Abstract

A system and method for treating publisher's textual and graphical data and converting it to device independent digital form for retention in master memory. Once both textual and graphical data have been converted to digital form, the graphical data are inserted in appropriate locations as determined by a formatting routine. Formatted articles then are collected for retention in master memory, and eventual production of local memory. The formatted page files residing in master memory are in a device independent form such that they are outputtable with high quality on a variety of output devices. Additionally, an index is generated for every word retained in master memory enabling the user to peruse as many as 30,000 complex pages for the desired subject matter.