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.