Abstract: A property storage structure is provided that is configured to store properties for a display object. The property storage structure includes a property object that corresponds to a property of the display object. The property storage structure is identified according to a key (e.g., the key identifies the property object as a fill style object that corresponds to a fill style property for the display object). The property object hierarchically includes a value designating what type of object for the property object identified by the key (e.g., the fill style object includes a value that designates the fill style object as a solid color fill type).

Abstract: A graphical object is generated according to a first application in a document of a second application. The graphical object is constructed as a composite, data-driven object. The graphical object's data is organized so that the semantic data (e.g., relationship among individuals on an organizational chart) is persisted separately from presentation data (e.g., the layout and style of shapes and connectors for visualizing the organizational chart). The semantic data and presentation data are combined to provide the rendered view of the graphical object within the document. The graphical object displays and functions equivalently to when the graphical object is rendered by the first application.

Abstract: An undo operation is executed by an application by performing the inverse actions of the do operation to which the undo operation relates. Previous designs simply swapped memory to execute an undo operation according to code that was entirely dissimilar to the code of the do operation. The dissimilarity of the code caused debugging such operations to be difficult. Using the inverse action to undo an action results in the similar code for the do, undo, and redo operations. Also, undo atoms are logged for do, undo, and redo operations so that any exceptions thrown during an operation allows the application to return to a previous, consistent state by operating on the undo atoms.

Abstract: A transparent format can be used to store the content of shape objects so that documents authored by different types of applications can uniformly share information related to the shape objects. Shape objects comprise, for example, properties such as geometries, lines, fills, size and the like. The properties can have other subordinate properties. For example, geometries can comprise polygons properties, and fill properties can comprise color properties. The shape objects can be hierarchically represented such that principles of object oriented programming can be applied to the shape object.