Patent Document ID: 6016492
Application ID: 08893939

Base Claim:
1. An improved method of formatting information in a program module operative in a computer system, comprising the steps of: storing a property information array stored in association with a program module, the property information array comprising formatting information for applying to data elements in a computer file upon which the program module is operative for manipulating; providing a data structure for storing data elements corresponding to the data to be formatted; providing a property modifier structure for storing groups of data formatting property modifiers and corresponding arguments that represent the appearance of the data elements; providing a data format structure for storing linking information that associates the data elements with corresponding groups of data formatting property modifiers, in response to an output display device command with respect to a selected data element in the data structure, accessing the data formatting structure to determine the location in the property modifier structure of a selected one of the groups of the data formatting property modifiers corresponding to the selected data element, each data formatting property modifier having a corresponding property modifier argument and comprising an index field including an index into the property information array associated with the program module; and displaying the selected data element in accordance with the formatting information obtained in response to accessing the property information array with each index of the data formatting property modifiers in the selected group of data formatting property modifiers.

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Claim 3:
3. The method of claim 1, wherein each data formatting property modifier further comprises a size field including information indicating the size of the property modifier argument, and further comprising the step of traversing the selected group of data formatting property modifiers associated with selected information by utilizing the information in the size field of the current data formatting property modifier to determine the location of the next data formatting property modifier in the group of data formatting property modifiers.