Spatial morphing of text to accommodate annotations

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Footnotes, headnotes, sidenotes, or other margin-borne annotations are widely employed in books and other printed or electronically viewed publications to present supporting or supplemental information to a primary text in an easily accessible format.
Annotations are commonly set in a smaller typesize than the primary text, and may be set in different typefaces, in bold or cursive, or have various formatting peculiarities to distinguish the annotation from the primary text.
Ideally, such annotations allow an author to provide a reader with supplementary textual or graphic explanations related to the primary text, while not requiring the reader to unnecessarily change focus (as parenthetical remarks, or lengthy subordinate explanatory clauses, so often do) from the primary text.
Unfortunately, physical limits to the size of margins, typesize, and density of text legible on paper can limit the amount of information one is able to present as an annotation.
Annotations may be too large to fit into margin, footnote, or headnote, and even when present can interrupt or slow reading speed.
What is needed is an annotation system that allows for viewing of annotations only when desired by a user, with sufficient flexibility to quickly and smoothly present annotations in context to the primary text.
Because of its ability to reformat screen displayed pages of text and graphics, a computer supporting a high quality monitor or flat panel display can greatly expand the range of permissible annotation techniques, allowing authors to somewhat alleviate problems with limited margin space.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for dynamically presenting a primary body of data displayable on a screen and a supporting body of data relatable to the primary body of data.
The primary body of data can include an annotation tag associated with a specific region and referring to the supporting body of data.
When a region of user focus at or near the annotation tag is selected in the primary body of data, the supporting body of data is dynamically displayed (as long as user focus is maintained) and data present in the primary body of data is concurrently modified to enhance presentation of the supporting body of data