Importance

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Abstract

Modern electronic office environments often include hundreds of different document format types. Format/object transformation applications exist which are capable of transforming a first selected document/object format into a second selected document/object format; however, the existence of thousands of such transformation applications make it difficult to identify the existence of multiple stage format transformations. Accordingly, a matrix is established having multiple rows and columns of zero value cells. An identification of selected document/object formats is associated with each row and column of the matrix. Thereafter, for each existing transformation capable of directly converting a selected document/object format into a second selected document/object format a value of one is entered into a cell at the intersection of a row of the matrix associated with the selected document/object format and a column of the matrix associated with the second selected document/object format. The existence of a multiple stage transformation from a first particular document/object format into a second particular document/object format is then determined by evaluating the matrix at successive powers from one to N for a nonzero value R in a cell at the intersection of the two document/object identifiers.

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First Claim