, the order in which the steps of the method are shown and described is not intended to be limiting.

As mentioned above, the complexity of the traditional spreadsheet model and the non-explicit calculation relationship between cells make the spreadsheet model very prone to errors, difficult to debug, and difficult to understand or change. Specifically, the existing general-purpose spreadsheet editing software (such as Microsoft Excel) includes some visualization tools, but these visualization tools generally only visualize values, such as generating charts such as bar charts and pie charts. Some independent visualization software (such as Data Visualizer in Microsoft Visio, Analytica in Lumina Decision Systems) can generate flowcharts from spreadsheet files with specific fields, and associate the nodes in the flowchart with the data in the spreadsheet, but However, the calculation relationship between the cells in the spreadsheet cannot be well visualized. The DPL developed by Syncopation Software includes the influence diagram function, which can be used to visualize the calculation relationship in the spreadsheet. However, if a spreadsheet contains more than 100 formulas, the influence diagram will contain too much information, and the influence diagram will become very complicated. It is difficult for users to find the information they need. Therefore, the influence diagram is difficult to help users understand and debug. Complex spreadsheet model.

In addition, in addition to the numerical value and formula information in the spreadsheet model, a large amount of text information and format information are generally stored. However, most of the existing electronic spreadsheet visualization methods only visualize numerical information or computational relationship information, and do not display the semantic information and hierarchical structure information in the electronic spreadsheet. This is detrimental to users' understanding and debugging of electronic forms.

The embodiment of the present application can divide the electronic table into nodes of different levels according to the text information and format information in the electronic table and the position of the cell, and can identify the semantic information of the cell storing the numerical value and formula information, thereby generating the electronic A visual representation of a table with a hierarchical structure and semantic information. Such a visual representation is also referred to as a hierarchical visual representation in this article.

The following describes an apparatus and method for visualizing an electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure with reference to FIGS. 1 to 2.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an exemplary apparatus 100 for visualizing electronic forms according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown in FIG. 1, the apparatus 100 may include a hierarchical structure obtaining component 110, a metadata extraction component 120, a dependency relationship establishment component 130, and a visual representation generating component 140. Although FIG. 1 illustrates the above four units, this is only a schematic structure of an apparatus for visualizing electronic forms. The apparatus 100 for visualizing electronic forms may also include other possible units, or may include the above four units. Combination unit of any unit.

The hierarchical structure obtaining part 110 may be configured to obtain the hierarchical structure of the electronic form. According to one embodiment, the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet may include one or more hierarchies with multiple nodes, where each hierarchy has at least one node and has a corresponding hierarchical type (e.g., workbook, page , Section, table, block, row, column, interval, cell, etc.), each node corresponds to one or more cells in the spreadsheet, where the hierarchical structure also includes the affiliation between the multiple nodes (for example A table node can have several child nodes whose level type is row, that is to say, these child nodes whose level type is row belong to the node whose level type is table). According to one embodiment, if and only if one or more cells corresponding to node A are contained in one or more cells corresponding to node B, node A is a child node of node B, or node A belongs to于Node B.

According to one embodiment, obtaining the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet may include one or more of the following: identifying the location, content, and format information of cells in the spreadsheet (for example, font, font size, whether to bold, background color, etc.) ), and at least based on one or more of cell location, content, and format information to identify the hierarchical structure of the electronic form; and receive the hierarchical structure specified by the user.

According to one embodiment, the level type of one or more levels of the spreadsheet includes one or more of the following: workbook, page, section, table, block, row, column, interval, and cell. In one embodiment, obtaining the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet may include one or more of the following: detecting the title in each page of the workbook, based on one or more of the location, content, and format information of the title To determine the level of the title, and divide each page into corresponding levels of sections or tables based on the level of the title; determine the row based on one or more of the row and column position, content, and format information of each table And column levels; divide rows and columns into blocks based on one or more of the correlation between the rows in each table, the correlation between the columns, the level of the rows, and the level of the columns; and based on each The correlation between the cells in each row and column divides the cells into intervals.

The metadata extraction component 120 may be configured to extract metadata of each of the plurality of nodes in the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet. According to an embodiment, the metadata of each node may include semantic information describing the specific meaning of the node. According to an embodiment, the semantic information may include one or more of a name, a title, a tag, and an annotation. For example, the semantic information of a workbook can be the name of the workbook and/or the text content that describes the entire workbook, and the semantic information of a page can be the name of the page and/or the text content that describes the entire page, a section The semantic information of can be the title of this section, the semantic information of a table can be the name of the table, the semantic information of a row or column can be the label of this row or column, and the semantic information of a block can be applicable to this block. The text labels of all rows or columns. The semantic information of a cell is the row label of this cell and the column label of this cell. The semantic information of workbooks, pages, sections, tables, blocks, rows, columns, intervals, and cells can all include comments. Comments are descriptive text for nodes at these levels. According to one embodiment, when the node is displayed in the hierarchical visual representation of the electronic form, the semantic information of the node is also displayed in the visual representation, thereby helping the user to understand the structure and content of the electronic form.

According to an embodiment, the metadata of each node may include an operator used in the calculation formula of the node, for example, a plus sign “+” or a multiplication sign “×”, or a combination of multiple operators. According to one embodiment, the semantic information of each of the multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet may be extracted or generated from the text content of one or more cells corresponding to the node, or may be generated by User-defined.

According to an embodiment, the metadata of each node may further include one or more of the following additional information: the generation time of one or more cells corresponding to the node, the number of child nodes of the node, and the node The value in the corresponding one or more cells, the unit of the value, the time point or time period corresponding to the value, the format of one or more cells corresponding to the node, one or more corresponding to the node The location of each cell in the spreadsheet and the path from the root node in the hierarchy to the node.

The dependency relationship establishment component 130 may be configured to establish the dependency relationship between the multiple nodes based at least on the calculated relationship between the multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure. It should be noted that each node in the hierarchy may have a dependency relationship with other nodes. For any two cells A and B in the spreadsheet, define that cell A depends on cell B if and only if cell A is at least calculated by cell B (or by cell B together with other cells) get. For nodes (eg, row nodes) C and D in the hierarchical structure, define that node C depends on node D if and only if at least one cell contained in node C directly or indirectly depends on at least one cell contained in node D. In an embodiment, establishing the dependency relationship between multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure may also be based on the membership relationship between the multiple nodes. In some embodiments, the dependency relationship between multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure may be established without knowing the affiliation relationship between the multiple nodes. For example, it is possible to directly obtain the relationship between all nodes (for example, based on user input). In the case of calculating the relationship, the dependency relationship between the nodes can be directly obtained only through the calculation relationship between the nodes, without further deduction based on the membership relationship between the nodes. The method of establishing the dependency relationship between nodes will be further described below.

In an embodiment, the level type of the level of the node, the child nodes of the node, and the metadata of the node may be stored for each node. In an embodiment, the nodes that the node depends on may also be stored for each node. The stored information can be subsequently used to generate or update the visual representation of the electronic form.

The visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to generate a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form based on the hierarchical structure of the electronic form, metadata, and the dependency relationship between the plurality of nodes. As will be described further below, the visual representation of the hierarchy of the spreadsheet can have a variety of forms and can be updated or modified in response to user operations.

In one embodiment, the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form can be expanded level by level, so as to help the user to intuitively understand the structure and logical relationship of the electronic form. In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to receive an input to expand a third node in the visual representation of the hierarchy of the spreadsheet (for example, double-click the third node or click an icon indicating that the third node is expanded, etc.) . In one embodiment, in response to determining that the level type of the third node is not a cell (for example, the third node is a row node or a table node), the visual representation is updated to display the descendants of the third node, among the multiple nodes Other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the descendant nodes of the third node and the dependency relationship between the descendant nodes of the third node and other nodes. According to one embodiment, updating the visual representation to display the descendant nodes of the third node includes displaying some of the descendant nodes of the third node (e.g., a predetermined number of nodes, a node whose level type is a specific level, or a node that is identified as being of high importance Nodes, etc.). According to one embodiment, the descendant nodes of the third node include a first plurality of descendant nodes, and wherein the descendant nodes of the third node are displayed such that the relative positions of the first plurality of descendant nodes in the visual representation are different from the first plurality of descendant nodes. The relative position of one or more cells corresponding to each descendant node of the descendant nodes in the spreadsheet is displayed in a consistent manner to display the first multiple descendant nodes, which helps users to easily and intuitively obtain in the visual representation Information about the relative position of the one or more cells in the spreadsheet. In one embodiment, in response to determining that the level type of the level of the third node is a cell, the visual representation is updated to display other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the dependency relationship between the third node and other nodes. According to one embodiment, displaying other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node includes displaying a part of all nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node (for example, a predetermined number of nodes, a node whose level type is a specific level, or a node that has been identified For nodes with high importance, etc.). According to one embodiment, updating the visual representation to display other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node includes: when the hierarchical type of the other node is a cell, so that the relative positions of the other nodes in the visual representation correspond to other nodes respectively The relative positions of the cells in the spreadsheet are displayed in a consistent manner to display other nodes.

In one embodiment, the visual representation of the hierarchy of the generated spreadsheet may include displaying the dependencies between all nodes in the hierarchical structure whose hierarchy type is page and all nodes whose hierarchy type is page, so that there is Help users intuitively understand the logical relationship between the various pages of the spreadsheet.

In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to, in response to receiving a request to visualize a node corresponding to a page in the spreadsheet, display the information about the node, the nodes on which the node depends, and other pages in the spreadsheet. The first group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes, the second group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet that depend on this node, and the dependency relationship between this node and the first group of nodes and the second group of nodes . In one embodiment, in response to determining that the number of the first group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet on which the node depends exceeds the first threshold, hide or collapse some of the nodes in the first group of nodes; And in response to determining that the number of the second group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet that depends on the node exceeds the second threshold, hide or collapse some of the nodes in the second group of nodes. By hiding or folding, you can avoid displaying too much information, and prevent the visual representation of the electronic form from being too complicated and making it difficult for users to obtain useful information.

In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to, in response to receiving a request to visualize a node corresponding to a row in the spreadsheet, display each node corresponding to the cell included in the row and the corresponding node. Each node in has a dependency relationship, a fifth group of nodes corresponding to cells in other rows in the spreadsheet, and a dependency relationship between the fifth group of nodes and each node in the respective nodes. It should be understood that the visual representation generating component 140 may also be configured to visualize the node corresponding to a column (or block, etc.) in the spreadsheet in a similar manner.

In one embodiment, generating a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form may include displaying the hierarchical structure of the electronic form in the form of a hierarchical list, and the hierarchical list can be expanded or collapsed level by level. In one embodiment, different display formats (e.g., background color, filling pattern, etc.) can be used in the visual representation to represent nodes belonging to different pages in the spreadsheet, and different node display formats (e.g., Node shape, node background color, etc.) to indicate different levels of nodes. In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to, in response to receiving an input of selecting a node in the visual representation (for example, clicking the node or double-clicking the node, etc.), highlight the selected node and the selected node. Nodes that have dependencies.

