WO2004015588A3 - Electronic document processing - Google Patents

Abstract

A method of processing a first electronic document using computer software to produce a second electronic document which is an edited version of the first electronic document, wherein the first and second electronic documents define the presentation of elements on at least one page when presented on an output device, the documents each comprising a plurality of text objects to be presented as textual elements in a page, the text objects comprising original text defining a plurality of textual characters, and having associated therewith original presentation attributes defining characteristics of the presentation of the original text of the text object on a page, the method comprising: in a template production process, using computer software to generate a document template by processing the first electronic document, selecting at least a first said text object in the first electronic document and associating one or more template attributes with the first text object, said one or more template attributes not being explicitly defined in the first document before the production of the template; and in an editing process, using computer software to: receive replacement text to replace at least part of the original text of the first text object; automatically generate a second text object using the replacement text and one or more of the original presentation attributes of the first text object; and automatically generate the second electronic document, which includes the second text object, such that the second electronic document accords with the document template.