Patent ID: 8122349

Claim:
A method of editing an electronic document comprising symbols, the method comprising: presenting a block-selecting command by a computer system to a user for selecting and defining blocks in the document; receiving, by the computer system, user selections of blocks of one or more of the symbols in the document that pre-exist the user selections via the block-selecting command, including user-selections in which one block overlaps another block; presenting a group-defining command by the computer system to the user for selecting and defining user-named groups of the blocks, wherein the groups comprise respective sets of the blocks; receiving, by the computer system, user selections and user-defined names of such groups via the group-defining command; altering the document by the computer system in response to the received, user-selections of blocks and groups, wherein the altering incorporates into the document identifications of the user-selected groups and blocks according to the user-defined names, including incorporating respective opening group name tags at the beginnings and closing group name tags at the endings of the respective user-selected blocks, to delimit the user-selected blocks and to define membership of the blocks in the user-selected and user-named groups, wherein the altered document is stored on a computer-readable storage medium; presenting group commands by the computer system to the user for listing or modifying one or more of the groups; receiving, by the computer system, user selections of one or more of the group commands and one or more of the groups to which the one or more of the selected group commands shall apply; modifying, if a received one of the group commands is for modifying, one or more of the selected groups by the computer system in response to the received selections of one or more of the group commands and one or more of the groups to which the one or more of the selected group commands shall apply; and presenting a list to the user by the computer system, if a received one of the group commands is for listing, wherein the presenting of the list is in response to the received selections of one or more of the group commands and one or more of the groups to which the one or more of the selected group commands shall apply, wherein the list sets out one or more of the selected groups.