Abstract: A document processing system including a control structure having separated supervisory and document functions. The document functions, including a document buffer and document access control means are the sole means for accessing documents and the document function routines are selected from predetermined library of such routines. The system includes a flexible, expandable document structure incorporating information item blocks and indexing blocks related through pointers and means for applying visual and informational attributes to document text.

Abstract: A document processing system including a document structure and a library of routines for manipulating the document structure. The components of the document structure are made up of individually-locatable blocks. The components include a chain of text blocks which contains at least one document page and includes at least one block, one or more chains of reference blocks, each chain containing a reference and including at least one reference block, information attributes in the text blocks which relate locations in the text of the document to item numbers referring to references, a page index which relates page numbers to the text blocks at which the pages begin, and a reference index which relates each item number to the first reference block in the chain containing the reference. The document structure may only be manipulated by means of routines in the document manager library. The routines in the library are accessible to programs such as editor programs and printing programs which manipulate documents.