In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to respond to receiving an input of additional information for viewing a node in the visual representation (for example, the cursor stays at the node for a predetermined time or double-clicks the node, etc.), Display additional information about the node. According to one embodiment, displaying the additional information of the node includes displaying thumbnails of one or more cells corresponding to the node. According to an embodiment, displaying the additional information of the node includes displaying links to one or more other nodes that indicate that there is an affiliation or dependency relationship with the node. In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to update or create a new visual representation to display the one or more other nodes in response to receiving an input of clicking a link of one or more other nodes.

In one embodiment, the visual representation of the hierarchy of the spreadsheet can be collapsed level by level. In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to receive input of the third node in the visual representation of the hierarchy of the collapsed spreadsheet (for example, selecting an icon instructing to collapse the third node, double-clicking the third node, etc. ). In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to, in response to determining that the level type of the third node is not a cell, update the visual representation to hide the child nodes of the third node and much of the spreadsheet hierarchy. The first group of other nodes (which can be one or more nodes) that have a dependency relationship with the child nodes of the third node among the nodes, and the dependency relationship between the child nodes of the third node and the first group of other nodes, and display the The third node has a dependency relationship between the second group of other nodes and the dependency relationship between the third node and the second group of other nodes. That is, the child nodes of the third node and their dependencies are no longer displayed, but the third node and their dependencies are displayed. In one embodiment, the visual representation generating component 140 may be configured to, in response to determining that the level type of the third node is a cell, update the visual representation to hide other nodes that are dependent on the third node and the third node and Dependencies between other nodes.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method 200 for visualizing an electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although FIG. 2 illustrates the four steps of the method 200, this is only a schematic flow of the method for visualizing an electronic form. The method 200 for visualizing an electronic form may also include other possible steps, or may include the above four steps. A combination of any steps in the step.

The method 200 starts from step S210, and step S210 may be executed by the hierarchical structure obtaining component 110 in FIG. 1. At step S210, a hierarchical structure of the electronic form is obtained, wherein the hierarchical structure includes one or more hierarchies, the one or more hierarchies have a plurality of nodes, wherein each hierarchy has at least one node and has a corresponding hierarchical type, each The node corresponds to one or more cells in the spreadsheet, and the hierarchical structure also includes the affiliation relationship between the multiple nodes.

The method 200 proceeds to step S220, which may be executed by the metadata extraction component 120 of FIG. 1. At step S220, the metadata of each node in the plurality of nodes in the hierarchical structure is extracted.

The method 200 proceeds to step S230, and step S230 may be executed by the dependency relationship establishment component 130 in FIG. 1. At step S230, the dependency relationship between the multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure is established at least based on the calculation relationship between the multiple nodes.

The method 200 proceeds to step S240, which may be executed by the visual representation generating component 140 of FIG. 1. At step S240, a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form is generated based on the hierarchical structure of the electronic form, the metadata and the dependency relationship between the plurality of nodes.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments according to the present disclosure will be described with reference to FIGS. 3 to 15.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating an exemplary electronic form 300 according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although the electronic form shown in FIG. 3 is based on Microsoft Excel, it should be understood that the embodiments of the present disclosure are not limited to this, but can be applied to electronic forms made based on any suitable software.

As shown in FIG. 3, the electronic form 300 is a workbook (book), that is, an electronic form file (such as an xls file, an xlsx file). Figure 3 shows a page (Sheet1) 371 of the workbook. The workbook may also have one or more other pages (for example, page 372, etc.), and each page may have one or more cells. Grid, such as cell 313. Each cell can store numbers, text or formulas, etc. For example, the result of the formula "9.9%" is displayed in cell 313 by default, and the formula "=G12/B12-1" in cell 313 is displayed in other areas of the spreadsheet file to indicate the value of cell 313= G12 cell value/B12 cell value -1. As mentioned above, this display mode makes it difficult for users to debug and understand the spreadsheet model.

As described above, the exemplary method for visualizing an electronic form according to an embodiment of the present disclosure can obtain the hierarchical structure of the electronic form. According to one embodiment, obtaining the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet may include identifying one or more of the location, content, and format information of the cells in the spreadsheet, and based on at least one of the location, content, and format information of the cells. Item or multiple items to identify the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet. According to another embodiment, obtaining the hierarchical structure of the electronic form may include receiving the hierarchical structure specified by the user. According to yet another embodiment, the hierarchical structure of the electronic form can be partly recognized by the above method and partly specified by the user; or can be provided to the user after the automatic recognition is obtained, and then complete and complete according to user input. supplement. You can also use machine learning algorithms to get the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet. For example, a certain number (for example, tens of thousands) of spreadsheets and the corresponding hierarchical structure obtained through manual or semi-manual methods can be used to train machine learning algorithms (for example, support vector machines, decision trees, neural networks, etc.), and then A trained machine learning algorithm can be used to obtain the hierarchical structure of a given spreadsheet.

According to one embodiment, the level type of one or more levels of the spreadsheet may include one or more of the following: workbook, page, section, table, block, row, column, interval, and cell. It should be understood that the above-mentioned hierarchical types are only examples, and any other suitable hierarchical types may also be defined for the hierarchical structure. According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, a page may be composed of sections or tables, and each section may also include a section or table. For example, in FIG. 3, page 371 may include two sections ("China" and "United States"), and section "United States" includes two tables 330 and 340. The table can be composed of rows, columns, or blocks. For example, in FIG. 3, table 330 includes row 311, block 321 "electronic product", etc., table 340 includes row 316 "sales", column 312, block 314 "2017". A block can be a group of closely related rows or columns, and the row or column labels of the cells in the block are closely related. For example, in Figure 3, the column labels of the cells in block 314 are "first quarter", "second quarter", "third quarter", "fourth quarter", and "full year", respectively. Under the column label of "2017", it can be identified as closely related because they are continuous. Blocks can also include blocks. Rows and columns can include cells or intervals. An interval can be a group of closely connected cells. For example, the interval 315 in FIG. 3 includes four cells, the four cells belong to the same row, the column labels are closely related, and the formulas are similar, so they can be identified as an interval. The definitions of rows and columns in the hierarchical structure according to the embodiments of the present disclosure are different from those in traditional spreadsheets: a row (a column) defined in a traditional spreadsheet refers to all those in the same horizontal position (vertical position). Cells (for example, column G includes all cells at the vertical position); while the rows and columns in the hierarchical structure are defined within the scope of the table, that is, if there are multiple horizontal (vertical) ) Arranged tables, then the same horizontal (vertical) position can have multiple rows (columns) belonging to different tables. For example, it can be considered that cells G9 to G13 are columns belonging to table 330, and cells G18-G20 are columns belonging to table 340.

In one embodiment, obtaining the hierarchical structure of the electronic form includes one or more of the following: detecting the title in each page of the workbook, based on one or more of the location, content, and format information of the title Determine the level of the heading, and divide each page into corresponding levels of sections or tables based on the level of the heading; determine the rows and tables based on one or more of the row and column position, content, and format information of each table Column level; based on one or more of the correlation between the rows in each table, the correlation between the columns, the level of the rows, the level of the columns, the rows and columns are divided into blocks; and based on each The correlation between the cells in the rows and columns divides the cells into intervals. For example, for page 371 in Figure 3, the heading 310 "Financial Report", the heading 320 "United States", and 350 "China" can be detected based on the lines 1, 3-5, 15, 22-24, and 34 that only include text content. And the heading 322 "Sales Details" and the heading 323 "Profit Statement", the heading 332 "Sales Details" and the heading 333 "Profit Statement". Then it can be based on the title 310 on the top line of page 371 and there is a blank line between the title 320 "United States" and/or can be based on the format of the title 310 and 320 (for example, font size, font color, background color, indentation, whether Bold\Underline) to determine that the title 310 is the text information describing the content of the entire page 371, and that the title 310 "Financial Report" is the first-level title, and the titles 320 "United States" and 350 "China" are the second-level titles. For the headings "Sales Details" 322, 332 and the headings "Profit Statement" 323, 333, it can be based on the continuous cells containing text and numbers below them and/or can be based on their format (for example, font size, font color, background color) , Indentation, bold\underline) to determine that the title 322 "Sales Details" and the title 323 "Profit Statement" are the names of Table 330 and Table 340, respectively. Similarly, it can be determined that the title 332 "Sales Details" and the title 333 "Profit Statement" are the names of the two tables in the section "China", respectively. Then you can determine the level of the row or column. For example, for row 311 "Total" in table 330, because it is more prominent (in bold, and less indented) than row "Phone", row 311 can be determined "Total" has a higher level than the row "Mobile". For column 312 (F18-F20) in table 340, the column label "full year" can be used to determine that the column is the summary data for the whole year, and column B18-B20, column C18-C20, column D18-D20, and column E18- E20 represents the data from the first quarter to the fourth quarter respectively. Therefore, it can be determined that the columns F18-F20 have a higher rank than the columns B18-B20, C18-C20, D18-D20, and E18-E20. According to another embodiment, the columns F18-F20 may also be assigned the same level as the columns B18-B20, C18-C20, D18-D20, and E18-E20. The rows and columns in the table can be divided into blocks. For example, the rows "laptop", "tablet", and "phone" can be divided into blocks based on the same row level (or correlation between row labels) It belongs to a block 321 of the table 330. In addition, cells can also be divided into intervals. For example, cells L20-O20 can be divided into an interval of table 340 based on the correlation between the column labels of cells L20-O20 and the similarity of their calculation formulas. 315.

As described above, the exemplary method for visualizing an electronic table according to an embodiment of the present disclosure can extract metadata of each node among a plurality of nodes in a hierarchical structure. According to an embodiment, the metadata of each node may include semantic information describing the specific meaning of the node. According to an embodiment, the semantic information may include one or more of a name, a title, a tag, and an annotation. For example, the semantic information of a workbook can be the name of the workbook and/or the text content describing the entire workbook and/or comments on the entire workbook, the semantic information of a page can be the name and/or description of the page The text content of the entire page and/or the annotations for the entire page, the semantic information of a section can be the title of this section and/or the annotations for the entire section, the semantic information of a table can be the name of the table and/or the The annotation of the entire table, the semantic information of a row or column can be the label of this row or column and/or the annotation of this row/column, the semantic information of a block can be the text label applicable to all rows or columns of this block And/or for the comment of this block, the semantic information of a cell is the row label of this cell and the column label of this cell and/or the comment for this cell. For example, for the electronic form shown in FIG. 3, the semantic information of page 371 can be identified as the title 310, that is, "financial report." For example, the semantic information of the table 330 can be identified as the combination of the title 320 "United States" and the title 322 "Sales Details" "United States Sales Details", the semantic information of the column 312 can be identified as the column label "2017 Annual", cell The semantic information of 313 can be identified as "2018 first quarter year-on-year growth rate", and the semantic information of interval 315 can be identified as "2019 first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter gross profit", or it can be Identified as "2019 gross profit".

According to an embodiment, the metadata of each node may include operators used in the calculation formula of the node, for example, a single operator or a combination of multiple operators. For example, the calculation formula for cell 313 is G12/B12-1. First, the cell nodes G12 and B12 can be extracted from the calculation formula to determine that the cell has a calculation relationship with cells G12 and B12. Specifically, Cell 313 is calculated from cells G12 and B12. Further, extracting the metadata of the cell node 313 may include extracting the operator "*/*-1" in the calculation formula G12/B12-1, where "*" represents a placeholder. It should be understood that the calculation formulas in the electronic table not only include calculation formulas between cells, but the electronic table may also include calculation formulas between higher-level nodes (for example, rows, columns, etc.). For example, cells B12～P12 in row 311 "Total" can contain the array formula "{=B9:P9+B10:P10+B11:P11}", which represents the row "Total" and "Laptop" and "Tablet The three lines of "computer" and "mobile phone" have a computational relationship. According to one embodiment, the semantic information of each of the multiple nodes in the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet may be extracted or generated from the text content of one or more cells corresponding to the node, or may be generated by User-defined. For example, the user can manually input the semantic information of a certain node, or modify the semantic information automatically extracted or generated.

