Patent ID: 7475343

Claim:
A data processing method for maintaining and customizing a list of words, phrases, and abbreviations that are standard in a profession, industry, trade or occupation, for insertion of abbreviations from the list into a pre-existing text, for converting selected words and phrases in the pre-existing text to abbreviations, for converting selected abbreviations in the pre-existing text to words and phrases, and for automatically converting a number of words and phrases to abbreviations, and abbreviations to words and phrases, throughout the pre-existing text, comprising the steps of: (a) storing in a memory a first data structure encoding a plurality of words and corresponding abbreviations; (b) storing in a memory a second data structure encoding a plurality of abbreviations and corresponding words; (c) the user actively selecting a word at any position in the pre-existing text to be converted to an abbreviation, displaying a list of suggested abbreviations corresponding to the selected word and receiving input from the user to choose the desired abbreviation, converting the selected word to a corresponding abbreviation using the first data structure, and replacing the word with the corresponding abbreviation; and (d) the user actively selecting an abbreviation at any position in the pre-existing text to be converted to a word, displaying a list of suggested words corresponding to the selected abbreviation and receiving input from the user to choose the desired word, converting the selected abbreviation to a corresponding word using the second data structure, and replacing the abbreviation with the corresponding word; (e) scanning the pre-existing text for words to be converted to abbreviations and converting words selected by the data processing method to corresponding abbreviations using the first data structure, and replacing the words in the pre-existing text with the corresponding abbreviations; (f) scanning the pre-existing text for abbreviations to be converted to words and converting abbreviations selected by the data processing method to corresponding words using the second data structure and replacing the abbreviations in the pre-existing text with the corresponding words.