Patent ID: 7310769

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for processing an electronic document including a non-coded representation of characters of text, the method comprising: receiving text coding information identifying each of a plurality of characters of text represented by the non-coded representation; based on the text coding information, generating a coded representation that: specifies for each of the plurality of characters of text represented by the non-coded representation, a respective code value based on a character encoding, the code value selected to represent the respective character of text, and associates a particular glyph with all the code values specified for each of the plurality of characters of text, the particular glyph selected independently of any relation to the respective character of text, the collection of glyphs being insufficient to semantically represent the plurality of characters of text; associating the coded representation with the non-coded representation, wherein a code value of one of the plurality of characters of text is associated with one or more positions in a visual representation of the non-coded representation; displaying the visual representation of the non-coded representation; receiving user input selecting one or more positions in the visual representation; and using the coded representation associated with the non-coded visual representation to identify characters associated with the selected positions of the visual representation.