According to an embodiment, the metadata of each node (for example, table node, row node, etc.) in the hierarchical structure may further include one or more of the following additional information: Generation time, the number of child nodes of the node (for example, how many row nodes belong to a table node), the value in one or more cells corresponding to the node, and the unit of the value (for example, from Table 330 The extracted unit "million yuan"), the time point or time period corresponding to the value (for example, the time period corresponding to cell node 313 is the first quarter of 2018), one or more units corresponding to the node The format of the cell (for example, font, font size, font color, background color, etc.), the position of one or more cells corresponding to the node in the spreadsheet (for example, cell node 313 is located on page 1 of the spreadsheet) Row 13, column G) and the path from the root node in the hierarchy to the node. For example, for the spreadsheet shown in Figure 3, the root node in the hierarchical structure can be the workbook 300, and the path from the root node to the cell node can be "workbook 300→page 371→table 330→row 317→cell 313".

The following further describes the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet according to the exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure and how to establish the dependency relationship between nodes in conjunction with FIG. 4A and FIG. 4B.

4A and 4B are schematic diagrams illustrating an exemplary spreadsheet hierarchical structure 400 and dependency relationships between nodes according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. It should be understood that FIG. 4A is exemplary, and the hierarchical structure shown in FIG. 4A and FIG. 4B is only for ease of understanding, and is not intended to limit the storage format of the hierarchical structure. The hierarchical structure in FIG. 4A may be obtained by, for example, the hierarchical structure obtaining part 110 of FIG. 1.

In FIG. 4A, different node shapes are used to show nodes of different hierarchical types in the hierarchical structure, solid arrows are used to show the affiliation relationship between nodes, and dotted arrows are used to show the dependency relationship between nodes. Assuming that node A belongs to node B, the solid arrow points from B to A, and it is said that node B is the parent node of node A, and node A is the child node of node B. Define the node without a parent node as the root node, and define the node without child nodes as the leaf node. All nodes except the root node and leaf nodes have one and only one parent node, and all nodes on the branch from the root node to a node are called the ancestors of the node, and a subgraph with a node as the root Any node of is called the descendant node of that node. The node 401 shown in an oval shape is the root node, and its level type is workbook, and the node 401 corresponds to the entire workbook of the spreadsheet. The level type of the node 403 shown by a rounded rectangle is a table, and it has two child nodes 404 and 405 whose level type is a row, and these two child nodes are shown by an octagon. The level type of the node 402 is also row, but it does not belong to the node 403, but directly belongs to the root node 401. That is, the workbook includes three rows in total, among which rows corresponding to nodes 404 and 405 belong to the table corresponding to node 403. Nodes with a hierarchy type of cell are shown by diamonds, where cell nodes 406 and 407 belong to row node 402, cell node 408 belongs to row node 404, and cell nodes 409 and 410 belong to row node 405. It should be understood that FIG. 4A is an example of the hierarchical structure of the electronic form. The actual hierarchical structure may include more or fewer or different types of levels than that of FIG. 4A, and each level may include any suitable number of nodes.

Assume that the calculation formula in the cell corresponding to node 408 indicates that the cell corresponding to node 408 is calculated from the row corresponding to node 402 (for example, the value of the cell corresponding to node 408 = SUM (row corresponding to node 402) )), it can be determined that the node 408 depends on the node 402, which is represented by the dashed arrow 434 between the node 402 and the node 408. Assume that the calculation formula in the cell corresponding to node 407 indicates that the cell corresponding to node 407 is calculated from the cell corresponding to node 410 (for example, the value of the cell corresponding to node 407 = the cell corresponding to node 410 The value of x 2), it can be determined that the node 407 depends on the node 410, which is represented by the dotted arrow 442 between the node 410 and the node 407. Hereinafter, a method for establishing a dependency relationship between nodes according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure will be further described in conjunction with FIG. 4A, FIG. 4B, and FIG. 5.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method 500 for establishing a dependency relationship between nodes according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although FIG. 5 illustrates the three steps of the method 500, this is only a schematic flow of a method for establishing a dependency relationship between nodes. The method 500 may also include other possible steps, or may include the above three steps. A combination of steps in any step. The method 500 may be executed by, for example, the dependency relationship establishment component 130 of FIG. 1.

The method 500 starts at step S510. At step S510, for each node in the hierarchical structure, it is determined that the node is calculated by one or more other nodes. According to an embodiment, it is possible to determine that the node is calculated by another one or more nodes by reading the content of the cell(s) corresponding to the node including a formula. For example, for cell 313 in Figure 3, based on its content as the formula G12/B12-1, it can be determined that the node corresponding to cell 313 is calculated from the node corresponding to cell G12 and the node corresponding to cell B12 . For another example, referring to FIG. 4A, it can be determined that the cell corresponding to node 408 is calculated from the row corresponding to node 402, and the cell corresponding to node 407 is calculated from the cell corresponding to node 410.

The method 500 proceeds to step S520. At step S520, for each first cell of the one or more first cells corresponding to the node, it is determined that the first cell corresponds to the other one or more The first group of second cells in one or more second cells of the node is calculated. Referring back to FIG. 4A, for the cell corresponding to node 408, for example, according to the value of the cell corresponding to node 408=SUM (the row corresponding to node 402), it can be determined that the cell is composed of the cell corresponding to node 406 and The cell corresponding to node 407 is calculated. It should be understood that since the hierarchical type of the node 408 itself is a cell, only the calculation relationship of one cell corresponding to the node 408 needs to be determined here. However, if the calculation relationship of the node 405 is initially determined, the calculation relationship of the nodes 409 and 410 whose hierarchical type belonging to the node 405 is a cell needs to be determined respectively. In addition, depending on the specific calculation relationship, the cell corresponding to node 408 is calculated from the row corresponding to node 402 does not necessarily mean that the cell corresponding to node 408 is calculated from each cell in the row corresponding to node 402 get. For example, if the calculation formula of row A including three cells is equal to the value of row B including three cells, it can be determined that the first cell in row A is calculated by the first cell in row B Instead of calculating from each cell in row B. Through step S520, the calculation relationship between nodes that may have a higher hierarchical type than the cell can be decomposed into the calculation relationship of nodes whose hierarchical type is the cell among the descendants of the node. As for the calculation relationship between the cell corresponding to node 407 and the cell corresponding to node 410 determined in step S510, since the level type of nodes 407 and 410 is already a cell, this step S520 actually Can be omitted.

The method 500 proceeds to step S530. At step S530, the following dependency relationship is established: the first node corresponding to the first cell and all ancestor nodes of the first node depend on the respective corresponding to the first group of second cells The first group of second nodes and all the ancestor nodes of the first group of second nodes. Referring to FIG. 4B, for example, for the node 408, it has been determined at step S520 that the cell corresponding to the node 408 is calculated from the cell corresponding to the node 406 and the cell corresponding to the node 407. Thus, the following dependency relationship can be established: node 408 and all ancestor nodes of node 408 that are not ancestor nodes of node 406 depend on nodes that are not ancestor nodes of node 408 among all ancestor nodes of node 406 and node 406, node 408 and node 408 Nodes that are not the ancestors of node 407 among all ancestor nodes of, depend on nodes that are not the ancestors of node 408 among all ancestor nodes of node 407 and node 407. FIG. 4B shows the dependency relationship constructed for the hierarchical structure shown in FIG. 4A. Note that, for clarity of illustration, the dependency relationship between the node 408 and its ancestors and the node 407 and its ancestors is omitted in FIG. 4B. That is, the following dependencies can be established: dependency 431, indicating that node 408 depends on node 406; dependency 432, indicating that node 404 depends on node 406; dependency 433, indicating that node 403 depends on node 406; dependency 434, indicating node 408 depends on the node 402; a dependency 435 indicates that the node 404 depends on the node 402; a dependency 436 indicates that the node 403 depends on the node 402. For another example, for the node 407, it has been determined at step S520 that the cell corresponding to the node 407 is calculated from the cell corresponding to the node 410. Thus, the following dependency relationship can be established: Node 407 and all ancestor nodes of node 407 that are not the ancestor nodes of node 410 depend on nodes 410 and all ancestor nodes of node 410 that are not ancestor nodes of node 407. That is, the following dependencies can be established: dependency 442, indicating that node 407 depends on node 410; dependency 443, indicating that node 407 depends on node 405; dependency 445, indicating that node 407 depends on node 403; dependency 441, indicating node 402 depends on node 410; dependency 444 indicates that node 402 depends on node 405; and dependency 446 indicates that node 402 depends on node 403.

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram illustrating a node 600 in an exemplary spreadsheet hierarchy structure according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. It should be understood that the node 600 may be any node in the hierarchical structure in FIGS. 4A-4B. The data structure storing node information in the hierarchical structure as shown in FIGS. 4A-4B according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure may be referred to as a hierarchy graph. It should be understood that the tree-like hierarchical structure shown in FIG. 4A and FIG. 4B is only for the convenience of understanding, and is not intended to limit the storage manner of the hierarchical structure. Any suitable data structure can be used to store the hierarchical graph, for example, a linked list, a directed graph, and so on.

According to an embodiment, the hierarchy type 602 of the hierarchy of the node, the child nodes 604 of the node, and the metadata 606 of the node may be stored for each node. Referring to FIG. 4B, for example, for node 404, the hierarchy type of node 404 can be stored as row, and the child node of node 404 is node 408 (for example, a list of numbers of child nodes or a list of pointers to child nodes can be stored), And the metadata of the node 404 (for example, the row label of the row corresponding to the node 404, the position of the cell corresponding to the node 404 in the electronic table, etc.) can be stored. The metadata of the node has been described above with reference to FIG. 3, and will not be repeated here.

According to an embodiment, the node 608 on which the node depends may be optionally stored for each node (for example, the number of the dependent node may be stored or a pointer to the dependent node may be stored, etc.). Referring to FIG. 4B, for the node 404, for example, the nodes on which the node 404 depends can be stored, including the node 402 and the node 406. It should be noted that it is not necessary to store the nodes that each node depends on, and the nodes that each node depends on can be determined in real time before generating the visual representation of the hierarchy of the spreadsheet, without storing.

