Patent ID: 7958444

Claim:
A document annotator comprising: a document converter configured to generate an initial representation of a source document, the initial representation including initial content of the source document and initial layout metadata indicative of layout of said content in the source document; at least one annotation pipeline configured to process at least some of the initial content of the source document to generate document annotations; a merger configured to assign positional tags of the initial layout metadata to the generated document annotations to locate the document annotations respective to the initial layout metadata; catalog data storage configured to store at least the document annotations and their assigned positional tags; and a document visualizer implemented in software run via a processor that, subsequent to the storing: generates a retrieval representation of the source document, the retrieval representation including retrieval content of the source document that is identical with the initial content and retrieval layout metadata that is identical with the initial layout metadata, the generating of the retrieval representation not comprising retrieving the initial representation of the source document, renders the retrieval content using the retrieval layout metadata, and renders at least one of the document annotations in conjunction with the rendering of the retrieval content based on the retrieval layout metadata and the assigned positional tag of the at least one document annotation.