Abstract: A word processing system in which text can be displayed on a display device and audio recording and playback means is provided to permit a user to record an audio message includes means for monitoring the volume level of speaking by the user and means for notifying the user if the volume level of the speaking by the user is too high or too low. Also, the system allows the user to pause and resume during recording and playback without requiring re-recording or re-playback of the entire message.

Abstract: A document indexing method and apparatus facilitates access to sequentially stored documents in a word processing system. The invention uses random access memory in the word processor to build a page index when the sequential data stream is first processed. The page index is then available so that subsequent access to previously processed pages is faster than conventional sequential access. The page index has associated with it an offset index having pointers to the actual entries in the page index. If the page index proves too small to store a index entry for every single page of a document, the offset index is reorganized to point to every other entry in the page index. Reorganization effectively doubles the span of pages covered by the page index and may be repeated a plurality of times to allow a sequentially stored document of arbitrary length to be indexed by a fixed length page index.