The following describes a method for generating a visualization of the hierarchy of an electronic form according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

7A-7C show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. For the sake of clarity, the spreadsheets corresponding to these visual representations are not shown. In the visual representation 700A of FIG. 7A, the dependency relationship between all nodes whose hierarchical type is page and all nodes whose hierarchical type is page in the hierarchical structure is displayed. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 700A of FIG. 7A may be displayed in response to receiving a request for all nodes whose visualized hierarchy type is a page. For example, the request may be a selection (for example, single-click, double-click, swipe, long-press (for example, click, double-click, swipe, long press, In terms of display devices), etc.). As shown in FIG. 7A, the visual representation 700A includes nodes 701-707 and arrows indicating the dependency relationship between them, and the semantic information of the nodes 701-707 (for example, the name of the page) is also displayed on the corresponding node. In the visual representation 700A, different filling patterns are used to represent nodes belonging to different pages in the spreadsheet, and nodes 701-707 are all represented by hexagons, indicating that these nodes have the same level type (ie, page ). It should be understood that the visual representation 700A is only exemplary, and other different display formats (for example, fill color, node shape, node size, etc.) may be used to represent nodes belonging to different pages in the spreadsheet, and the same other display formats may be used. Node format (for example, fill color, fill pattern, node size, etc.) to indicate that these nodes belong to the same level. Thus, the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form can clearly and intuitively present to the user which pages are included in the electronic form, the meaning of these pages, and the dependencies between these pages.

According to one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 7B, in response to receiving an input of selecting the node 701 in the visual representation 700A, the selected node 701 and the nodes 702-705 that have a dependency relationship with the node 701 may be highlighted. The input of selecting the node 701 in the visual representation 700A may be the input of clicking the node 701, the input of double-clicking the node 701, or the selection of an icon (for example, text, graph, button, etc.) indicating that the node 701 is emphasized. As shown in FIG. 7B, the font color and fill color of the selected node 701 are inverted, and the nodes 706 and 707 that have no dependency relationship with the selected node 701 are faded. It should be understood that this is only an example of the way of highlighting the selected node 701 and the nodes 702-705 that have a dependency relationship with the node 701, and any other suitable way can also be used for highlighting, for example, zooming in to emphasize Display nodes, add a predefined background color to the nodes to be highlighted, and so on. In this way, the visual representation 700B can help the user to more clearly observe the pages of the spreadsheet that he is interested in, and avoid interference from information that the user is not interested in. This is especially advantageous when the scale of the spreadsheet is large.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation of FIG. 7A shows that the nodes in 700A can be expanded level by level to their descendant nodes (ie, nodes with lower level types). FIG. 7C shows the visual representation 700C after the node 701 is expanded. The visual representation 700C may be displayed in response to receiving an input to expand the node 701 in the visual representation 700A or 700B. The input of expanding node 701 may be input of single-clicking node 701, input of double-clicking node 701, or selection of an icon indicating expansion of node 701 (for example, text, graphics, options in a pop-up menu after node 701 is selected, etc.). As shown in FIG. 7C, the node 701 is expanded into its child nodes 711 and 712, and the nodes 711 and 712 are shown with rectangles to indicate that their hierarchical types are different from the nodes 701-707. For example, the hierarchical type of nodes 711 and 712 may be a table. The semantic information "2014 profit forecast" and "2015 profit forecast" of the node 711 and the node 712 are also displayed in the visual representation 700C, which are, for example, the titles of the tables corresponding to the nodes 711 and 712, respectively. In addition, the dependency relationship between the node 701 and other nodes is also replaced with the dependency relationship between the nodes 711 and 712 and other nodes. The dependency relationship between the node 711 and the node 712 can also be displayed. For example, the arrow between the nodes 711 and 712 in FIG. 7C can indicate that the node 712 depends on the node 711. It should be understood that although FIG. 7C shows that the node 701 whose level type is page is expanded to its two child nodes- table nodes 711 and 712, the present invention is not limited to this, and may also respond to receiving the expanded visual representation The input of node 701 in 700A or 700B displays other hierarchical descendant nodes of node 701, such as descendant nodes whose hierarchical type is row and the dependency relationship between these descendant nodes and other nodes whose hierarchical type is page.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation 700A may also be displayed in response to receiving an input of the node 711 or 712 in the visual representation 700C of the hierarchy of the collapsed spreadsheet. For example, the input of retracting node 711 may be the input of single-clicking node 711, the input of double-clicking node 711, or the icon indicating to retract node 711 (for example, text, graphics, options in the menu that pops up after node 711 is selected) The selection and so on. Specifically, the visual representation 700C can be updated to hide the dependencies between nodes 711 and 712, the dependencies between nodes 711 and 712 and other nodes 702-707, and the dependencies between nodes 711 and 712, and display the status of nodes 711 and 712 The parent node 701 and the dependency relationship between the node 701 and other nodes 702-707. Therefore, after the nodes in the visual representation 700A are expanded by level, the expanded descendant nodes can also be collapsed by level, so that users can view information at any level according to their needs.

8A-8C show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. For the sake of clarity, the spreadsheets corresponding to these visual representations are not shown. In the visual representation 800A of FIG. 8A, the node 801 whose hierarchy type is page is displayed in the hierarchical structure, and the node 801 depends on some descendant nodes (or all descendant nodes) of other page nodes in the hierarchical structure. The first group of nodes 811-814 and the second group of nodes 821-826 that correspond to some descendent nodes (or all descendant nodes) of other page nodes in the hierarchical structure that depend on node 801, and arrows show that node 801 and The dependencies between the first group of nodes 811-814 and the second group of nodes 821-826. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 800A of FIG. 8A may be displayed in response to receiving a request to visualize the node 801 corresponding to a page in the spreadsheet. For example, the request may be a selection (for example, single-click, double-click, swipe, long-press (for example, click, double-click, swipe, long press, In terms of a display device), etc.) or it may be an input (for example, a single click, a double click, etc.) of the node 701 in the visual representation 700A shown in FIG. 7A. As shown in FIG. 8A, in the visual representation 800A, the semantic information of the nodes 801, 811-814, and 821-826 (for example, the name of the page, the label of the row or the column, etc.) is also displayed on the corresponding node. For example, the nodes 811-814 and 821-826 may be nodes of any level lower than the level of the page, for example, their level type may be section, table, row, column, and so on. In Figure 8A for clarity, the nodes 801, 811-814, and 821-826 are displayed in the same format, but it should be understood that different display formats (e.g., fill color, fill pattern, node shape, etc.) can be used in the visual representation 800A. , Node size, etc.) to represent nodes belonging to different pages in the spreadsheet, and different node display formats (for example, fill color, fill pattern, node shape, node size, etc.) to represent different hierarchical types of nodes.

In one embodiment, in response to determining that the number of nodes in the first group corresponding to some descendant nodes of other page nodes in the spreadsheet on which the node 801 depends exceeds a first threshold (for example, 10, 20, etc.), it may be hidden or Collapse part of the nodes in the first group of nodes so that the nodes displayed in the first group of nodes do not exceed the first threshold; and in response to determining that the nodes that depend on node 801 correspond to some descendant nodes of other page nodes in the spreadsheet If the number of nodes in the second group exceeds the second threshold (for example, 10, 20, etc.), some nodes in the second group of nodes can be hidden or collapsed, so that the displayed nodes in the second group of nodes do not exceed the second threshold. The nodes to be hidden or collapsed can be selected based on any suitable criteria. For example, nodes that are hidden or collapsed may be nodes with fewer dependencies, nodes with a lower position in the spreadsheet, nodes with a smaller number of corresponding cells, and so on. As a result, especially when the scale of the spreadsheet is large and the dependencies are relatively complex, the visual representation can be simplified, and information that may not be important can be hidden.

A triangle 851 is displayed in the node 801 to indicate that the node 801 can be further expanded to its descendant nodes (ie, nodes with lower hierarchical types). The triangle 851 is exemplary, and any other suitable text, graphics, icons, buttons, etc. can also be used to indicate to the user that the node 801 can be further expanded.

FIG. 8B shows the visual representation 800B after the node 801 is expanded. The visual representation 800B may be displayed in response to receiving an input to expand the node 801 in the visual representation 800A. The input of the expanded node 801 can be the input of clicking the node 801, the input of double-clicking the node 801, or the icon indicating the expansion of the node 801 (for example, text, a graphic such as the triangle 851 in FIG. 8A, and the pop-up after selecting the node 801 Selection of options in the menu, etc.). As shown in FIG. 8B, the node 801 is expanded into its child nodes 831 and 832. For example, the hierarchical type of the nodes 831 and 832 may be a table (or section). It is also possible to display the semantic information "2014 profit forecast" and "2015 profit forecast" of the node 831 and the node 832 in the visual representation 800B, which are, for example, the titles of the tables corresponding to the nodes 831 and 832, respectively. In addition, the dependency relationship between the node 801 and other nodes is also replaced with the dependency relationship between the nodes 831 and 832 and other nodes. The dependency relationship between the nodes 831 and 832 may also be displayed. For example, the visual representation 800B may include an arrow pointing from the node 831 to the node 832 to indicate that the node 832 depends on the node 831. It should be understood that although FIG. 8B shows that the node 801 whose level type is page is expanded to its two child nodes- table nodes 831 and 832, the present invention is not limited to this, and may also respond to receiving expanded visual representation The input of node 801 in 800A displays the descendant nodes of other levels of node 801, such as descendant nodes whose level type is row and the dependency relationship between these descendant nodes and other nodes. It should be noted that in the visual representation 800B, the shape of the triangle 851 can be rotated relative to FIG. 8A to indicate that the node 801 has been expanded. According to one embodiment, the nodes are displayed in such a way that the relative positions of the nodes 831 and 832 in the visual representation 800B are consistent with the relative positions of one or more cells (tables) corresponding to the nodes 831 and 832 in the spreadsheet. 831 and 832. For example, the table corresponding to the node 831 in the spreadsheet is above the table corresponding to the node 832, so the node 831 can be displayed above the node 832 in the visual representation 800B. It should be understood that the node 831 may also be displayed on the left or upper left of the node 832, and so on.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation 800A may also be displayed in response to receiving an input of the node 801 in the visual representation 800B of the hierarchy of the collapsed spreadsheet. For example, the input to collapse the node 801 may be the input of clicking the node 801, the input of double-clicking the node 801, or the icon indicating the collapse of the node 801 (for example, text, a graphic such as a triangle 851, or a pop-up after the node 801 is selected). Selection of options in the menu, etc.). Specifically, in response to determining that the level type of node 801 is not a cell, the visual representation 800B is updated to hide nodes 831 and 832 and the dependency relationship between these two nodes, and other nodes that have a dependency relationship with nodes 831 and 832. Nodes 811-814, 821-826 and the dependencies between nodes 831 and 832 and other nodes 811-814, 821-826, and display the parent node 801 of nodes 831 and 832, and other nodes 811 that have a dependency relationship with node 801 -814, 821-826 and the dependency relationship between node 801 and other nodes 811-814, 821-826. It should be understood that although other nodes that have a dependency relationship with node 801 and other nodes that have a dependency relationship with nodes 831 and 832 shown here are nodes 811-814 and 821-826, they may be different. For example, if the number of other nodes that are dependent on node 801 and other nodes that are dependent on nodes 831 and 832 exceeds the first threshold or second threshold described above, some nodes can be hidden or collapsed. In the case of displaying only the node 801, the hidden or collapsed nodes may be different from the case of displaying the nodes 831 and 832, so that other nodes shown in the visual representation 800A that are dependent on the node 801 may be different from those in the case of displaying nodes 831 and 832. The other nodes shown in the visual representation 800B that have a dependency relationship with the nodes 831 and 832 are different.

As shown in FIG. 8B, a triangle is also displayed in the node 831 to indicate that the node 831 can be further expanded to its descendant nodes (ie, nodes with lower hierarchical types).

