Patent ID: 7522771

Claim:
A system, comprising: an input system for receiving input data representing plural electronic ink strokes including at least a first electronic ink stroke; and a processing system programmed and adapted to perform operations comprising: defining at least a first vertex in the first electronic ink stroke; and determining, by using triangulation, at least a first neighbor vertex to the first vertex, wherein the first neighbor vertex is in an electronic ink stroke other than the first electronic ink stroke; wherein: the processing system groups at least some of the plural electronic ink strokes in a hierarchical manner in a data structure to form a hierarchical association of plural electronic ink components; the hierarchical association of the plural electronic ink components has multiple hierarchical levels comprising an ink line level, an ink word level, and an ink stroke level; at least one of ink words in the ink word level is grouped into an ink line in the ink line level, and at least one of ink strokes in the ink stroke level is grouped into an ink word in the ink word level; and the first neighbor vertex determined is preserved when a change occurs in the data structure above the ink stroke level.