Patent Document ID: 7890859
Application ID: 11360951

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising: identifying a table of contents in a document by: associating an initial indexing text fragment at about the middle of an ordered sequence of indexing text fragments with an initial set of one or more candidate linked body text fragments selected from an ordered sequence of body text fragments, associating a lower-ordered indexing text fragment at lower order than the initial indexing text fragment with a set of one or more candidate linked body text fragments at lower order than the highest order member of the initial set of one or more candidate linked body text fragments, associating a higher-ordered indexing text fragment at higher order than the initial indexing text fragment with a set of one or more candidate linked body text fragments at higher order than the lowest order member of the initial set of one or more candidate linked body text fragments, iteratively repeating the selecting and associating of the lower-ordered and higher-ordered indexing text fragments to associate the indexing text fragments with candidate linked body text fragments, and optimizing the candidate linked body text fragments to determine a one-to-one association between indexing text fragments and linked body text fragments.

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Claim 7:
7. A method as set forth in claim 1 , further comprising: selecting the lower-ordered indexing text fragment to abut the initial indexing text fragment in the ordered sequence of indexing text fragments; and selecting the higher-ordered indexing text fragment to abut the initial indexing text fragment in the ordered sequence of indexing text fragments.