FIG. 8C shows the visual representation 800C after the node 831 is expanded. The visual representation 800C may be displayed in response to receiving an input to expand the node 831 in the visual representation 800B. The input to expand the node 831 can be the input of clicking the node 831, the input of double-clicking the node 831, or an icon indicating the expansion of the node 831 (for example, text, a graphic such as a triangle in the node 831, a menu that pops up after the node 831 is selected). The selection of options in), etc.). As shown in FIG. 8C, the node 831 is expanded into its child nodes. For example, the level type of these child nodes may be rows (or columns). The semantic information "guarantee fee income", "interest and fee net income", "operating income subtotal", "operating expenditure subtotal", "operating profit" and "profit" of these sub-nodes can also be displayed in the visual representation 800C. "Total", which are, for example, the row labels of the rows corresponding to these child nodes. In addition, the dependency relationship between the node 831 and other nodes is also replaced with the dependency relationship between these child nodes and other nodes. At the same time, the internal dependencies of these sub-nodes can be displayed. For example, the visual representation 800C can include arrows from "operating income subtotal" and "operating expenditure subtotal" to "operating profit" to indicate that operating profit depends on "operating "Income subtotal" and "operating expenditure subtotal". In addition, the visual representation 800C can also include an arrow from "guarantee fee income" to "2015 profit forecast" 832, to indicate that the 2015 profit forecast depends on the guarantee fee income in the 2014 profit forecast. It should be understood that although FIG. 8C shows that the node 831 whose level type is a table is expanded to its six child nodes whose level type is a row, the present invention is not limited to this, and may also respond to receiving the expanded visual representation 800B The input of the node 831 in the node 831 displays the descendant nodes of other levels of the node 831, such as the descendant nodes of the cell or block as the level type, and the dependency relationship between these descendant nodes and other nodes. According to one embodiment, so that the relative position of the displayed descendant nodes of node 831 in the visual representation 800C corresponds to one or more cells (rows) corresponding to each of the descendant nodes of node 831 respectively. The relative positions in the table are displayed in a consistent manner to display these descendant nodes.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation 800B may also be displayed in response to receiving an input of the node 831 in the visual representation 800C of the hierarchy of the collapsed spreadsheet. This process is similar to the process of retracting the node 801 described above with reference to FIG. 8B, and will not be repeated here. It should be understood that the dependency relationship between the child nodes of the node 831 can also be displayed in the visual representation 800C, and in response to receiving an input to collapse the node 831 in the visual representation 800C, the dependency relationship between these child nodes can also be hidden .

Figure 9 shows a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary spreadsheet according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the visual representation 900 of FIG. 9, the nodes 901 and 902 whose hierarchical types are pages in the hierarchical structure are displayed, and some descendant nodes (or all of the children and grandchildren) of other page nodes in the hierarchical structure that have a dependency relationship with the node 901 are displayed. The third group of nodes 921-926 corresponding to the descendant nodes) and the fourth group of nodes 911-913 corresponding to some descendant nodes (or all descendant nodes) of other page nodes in the hierarchy that have a dependency relationship with node 902, and also use The arrow shows the dependency relationship between node 901 and the third group of nodes 921-926 and the dependency relationship between node 902 and the fourth group of nodes 911-913. It can also show the dependency relationship between nodes 901 and 902 or node 901. Dependencies within or between the respective child nodes of and 902. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 900 of FIG. 9 may be displayed in response to receiving a request to visualize the node 901 corresponding to the first page and the node 902 corresponding to the second page in the spreadsheet. For example, the request may be a selection (e.g., single-click, double-click, swipe, long-press (for display devices with touch-sensitive surfaces) of icons (e.g., text, buttons, or graphics, etc.) indicating the visualization nodes 901 and 902 Language), etc.) or may be the input of the nodes 701 and 703 in the visual representation 700A shown in FIG. 7A (for example, simultaneous selection of these two nodes, etc.). As shown in Figure 9, in the visual representation 900, the semantic information of the nodes 901-902, 911-913, and 921-926 are also displayed on the corresponding nodes. For example, the nodes 911-913 and 921-926 may be nodes of any level lower than the level of the page, for example, their level type may be section, table, row, column, and so on. In Figure 9 for clarity, the nodes 901-902, 911-913, and 921-926 are displayed in the same format, but it should be understood that different display formats (e.g., fill color, fill pattern, Node shape, node size, etc.) to represent nodes belonging to different pages in the spreadsheet, and different node display formats (for example, fill color, fill pattern, node shape, node size, etc.) to represent different levels of nodes Types of. It should be noted that although FIG. 9 shows one node 921 on which the node 901 depends, other nodes on which the node 901 depends, or other nodes that depend on the node 901 may also be displayed. In addition, although only the node 901 that depends on the node 902 is shown in FIG. 9 for the sake of clarity, it is also possible to display nodes that depend on the node 902 or other hierarchical types that the node 902 depends on are pages and/or their descendants. . The visual representation 900 can also display the (part or all) descendant nodes of the node 901, the (part or all) descendants of the node 902, and the dependency relationship between the descendants of the node 901 and the descendants of the node 902. For example, the visual representation 900 may include an arrow from the descendant node "total" of node 902 to the descendant node "operating income subtotal" of node 901 to indicate that the node "operating income subtotal" depends on the node "total". It should be understood that although the child nodes 931 and 932 of the node 901 and the child nodes of the node 931 and the child nodes 941 and 942 of the node 902 and the child nodes of the node 941 are shown in FIG. 9, this is not necessary. According to one embodiment, in response to receiving a request from the visualization node 901 and node 902, only the nodes 901 and 902 and their dependencies with other nodes may be displayed, and the descendant nodes of the nodes 901 and 902 may not be displayed. Then, in response to receiving the request to expand the nodes 901 and 902, the nodes 931-932 and 941-942 are displayed, and then in response to the request of the expanded node 931, the descendant nodes of the node 931 and the descendant nodes of the node 941 are displayed. According to an embodiment, the visual representation 900 may also be directly displayed in response to receiving requests from the visualization node 901 and the node 902, that is, the child nodes 931 and 932 of the node 901 and the child nodes of the node 931 and the child node 941 of the node 902 are displayed. , 942 and the child node of node 941.

In one embodiment, in response to determining that the number of the third group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other page nodes in the spreadsheet that has a dependency relationship with node 901 exceeds a certain threshold (for example, 10, 20, etc.), it can be hidden Or collapse part of the nodes in the third group of nodes, so that the nodes displayed in the third group of nodes do not exceed the threshold; and in response to determining that the node 902 has a dependency relationship with other page nodes in the spreadsheet, some descendant nodes If the number of the corresponding fourth group of nodes exceeds a certain threshold (for example, 10, 20, etc.), some nodes in the fourth group of nodes can be hidden or collapsed, so that the nodes displayed in the fourth group of nodes do not exceed the threshold. As mentioned above, the nodes to be hidden or collapsed can be selected based on any suitable criteria. Similar to the manner described with reference to FIGS. 8A to 8C, each node in the visual representation 900 of FIG. 9 can also be expanded or collapsed in a hierarchical manner, which will not be repeated here. It should be understood that the visual representation of three or more pages in the electronic form can be displayed in a similar manner to the visual representation 900 shown in FIG. 9, which will not be repeated here.

FIG. 10 shows a visual representation 1000 of the hierarchy of an exemplary spreadsheet according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the visual representation 1000 of Fig. 10, the node 1001 whose level type is row (or column) in the hierarchical structure is displayed, the nodes 1031-1032 corresponding to the cells included in the row, and the nodes 1031-1032. Each node of has dependencies and corresponds to the fifth group of nodes 1011-1018 and 1021-1022 in the cells in the other rows of the spreadsheet. The arrows also show the nodes 1031-1032 and the fifth group of nodes 1011- The dependency between 1018 and 1021-1022. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1000 of FIG. 10 may be displayed in response to receiving a request to visualize the node 1001 corresponding to a row in the spreadsheet. For example, the request may be a selection (for example, single-click, double-click, swipe, long-press (for display devices with touch-sensitive surfaces) of icons (for example, text, buttons, or graphics, etc.) indicating the visualization node 1001 Etc.) Or it may be an input to visualize a node whose semantic information is "operating profit" in the visual representation shown in FIG. 8C or FIG. 9 (for example, a single click on the node, a double click, etc.). As shown in Figure 10, in the visual representation 1000, the semantic information of the nodes 1001, 1031-1032, 1011-1018, and 1021-1022 are also displayed on the corresponding nodes. The nodes 1011-1018 and 1021-1022 can be nodes of any level, for example, their level types can be tables, rows, columns, cells, and so on. For clarity in Figure 10, the hierarchy types of nodes 1011-1018 and 1021-1022 are all cells, and the nodes 1001, 1031-1032, 1011-1018, and 1021-1022 are displayed in the same format, but it should be understood that The visual representation 1000 of nodes 1011-1018 and 1021-1022 can also be any other hierarchical type, and can use different display formats (for example, fill color, fill pattern, node shape, node size, etc.) to indicate that they belong to the spreadsheet Nodes on different pages, and use different node display formats (for example, fill color, fill pattern, node shape, node size, etc.) to represent different levels of nodes, and you can also use different arrangement positions for different nodes Typesetting.

In one embodiment, in response to determining that the number of the fifth group of nodes corresponding to cells in other rows in the spreadsheet that have a dependency relationship with nodes 1031 and 1032 exceeds a certain threshold (for example, 10, 20, etc.), it is possible to Hide or collapse part of the nodes in the fifth group of nodes, so that the displayed nodes in the fifth group of nodes do not exceed the threshold. As mentioned above, the nodes to be hidden or collapsed can be selected based on any suitable criteria. Similar to the manner described with reference to FIGS. 8A to 8C, each node in the visual representation 1000 of FIG. 10 can also be expanded or collapsed in a hierarchical manner, which will not be repeated here.

11A-11B show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the visual representation 1100A of FIG. 11A, the node 1101 whose level type is a cell in the hierarchical structure and other nodes 1102-1105 that are dependent on the node 1101 are displayed. Although for the sake of clarity, the visual representation 1100A of FIG. 11A only shows the nodes that the node 1101 depends on, it should be understood that nodes that depend on the node 1101 may also be displayed. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1100A of FIG. 11A may be displayed in response to receiving a request to visualize the node 1101 corresponding to a cell in the spreadsheet. For example, the request may be a selection (for example, single-click, double-click, swipe, long press (for display devices with touch-sensitive surfaces) of icons (for example, text, buttons, or graphics, etc.) indicating the visualization node 1101. Etc.) Or it may be an input for visualizing a node whose semantic information in the visual representation is "predicted net profit in December 2014" (for example, a single click on the node, a double click, etc.). As shown in FIG. 11A, in the visual representation 1100A, the semantic information of the nodes 1101-1105 (for example, the combination of the row label and the column label of the cell) is also displayed on the corresponding node. The nodes 1102-1105 may be nodes whose level type is a cell.

In one embodiment, in response to determining that the number of other nodes that have a dependency relationship with node 1101 exceeds a certain threshold (for example, 10, 20, etc.), some of these other nodes may be hidden or collapsed, so that all nodes in other nodes can be hidden or collapsed. The displayed nodes do not exceed this threshold.

