[en] A generalized parton picture is developed, based on the impulse approximation. A parton is allowed to have non-point-like elastic form factors; inelastic current-parton scattering is taken into account explicitly. The amplitude of any exclusive channel of lepton-induced reactions is written down, with the parts containing the long-distance and the short-distance behavior of interaction dynamics clearly separated. Scaling violation is a natural feature of this picture. The inelastic structure functions, W₁ and nW₂, are studied in this scheme using various different theories; perturbative QCD, the scale-invariant parton model, the hadron bootstrap picture, and a phenomenological stripped-down hadron-parton model. The application of this picture to elastic lepton-hadron scattering and the problem of the selection of an infinite momentum frame are also discussed