Patent ID: 7228496

Claim:
A document editing method in a document editing system for editing a plurality of structured documents each having a document structure including a plurality of elements, the method comprising steps of: reading a first structured document; determining type information associated with the read first structured document and determining whether the first structured document is a block document, that includes tag information for specifying partial documents that correspond to operation units on which a selected operation may be performed, and each operation unit including at least a portion of the first structured document; converting the first structured document into the block document when the first structured document is determined not to be the block document, said converting includes (a) inserting the tag information into the first structured document based on a block conversion rule to obtain partial documents corresponding to the operation units, or (b) inserting the tag information into the first structured document according to an existing structure of the first structured document to obtain partial documents corresponding to the operation units; displaying the first structured document determined as the block document or the first structured document converted into the block document on a display; preparing parts data associated with the first structured document for each of the partial documents based on the tag information included in the first structured document, said parts data including at least the partial documents included in the first structured document and position information representing a location within the first structured document of each partial document; storing the first structured document in a storage as a collection of the parts data; and editing the first structured document by updating the parts data corresponding to the partial documents in accordance with the selected operation.