Abstract: A computer-implemented method, system, and computer-readable medium to uniformly display electronic annotations of a document across differing computer platforms of an imaging system where documents are stored as images on an image file server. An exemplary method comprises a user producing a textual representation of a document annotation, generating an image and associated attributes (e.g., size, location, color, etc.) of the annotation, storing the annotation image in a record of an annotation file, and accessing the annotation file record to retrieve the annotation image in a standard universal format whereby to render a combined image representation of the document overlaid with the annotation image according to the attributes. Standard formats include jpeg, gif, tiff, or Windows metafile. Instead of storing the annotation image in the record, a pointer may be stored in the record to enable retrieval of the annotation image from another memory location.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method, system, and computer-readable medium to uniformly display electronic annotations of a document across differing computer platforms of an imaging system where documents are stored as images on an image file server. An exemplary method comprises a user producing a textual representation of a document annotation, generating an image and associated attributes (e.g., size, location, color, etc.) of the annotation, storing the annotation image in a record of an annotation file, and accessing the annotation file record to retrieve the annotation image in a standard universal format whereby to render a combined image representation of the document overlaid with the annotation image according to the attributes. Standard formats include jpeg, gif, tiff, or Windows metafile. Instead of storing the annotation image in the record, a pointer may be stored in the record to enable retrieval of the annotation image from another memory location.

Abstract: A method, system, and computer-readable medium to provide version management of a compound document in a document management system where the compound document includes multiple component files. The method comprises assigning a version number to the compound document, enabling a user to index the version number according to a change in any one of the component files, assigning a respective component version number to respective component files, enabling a user to index the component file version number according to changes therein, maintaining a record of component version numbers associated with each version of the compound document, and retrieving a version of a compound document by retrieving the associated versions of the component files. The method may be implemented in a multi-user system over a LAN or WAN network, and component files may be stored on a central networked file server as images accessible by the multiple users.