Patent ID: 7418442

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of searching through ink characters within an electronic document comprising: accepting, by a computer, a search query, where the search query comprises a search query word, a list of electronic documents, and at least one folder containing the electronic documents in the list of electronic documents wherein each document in the list of electronic documents comprises a plurality of text and ink words; retrieving a search query character from the search query word in the search query; accepting a word from the electronic document; determining if the document word is an ink word, in response to determining that the document word is an ink word, conducting an ink word match, wherein conducting an ink word match comprises; accepting an ink alternate word, wherein the ink alternate word is an estimation of the ink word, retrieving each of a plurality of ink alternate characters for the ink alternate word, determining, for each of the plurality of the ink alternate characters whether the each of the ink alternate characters matches the search query character, and returning a match list of each of the plurality of ink alternate character matches; determining if the document character is a text word; and in response to determining that the document character is a text word, conducting a text word match; adding a match to a match list in response to a positive determination that the search query word matches the set of characters in the electronic document; and processing a boolean operator in the search query, wherein the boolean operator satisfies a spatial relationship when the match to the first query word before the boolean operator and the match to the first query word after the boolean operator occur within a portion of the document currently displayed in a viewable area.