Patent ID: 7296228

Claim:
A method of editing an electronic document comprising symbols, the method comprising the steps of: a) presenting a block-selecting command by a computer system to a user for defining blocks in the document, wherein such a block comprises either none of the symbols, one of the symbols, or a contiguous sequence of more than one of the symbols; b) receiving, by the computer system, user selections of such blocks and of the block-selecting command; c) presenting a group-defining command by the computer system to the user for defining groups of the blocks, wherein the groups comprise respective sets of the blocks; d) receiving, by the computer system, user selections of such groups and of the group-defining command; e) altering the document by the computer system in response to the received selections of b) and d), wherein the altering incorporates into the document identifications of the user-selected groups and blocks including incorporating respective opening and closing tags to delimit respective one or more of the user-selected blocks and to define membership of the blocks in user-selected groups, the altered document being stored on a computer-readable storage medium; f) presenting certain block or group commands by the computer system to the user for listing or modifying one or more of the blocks or groups; g) receiving, by the computer system, user selections of one or more of the certain block or group commands and of one or more of the blocks or groups to which the one or more of the selected certain block or group commands shall apply; and h) modifying one or more of the selected block or groups by the computer system in response to the received selections of g), wherein the commands presented in f) includes a command for pasting a copy of at least partial block by the computer system responsive to a user commanding the pasting of the copy, wherein the pasting includes the computer system pasting all pairs of tags associated with the at least partial block but not pasting unpaired tags inside the at least partial block, wherein responsive to the computer system receiving a user command for pasting a copy of only a selected partial block, the selected partial block being a portion of an associated entire block, the modifying of one or more of the blocks or groups comprises: pasting the copy of the selected partial block by the computer system, wherein the pasting includes pasting a pair of innermost tags associated with the selected partial block's associated entire block, but not pasting unpaired tags inside the selected partial block.