A triangle is displayed in the node 1105 to indicate that the node 1105 (actually the dependency of the node 1105) can be further expanded. The triangle is exemplary, and any other suitable text, graphics, icons, buttons, etc. can also be used to indicate to the user that the node 1105 can be further expanded.

FIG. 11B shows the visual representation 1100B after the node 1105 is expanded. The visual representation 1100B may be displayed in response to receiving an input to expand the node 1105 in the visual representation 1100A. The input to expand the node 1105 can be the input of clicking the node 1105, the input of double-clicking the node 1105, or the icon indicating the expansion of the node 1105 (for example, text, graphics such as the triangle in FIG. 11A, and the menu that pops up after the node 1105 is selected. The selection of options in), etc.). As shown in FIG. 11B, the node 1105 is expanded to display the nodes 1111 and 1112 that have a dependency relationship with it, and the dependency relationship between the node 1105 and the nodes 1111 and 1112 is also shown with arrows. For example, the hierarchical type of nodes 1111 and 1112 may be cells. The semantic information of the nodes 1111 and 1112 can also be displayed in the visual representation 1100B, which is, for example, a combination of the row labels and column labels of the cells corresponding to the nodes 1111 and 1112, respectively. According to one embodiment, displaying other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the node 1105 includes displaying a part of all nodes that have a dependency relationship with the node 1105 (for example, a predetermined number of nodes or nodes that are identified as highly important, etc.). According to one embodiment, the nodes 1111 and 1112 are displayed in such a way that the relative positions of the nodes 1111 and 1112 in the visual representation 1100B are consistent with the relative positions of the cells corresponding to the nodes 1111 and 1112 in the spreadsheet. For example, in the spreadsheet, the cell corresponding to the node 1111 is above the cell corresponding to the node 1112, so the node 1111 can be displayed above the node 1112 in the visual representation 1100B. It should be understood that the node 1111 may also be displayed on the left or upper left of the node 1112. According to an embodiment, the nodes 1102-1105 may be similarly displayed in such a way that the relative positions of the nodes 1102-1105 in the visual representation 1100B are consistent with the relative positions of the cells corresponding to the nodes 1102-1105 in the spreadsheet.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1100A may also be displayed in response to receiving an input of the node 1105 in the visual representation 1100B of the hierarchy of the collapsed spreadsheet. For example, the input of retracting the node 1105 may be the input of clicking the node 1105, the input of double-clicking the node 1105, or an icon indicating to retract the node 1105 (for example, text, a graphic such as a triangle in FIG. 11B, and selecting the node 1105). Select the options in the pop-up menu, etc.). Specifically, in response to determining that the level type of the node 1105 is a cell, the visual representation 1100B is updated to hide the nodes 1111 and 1112 and the dependency relationship between the node 1105 and the nodes 1111 and 1112.

12A-12C show a visual representation of the hierarchy of an exemplary electronic form according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In FIG. 12A, the hierarchical structure of the electronic form is displayed in the form of a hierarchical list, and the hierarchical list can be expanded or collapsed level by level. The visual representation 1200A of FIG. 12A may include nodes 1210-1270 whose hierarchical type is page, which are arranged in order from top to bottom, and their semantic information is also displayed in the visual representation 1200A. Symbol 1282 shows that the hierarchical type of node 1210 is page, and symbol 1281 may indicate that node 1210 can be expanded.

Figure 12B shows a visual representation 1200B of the node 1210 after it has been expanded. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1200B may be displayed in response to the input of clicking the symbol 1281. The input for expanding the node 1210 can also be the input of clicking the node 1210, the input of double-clicking the node 1210, or the selection of options in the pop-up menu after the node 1210 is selected (for example, clicking, right-clicking, or long-pressing). The visual representation 1200B can display the child nodes 1211 and 1212 of the node 1210 whose hierarchical type is the table. According to one embodiment, the child nodes of the display node 1210 include some of the child nodes of the display node 1210 (for example, a predetermined number of nodes or the nodes whose corresponding cells are at the top of the spreadsheet). According to an embodiment, the nodes 1211 and 1212 are displayed in such a way that the relative positions of the nodes 1211 and 1212 in the visual representation 1200B are consistent with the relative positions of the cells corresponding to the nodes 1211 and 1212 in the spreadsheet. For example, in the spreadsheet, the table corresponding to the node 1211 is above the table corresponding to the node 1212, so the node 1211 can be displayed above the node 1212 in the visual representation 1200B.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1200A may also be displayed in response to receiving the input of the retract node 1210. For example, the input to collapse the node 1210 may be the input of clicking the node 1210, the input of double-clicking the node 1210, or the icon indicating the collapse of the node 1210 (for example, text, graphics such as the symbol 1281 in front of the node 1210, the selected node After 1210, the options in the pop-up menu, etc.) are selected. Specifically, in response to determining that the level type of the level of the node 1210 is not a cell, the visual representation 1200B is updated to hide the nodes 1211-1212. In addition, the nodes 1211 and 1212 in FIG. 12B can be further expanded.

FIG. 12C shows a visual representation 1200C after the node 1211 is expanded. According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1200C may be displayed in response to the input of clicking the symbol in front of the node 1211. The input to expand the node 1211 can also be the input of clicking the node 1211, the input of double-clicking the node 1211, or the selection of options in the pop-up menu after the node 1211 is selected (for example, clicking, right-clicking, or long-pressing). The visual representation 1200C can display the child nodes 1213-1218 whose hierarchical type of node 1211 is row. According to one embodiment, the child nodes of the display node 1211 include some of the child nodes of the display node 1211 (for example, a predetermined number of nodes or the nodes whose corresponding cells are at the top of the spreadsheet). According to one embodiment, the nodes 1213-1218 are displayed in such a way that the relative positions of the nodes 1213-1218 in the visual representation 1200C are consistent with the relative positions of the cells corresponding to the nodes 1213-1218 in the spreadsheet. For example, in the spreadsheet, the row corresponding to the node 1213 is above the row corresponding to the node 1214, so the node 1213 can be displayed above the node 1214 in the visual representation 1200C.

According to one embodiment, the visual representation 1200B may also be displayed in response to receiving the input of the retract node 1211. For example, the input to collapse the node 1211 may be the input of clicking the node 1211, the input of double-clicking the node 1211, or the input of the icon indicating the collapse of the node 1211 (for example, text, graphics such as the symbol in front of the node 1211, and the selection of the node 1211. Select the options in the pop-up menu, etc.). Specifically, in response to determining that the level type of the level where the node 1211 is located is not a cell, the visual representation 1200C is updated to hide the nodes 1213-1218.

FIG. 13 is a schematic diagram illustrating additional information 1300 in a visual representation of an exemplary electronic form's hierarchy according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. According to one embodiment, in response to receiving an input of viewing additional information of a node in the visual representation (for example, any one of the visual representations shown in FIGS. 7A to 12C), the additional information of the node may be displayed. For example, the input for viewing the additional information of a node in the visual representation may be hovering the cursor on the node, selecting the node, and so on. FIG. 13 shows the additional information of a node A whose level type is a table, where the semantic information of the node A is "2014 profit forecast".

According to one embodiment, displaying the additional information of the node A includes displaying a thumbnail 1301 of one or more cells (for example, a table in this case) corresponding to the node A. In the thumbnail 1301, the numerical values of the cells in the table corresponding to the node A and the row coordinates and column coordinates of these cells in the spreadsheet are shown. The semantic information of the node A can also be displayed, for example, the name of the table 1302 "2014 Profit Forecast" as shown in FIG. 13. The additional information may also include the directory 1303 of the node A (all nodes on the path from the root node in the hierarchical structure to the node) "Financial Statement/Main Table/2014 Profit Forecast". For example, "Financial Statement" can be the name of a workbook, and "Master Table" can be the title of the page where the table is located. The additional information may also include external nodes (nodes corresponding to one or more cells on other pages) 1304 on which the node A depends, and external nodes that depend on the node ("2015 profit forecast", "guarantee fee income" ), row 1305 in the table corresponding to node A, and column 1306 in the table corresponding to node A. It should be noted that the nodes shown in 1303-1306 all have an affiliation or dependency relationship with the node A, and these nodes are shown in the form of links. According to one embodiment, in response to receiving an input of clicking on a link, the visual representation is updated or newly created to visualize one or more nodes corresponding to the link. For example, in response to receiving a click on the link "operating profit", a row with semantic information "operating profit" may be visualized, for example, a visual representation 1000 as shown in FIG. 10 may be displayed. According to an embodiment, the additional information 1300 may also be updated to display additional information of the node having the semantic information "operating profit". As mentioned above, the additional information of a node is not limited to this, but may include one or more of the following: the calculation relationship between the node and other nodes (which can be displayed in the form of a formula), and the one corresponding to the node The generation time of or multiple cells, the number of child nodes of the node, the value in one or more cells corresponding to the node, the unit of the value, the time point or time period corresponding to the value, and the The format of one or more cells corresponding to a node, the position of one or more cells corresponding to the node in the spreadsheet, and the path from the root node in the hierarchy to the node, etc.

In addition, the embodiments of the present disclosure also relate to modifying the electronic form by modifying the visual representation. FIG. 14 is a flowchart 1400 illustrating an exemplary method for modifying an electronic form through a visual representation according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although FIG. 14 illustrates the two steps of the method 1400, this is only a schematic flow of the method for modifying the electronic form by modifying the visual representation. The method 1400 for modifying the electronic form through the visual representation may also include other possibilities. , Or may include a combination of any of the above two steps.

The method 1400 starts at step S1410, and at step S1410, a modification to the visual representation is received. Any one of the visual representations shown in FIGS. 7A to 12C can be modified. According to one embodiment, a user interaction component can be provided in a graphical user interface, so that the user can make arbitrary modifications to the visual representation. For example, the user performs one or more of the following operations: modify the metadata of any node in the visual representation (for example, semantic information, operators, additional information, etc.), add descendant or ancestor nodes for the node, add the node for the node The node that the node depends on or the node that depends on the node, or change the membership of the node (for example, move the node A that originally belongs to the node B to the node C, so that the node A becomes a child node of the node C) and so on. According to an embodiment, a dialog box may be further provided in response to the user's operation of adding or modifying a node to request the user to input further information about the node, for example, the value of one or more cells corresponding to the node, The calculation formula of one or more cells corresponding to the node, the display format of one or more cells corresponding to the node, etc.

The method 1400 proceeds to step S1420. At step S1420, the electronic form is modified so that the modified electronic form corresponds to the modified visual representation. According to an embodiment, the electronic form corresponding to the visual representation may be determined first. For example, the visual representations generated for an electronic form may be stored in association with the electronic form, for example, they may be stored at a related location, or they may have the same identifier, etc. According to an embodiment, the spreadsheet may be modified accordingly based on the modification of one or more of the hierarchical structure, metadata, and dependency relationship between nodes in the visual representation. For example, in response to changing the semantic information of the node 814 of the visual representation 800A in FIG. 8A from "total" to "total of investment income", the row label of the row corresponding to node 814 in the spreadsheet can be changed to "total of investment income" ". For another example, in response to adding a new child node "Actual number in December 2014" for the node 1001 of the visual representation 1000 in FIG. 10, the row (or column) corresponding to the node 1001 in the spreadsheet can be compared with the node 1031 and Add a new cell to the right (or below) of the cell corresponding to 1032.

