Method and apparatus for synchronizing, displaying and manipulating text

Abstract

The system synchronizes, displays, and manipulates text and image documents in electronic form for display. The text and image files are synchronized to produce Equivalent Files using heuristic algorithms to create an approximate equivalence relationship between the text and the image files. The graphic user interface of the present system allows a user to selectively view an Equivalent File in a window while simultaneously viewing an image file within one or ore image windows on the display. The user may also create and manipulate notes and subnotes as annotations to document objects or document portions. The notes and subnotes may be linked to text documents, image documents, text objects, or other non-text objects or documents, such as images, audio clips, etc. The user may create new subnotes associated with selected objects or selected portions, and the user may enter information pertaining to the selected objects in the new subnote. The new subnotes may be created in a particular notes window, or if a note window is not open at the time that the user selects an object or document portion, a new note may be created in response to the selected object. The notes and subnotes may be stored in a note database associated with sets of documents.