PROCESS AND APPARATUS FOR EXTRACTING, MANIPULATING AND TAGGING HIGHLIGHTED OBJECTS

A user-configurable control palette for the extraction and tagging of highlighted objects where the user performs any desired task upon the objects. A control palette library is provided for the user to save custom palette layouts to and retrieve custom palette layouts from and allow the user to setup standard palettes for specific tasks such as document version control, training documents, interactive tutorials, survey questionnaires, interview forms, and on line testing. The user performs simplified extraction and tagging of highlighted objects from various sources through the control palette, changing each object's attributes such as font type, font style, font pitch, and color, through simple button clicks on the control palette. User defined tags or HTML tags may also be selected by the user to be associated with an object and the user may also specify links back to the source document for future reference. All of these operations are performed through the control palette and never affect the original object in the source file. Once the desired operations are performed on an object, the user selects a plurality of destination files where the modified object is written. The invention thus provides a system that is beyond the drag and drop concept, allowing the user to perform multiple operations upon an object through one control palette rather than through several different applications and utilities.