As described above, according to the embodiment of the present disclosure, the electronic form is visualized in layers, and multiple dimensions of information such as related semantic information and dependencies are displayed, so that users can more easily understand or change the organizational structure and structure of the electronic form. Logic. The user can also expand or collapse the different nodes in the visual representation according to the hierarchy, which can effectively filter out the information that the user does not care about, making it easier for the user to find the information they need. In addition, it is more intuitive and convenient to modify the spreadsheet through the visual representation.

Hardware implementation

FIG. 15 shows a general hardware environment in which the present disclosure can be applied according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

With reference to FIG. 15, a computing device 1500 as an example of a hardware device applicable to various aspects of the present disclosure will now be described. The computing device 1500 can be any machine configured to perform processing and/or calculations, and can be, but is not limited to, a workstation, a server, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a personal digital assistant, a smart phone, a portable camera, or any of these combination. The foregoing apparatus 100 may be implemented in whole or at least in part by a computing device 1500 or a similar device or system.

The computing device 1500 may include elements capable of being connected to or communicating with the bus 1502 via one or more interfaces. For example, the computing device 1500 may include a bus 1502, one or more processors 1504, one or more input devices 1506, and one or more output devices 1508. The one or more processors 1504 may be any type of processor, and may include, but are not limited to, one or more general-purpose processors and/or one or more special-purpose processors (such as special-purpose processing chips). The input device 1506 may be any type of device capable of inputting information to a computing device, and may include, but is not limited to, a mouse, a keyboard, a touch screen, a microphone, and/or a remote control. The output device 1508 may be any type of device capable of presenting information, and may include, but is not limited to, a display, a speaker, a video/audio output terminal, and/or a printer. The computing device 1500 may also include a non-transitory storage device 1510 or be connected to a non-transitory storage device 1510. The non-transient storage device 1510 may be any storage device that is non-transient and can implement a data storage library, and may include but is not limited to Disk drives, optical storage devices, solid-state storage devices, floppy disks, flexible disks, hard disks, magnetic tapes or any other magnetic media, compact disks or any other optical media, ROM (read only memory), RAM (random access memory), high-speed Cache memory and/or any other memory chip or cassette, and/or any other medium from which the computer can read data, instructions, and/or code. The non-transitory storage device 1510 may be detachable from the interface. The non-transitory storage device 1510 may have data/instructions/code for implementing the above-mentioned methods and steps. The computing device 1500 may also include a communication device 1512. Communication device 1512 may be capable of external devices and / or with any type of device or system network communication, and may include but is not limited to a modem, a network card, an infrared communication device, a wireless communication equipment and / or such as Bluetooth ^(TM) device, an 802.11 Chip sets for devices, WiFi devices, WiMax devices, cellular communication facilities, etc.

The bus 1502 may include, but is not limited to, an industry standard architecture (ISA) bus, a microchannel architecture (MCA) bus, an enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, a video electronics standard association (VESA) local bus, and peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus.

The computing device 1500 may further include a working memory 1514. The working memory 1514 may be any type of working memory that can store instructions and/or data useful for the work of the processor 1504, and may include, but is not limited to, random access memory and/or Read only memory device.

The software elements may be located in the working memory 1514, including but not limited to the operating system 1516, one or more application programs 1518, drivers, and/or other data and codes. Instructions for executing the above methods and steps may be included in one or more application programs 1518, and the components of the above apparatus 100 may be implemented by the processor 1504 reading and executing instructions of one or more application programs 1518. More specifically, the hierarchical structure obtaining unit 110 may be implemented by the processor 1504 when the application program 1518 having instructions for executing step S210 is executed, for example. The metadata extraction unit 120 may be implemented by, for example, the processor 1504 when the application program 1518 having instructions for executing step S220 is executed. The dependency establishing component 130 may be implemented by the processor 1504 when the application program 1518 having instructions for executing step S230 is executed, for example. The visual representation generating component 140 may be implemented by the processor 1504 when the application program 1518 with instructions for executing step S240 is executed, for example. The executable code or source code of the instructions of the software element can be stored in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (such as the aforementioned storage device(s) 1510), and can be compiled and/or installed where possible Read into the work memory 1514. The executable code or source code of the instructions of the software element can also be downloaded from a remote location.

The present disclosure also relates to the following embodiments.

Embodiment 1. A computer-implemented method for visualizing electronic forms, the method comprising:

Obtain the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet, wherein the hierarchical structure includes one or more levels, the one or more levels have a plurality of nodes, wherein each level has at least one node and has a corresponding level type, and each node corresponds to One or more cells in the electronic table, wherein the hierarchical structure further includes the affiliation relationship between the multiple nodes;

Extracting metadata of each node in the plurality of nodes;

Establishing the dependency relationship among the plurality of nodes based at least on the computational relationship among the plurality of nodes in the hierarchical structure; and

A visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form is generated based on the hierarchical structure of the electronic form, the metadata and the dependency relationship between the plurality of nodes.

Embodiment 2. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein establishing the dependency relationship between the multiple nodes is also based on the affiliation relationship between the multiple nodes.

Embodiment 3. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein the metadata of each node includes semantic information describing the specific meaning of the node, and when the node is displayed in the hierarchical visual representation of the spreadsheet, The semantic information is also displayed in the visual representation.

Embodiment 4. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein the metadata of each node includes an operator used in the calculation formula of the node.

Embodiment 5. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein obtaining the hierarchical structure of the electronic form includes one or more of the following:

Identify one or more of the location, content, and format information of the cell in the electronic form, and identify the electronic based on at least one or more of the location, content, and format information of the cell The hierarchical structure of the table;

Receive the hierarchical structure specified by the user.

Embodiment 6. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein the level type of the one or more levels of the electronic form includes one or more of the following: workbook, page, section, table, block, Rows, columns, intervals, and cells, and the hierarchical structure in which the spreadsheet is obtained includes one or more of the following:

Detect the title in each page of the workbook, determine the level of the title based on one or more of the location, content, and format information of the title, and divide each page into sections or sections of the corresponding level based on the level of the title. table;

Determine the level of rows and columns based on one or more of the position, content and format information of the rows and columns of each table;

Divide the rows and columns into blocks based on one or more of the correlation between the rows, the correlation between the columns, the level of the rows, and the level of the columns in each table; and

The cells are divided into intervals based on the correlation between the cells in each row and column.

Embodiment 7. The method according to embodiment 3, wherein the semantic information includes one or more of a name, a title, a tag, and an annotation.

Embodiment 8. The method according to embodiment 3, wherein the semantic information of each node in the plurality of nodes is extracted or generated from the text content of one or more cells corresponding to the node, or Defined by the user.

Embodiment 9. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein establishing a dependency relationship between the multiple nodes includes:

For each node in the hierarchical structure, it is determined that the node is calculated by one or more other nodes, and for each first cell of the one or more first cells corresponding to the node:

Determining that the first cell is calculated from the first group of second cells in the one or more second cells corresponding to the other one or more nodes; and

The following dependency relationship is established: the first node corresponding to the first cell and all or part of the ancestor nodes of the first node depend on the first group of second nodes corresponding to the first group of second cells and all All or part of the ancestor nodes of the second node in the first group.

Embodiment 10. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising: storing, for each node, the level type of the level where the node is located, the child nodes of the node, and the metadata of the node.

Embodiment 11. The method according to embodiment 10, further comprising: storing, for each node, the node that the node depends on.

Embodiment 12. The method according to embodiment 3, wherein the metadata of each node further includes one or more of the following additional information: the calculation formula of the node, the information of one or more cells corresponding to the node The generation time, the number of child nodes of the node, the value in one or more cells corresponding to the node, the unit of the value, the time point or time period corresponding to the value, and the one corresponding to the node The format of or more cells, the position of one or more cells corresponding to the node in the spreadsheet, and the path from the root node in the hierarchical structure to the node, and the method further includes:

Receiving input for viewing additional information of a node in the visual representation; and

In response to receiving the input, additional information of the node is displayed.

Embodiment 13. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising:

Receiving the input of the third node in the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form expanded;

In response to determining that the level type of the third node is not a cell, the visual representation is updated to display descendant nodes of the third node, and those of the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with descendant nodes of the third node Other nodes and the dependency relationship between the descendant nodes of the third node and the other nodes; and

In response to determining that the level type of the third node is a cell, the visual representation is updated to display other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the dependency relationship between the third node and the other nodes.

Embodiment 14. The method according to embodiment 13, wherein:

Displaying other nodes among the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with descendant nodes of the third node includes displaying some of all nodes among the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with descendant nodes of the third node, and

Displaying other nodes that have a dependent relationship with the third node includes displaying some of all nodes that have a dependent relationship with the third node.

Embodiment 15. The method according to embodiment 13, wherein the descendant nodes of the third node include a first plurality of descendant nodes, and wherein displaying the descendant nodes of the third node includes such that the first plurality The relative position of the descendant node in the visual representation is displayed in a manner consistent with the relative position of one or more cells in the spreadsheet corresponding to each descendant node of the first plurality of descendant nodes. The first plurality of descendant nodes.

Embodiment 16. The method according to embodiment 13, wherein updating the visual representation to display other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node includes: when the level type of the other node is a cell, so that the other node The other nodes are displayed in a manner consistent with the relative positions in the visual representation and the relative positions of the cells corresponding to the other nodes in the electronic table.

Embodiment 17. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein generating the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form includes displaying all nodes in the hierarchical structure whose hierarchy type is page and the hierarchy type of the hierarchy is page The dependencies between all nodes.

Embodiment 18. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising:

In response to receiving a request to visualize a node corresponding to a page in the electronic form, display the node, the first group of nodes that the node depends on and the first group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the electronic form, and The second group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the electronic table of the node and the dependency relationship between the node and the first group of nodes and the second group of nodes.

Embodiment 19. The method according to embodiment 18, further comprising:

In response to determining that the number of the first group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet on which the node depends exceeds the first threshold, hide or collapse part of the first group of nodes; and

In response to determining that the number of the second set of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet that depends on the node exceeds the second threshold, hide or collapse some of the nodes in the second set.

Embodiment 20. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising:

In response to receiving a request to visualize the first node and the second node respectively corresponding to the first page and the second page in the electronic form, display the first node and the electronic form that has a dependency relationship with the first node The third group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of pages other than the first page and the second page in and the dependency relationship between the third group of nodes and the first node, and the display of the second node and the second node There is a dependency relationship between the fourth group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of pages other than the first page and the second page in the electronic table, and the dependency relationship between the fourth group of nodes and the second node.

Embodiment 21. The method according to embodiment 20, further comprising displaying the descendant nodes of the first node, the descendant nodes of the second node, and the dependency relationship between the descendant nodes of the first node and the descendant nodes of the second node.

Embodiment 22. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising:

In response to receiving a request to visualize a node corresponding to a row in the electronic table, display each node corresponding to the cell included in the row and the nodes that have a dependency relationship with each of the nodes and are related to each other. The fifth group of nodes corresponding to cells in other rows of the electronic table and the dependency relationship between the fifth group of nodes and each of the nodes are described.

Embodiment 23. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein generating a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form includes displaying the hierarchical structure of the electronic form in the form of a hierarchical directory.

Embodiment 24. The method according to embodiment 1, wherein generating a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form includes: using different display formats in the visual representation to represent information belonging to different pages in the electronic form Nodes, and use different node display formats to represent different hierarchical types of nodes.

