System, method, and computer program product for displaying and processing notes containing note segments linked to portions of documents

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention provides a method and apparatus for extracting, synchronizing, displaying, and manipulating text and image documents in machine readable form for display.
In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, text and image files for documents, such as for example patent documents, are initially stored on separate magnetic tape media.
These data files are extracted from the respective tapes and placed onto a faster medium, such as a hard disk drive.
Catalogues are generated of the contents of the tapes and procedures are provided for locating and loading tapes from a tape inventory.
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.
In the presently preferred embodiment, the automatic pagination of the text and image files provides an equivalence relationship, and a final Equivalent File is obtained through human intervention to correct any inaccuracies still remaining after the automatic process has been completed.
However, the present invention also contemplates an entirely automatic pagination process which would require no human intervention to obtain a usable Equivalent File.
A word based inverted tree index is created for the text files to allow for very fast text searching using a graphic user interface (GUI) workbench.
The Equivalent Files and image files residing on, for example, a hard disk drive or compact disk (CD), are coupled as a resource to a computer display system.
The computer display system includes a computer having a central processing unit (CPU) coupled to memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry.
The computer is also coupled to a CD ROM, hard disk drive, or other mass memory device onto which the Equivalent File and image file have been stored.
The computer is coupled to a display, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) or liquid crystal display, as well as a keyboard and a cursor control device.
The graphic user interface of the present invention is displayed by the computer on the CRT, and includes a menu bar and a tool bar, each bar having a plurality of command options for selection by a user