Embodiment 25. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising:

In response to receiving an input of selecting a node in the visual representation, the selected node and the node that has a dependency relationship with the selected node are highlighted.

Embodiment 26. The method according to embodiment 12, wherein displaying the additional information of the node includes displaying thumbnails of one or more cells corresponding to the node.

Embodiment 27. The method according to embodiment 12, wherein displaying the additional information of the node includes displaying the link of one or more other nodes that indicate that there is an affiliation relationship or a dependency relationship with the node, and the method further includes:

Receive the input of clicking on the link; and

Update or create a new visual representation to display the one or more other nodes.

Embodiment 28. The method according to embodiment 13, further comprising:

Receiving input from the third node in the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form;

In response to determining that the level type of the third node is not a cell, the visual representation is updated to hide the child nodes of the third node, and those of the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with the child nodes of the third node The dependencies between the first group of other nodes and the child nodes of the third node and the first group of other nodes, and display the second group of other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the third The dependency between the node and the other nodes in the second group; and

In response to determining that the level type of the third node is a cell, the visual representation is updated to hide other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the dependency relationship between the third node and the other nodes.

Embodiment 29. The method according to embodiment 1, further comprising:

Receiving modifications to the visual representation; and

The electronic form is modified so that the modified electronic form corresponds to the modified visual representation.

Embodiment 30. A device for visualizing an electronic form, comprising: components for executing the steps of the method according to any one of the embodiments 1-29.

Embodiment 31. A device for visualizing electronic forms, including:

At least one processor; and

At least one storage device, the at least one storage device stores instructions, and when the instructions are executed by the at least one processor, the at least one processor is caused to execute the steps described in any one of embodiments 1-29 method.

Embodiment 32. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor causes the method described in any one of the embodiments 1-29 to be executed.

From the foregoing embodiments, those skilled in the art can clearly know that the present disclosure can be implemented by software and necessary hardware, or the present disclosure can be implemented by hardware, firmware, and the like. Based on this understanding, the embodiments of the present disclosure may be partially implemented in the form of software. Computer software can be stored in a computer readable storage medium, such as a floppy disk, hard disk, optical disk, or flash memory. The computer software includes a series of instructions that cause a computer (for example, a personal computer, a service station, or a network terminal) to execute the method according to various embodiments of the present disclosure or a part thereof.

Having described the present disclosure as such, it is clear that the present disclosure can be varied in many ways. These changes are not deemed to depart from the spirit and scope of the present disclosure, but all such modifications obvious to those skilled in the art are intended to be included in the scope of the following claims.

Claims (32)

1. A computer-implemented method for visualizing electronic forms, the method comprising:

   Obtain the hierarchical structure of the spreadsheet, wherein the hierarchical structure includes one or more levels, the one or more levels have a plurality of nodes, wherein each level has at least one node and has a corresponding level type, and each node corresponds to One or more cells in the electronic table, wherein the hierarchical structure further includes the affiliation relationship between the multiple nodes;

   Extracting metadata of each node in the plurality of nodes;

   Establishing the dependency relationship among the plurality of nodes based at least on the computational relationship among the plurality of nodes in the hierarchical structure; and

   A visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form is generated based on the hierarchical structure of the electronic form, the metadata and the dependency relationship between the plurality of nodes.
2. The method according to claim 1, wherein establishing the dependency relationship between the plurality of nodes is further based on the affiliation relationship between the plurality of nodes.
3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the metadata of each node includes semantic information describing the specific meaning of the node, and when the node is displayed in a hierarchical visual representation of the spreadsheet, the semantic information It is also displayed in the visual representation.
4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the metadata of each node includes an operator used in the calculation formula of the node.
5. The method according to claim 1, wherein obtaining the hierarchical structure of the electronic form comprises one or more of the following:

   Identify one or more of the location, content, and format information of the cell in the electronic form, and identify the electronic based on at least one or more of the location, content, and format information of the cell The hierarchical structure of the table;

   Receive the hierarchical structure specified by the user.
6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the level type of the one or more levels of the spreadsheet includes one or more of the following: workbook, page, section, table, block, row, column, Intervals and cells, and the hierarchical structure in which the spreadsheet is obtained includes one or more of the following:

   Detect the title in each page of the workbook, determine the level of the title based on one or more of the location, content, and format information of the title, and divide each page into sections or sections of the corresponding level based on the level of the title. table;

   Determine the level of rows and columns based on one or more of the position, content and format information of the rows and columns of each table;

   Divide the rows and columns into blocks based on one or more of the correlation between the rows, the correlation between the columns, the level of the rows, and the level of the columns in each table; and

   The cells are divided into intervals based on the correlation between the cells in each row and column.
7. The method according to claim 3, wherein the semantic information includes one or more of a name, a title, a tag, and an annotation.
8. The method according to claim 3, wherein the semantic information of each node in the plurality of nodes is extracted or generated from the text content of one or more cells corresponding to the node or defined by the user .
9. The method according to claim 1, wherein establishing a dependency relationship between the plurality of nodes comprises:

   For each node in the hierarchical structure, it is determined that the node is calculated by one or more other nodes, and for each first cell of the one or more first cells corresponding to the node:

   Determining that the first cell is calculated from the first group of second cells in the one or more second cells corresponding to the other one or more nodes; and

   The following dependency relationship is established: the first node corresponding to the first cell and all or part of the ancestor nodes of the first node depend on the first group of second nodes corresponding to the first group of second cells and all All or part of the ancestor nodes of the second node in the first group.
10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising: storing, for each node, the level type of the level where the node is located, the child nodes of the node, and the metadata of the node.
11. The method according to claim 10, further comprising: storing, for each node, the node that the node depends on.
12. The method according to claim 3, wherein the metadata of each node further includes one or more of the following additional information: the calculation formula of the node, the generation time of one or more cells corresponding to the node, the The number of child nodes of the node, the value in one or more cells corresponding to the node, the unit of the value, the time point or time period corresponding to the value, and one or more units corresponding to the node The format of the grid, the position of one or more cells corresponding to the node in the spreadsheet, and the path from the root node in the hierarchy to the node, and the method further includes:

    Receiving input for viewing additional information of a node in the visual representation; and

    In response to receiving the input, additional information of the node is displayed.
13. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

    Receiving the input of the third node in the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form expanded;

    In response to determining that the level type of the third node is not a cell, the visual representation is updated to display descendant nodes of the third node, and those of the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with descendant nodes of the third node Other nodes and the dependencies between the descendant nodes of the third node and the other nodes; and

    In response to determining that the level type of the third node is a cell, the visual representation is updated to display other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the dependency relationship between the third node and the other nodes.
14. The method according to claim 13, wherein:

    Displaying other nodes among the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with descendant nodes of the third node includes displaying some of all nodes among the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with descendant nodes of the third node, and

    Displaying other nodes that have a dependent relationship with the third node includes displaying some of all nodes that have a dependent relationship with the third node.
15. The method according to claim 13, wherein the descendant nodes of the third node include a first plurality of descendant nodes, and wherein displaying the descendant nodes of the third node includes such that the first plurality of descendant nodes are in the The relative position in the visual representation is consistent with the relative position in the electronic table of one or more cells corresponding to each descendant node of the first plurality of descendant nodes to display the first Multiple descendant nodes.
16. The method according to claim 13, wherein updating the visual representation to display other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node comprises: when the hierarchical type of the other node is a cell, so that the other node is in the visualization The other nodes are displayed in a manner that the relative positions in the representation are consistent with the relative positions of the cells respectively corresponding to the other nodes in the electronic table.
17. The method according to claim 1, wherein generating a visual representation of the hierarchy of the spreadsheet comprises displaying all nodes in the hierarchy whose hierarchy type is page and among all nodes whose hierarchy type is page. Dependence between.
18. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

    In response to receiving a request to visualize a node corresponding to a page in the electronic form, display the node, the first group of nodes that the node depends on and the first group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the electronic form, and The second group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the electronic table of the node and the dependency relationship between the node and the first group of nodes and the second group of nodes.
19. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

    In response to determining that the number of the first group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet on which the node depends exceeds the first threshold, hide or collapse part of the first group of nodes; and

    In response to determining that the number of the second set of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of other pages in the spreadsheet that depends on the node exceeds the second threshold, hide or collapse some of the nodes in the second set.
20. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

    In response to receiving a request to visualize the first node and the second node respectively corresponding to the first page and the second page in the electronic form, display the first node and the electronic form that has a dependency relationship with the first node The third group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of pages other than the first page and the second page in and the dependency relationship between the third group of nodes and the first node, and the display of the second node and the second node There is a dependency relationship between the fourth group of nodes corresponding to some descendant nodes of pages other than the first page and the second page in the electronic table, and the dependency relationship between the fourth group of nodes and the second node.
21. The method according to claim 20, further comprising displaying the descendant nodes of the first node, the descendant nodes of the second node, and the dependency relationship between the descendant nodes of the first node and the descendant nodes of the second node.
22. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

    In response to receiving a request to visualize a node corresponding to a row in the electronic table, display each node corresponding to the cell included in the row and the nodes that have a dependency relationship with each of the nodes and are related to each other. The fifth group of nodes corresponding to cells in other rows of the electronic table and the dependency relationship between the fifth group of nodes and each of the nodes.
23. The method of claim 1, wherein generating a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form includes displaying the hierarchy of the electronic form in the form of a hierarchical catalog.
24. The method according to claim 1, wherein generating a visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form comprises: using different display formats in the visual representation to represent nodes belonging to different pages in the electronic form, and using Different node display formats represent different levels of nodes.
25. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

    In response to receiving an input of selecting a node in the visual representation, the selected node and the node that has a dependency relationship with the selected node are highlighted.
26. The method according to claim 12, wherein displaying the additional information of the node comprises displaying thumbnails of one or more cells corresponding to the node.
27. The method according to claim 12, wherein displaying the additional information of the node comprises displaying links of one or more other nodes that indicate that there is an affiliation or dependency relationship with the node, and the method further comprises:

    Receive the input of clicking on the link; and

    Update or create a new visual representation to display the one or more other nodes.
28. The method according to claim 13, further comprising:

    Receiving input from the third node in the visual representation of the hierarchy of the electronic form;

    In response to determining that the level type of the third node is not a cell, the visual representation is updated to hide the child nodes of the third node, and those of the plurality of nodes that have a dependency relationship with the child nodes of the third node The dependencies between the first group of other nodes and the child nodes of the third node and the first group of other nodes, and display the second group of other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the third The dependency between the node and the other nodes in the second group; and

    In response to determining that the level type of the third node is a cell, the visual representation is updated to hide other nodes that have a dependency relationship with the third node and the dependency relationship between the third node and the other nodes.
29. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

    Receiving modifications to the visual representation; and

    The electronic form is modified so that the modified electronic form corresponds to the modified visual representation.
30. An apparatus for visualizing electronic forms, comprising: components for performing the steps of the method according to any one of claims 1-29.
31. A device for visualizing electronic forms, including:

    At least one processor; and

    At least one storage device, the at least one storage device stores instructions, and when the instructions are executed by the at least one processor, the at least one processor is caused to execute the method according to any one of claims 1-29 method.
32. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions, which when executed by a processor, causes the method according to any one of claims 1-29 to be executed.

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