FLEXIBLE SCHEMES FOR APPLYING PROPERTIES TO INFORMATION IN A MEDIUM

A scheme data structure is used for applying a set of coordinated attributes to any number of components within a composition such as a document, Internet web page, computer screen etc. A scheme data structure allows a user to easily apply variations of professionally designed font, color, graphic, paragraph and other schemes to a composition. The data structure includes a scheme instance category indicating a type of scheme and a number of attributes corresponding to the scheme instance category. The structure has a number of scheme slots, and each scheme slot can be associated with zero or more components of the composition. Each of the scheme slots is arranged to hold a distinct value for each of the attributes. Thus, for each of the scheme slots, the scheme instance data structure may be used to apply values of attributes to the components of the composition associated with each scheme slot. Each scheme instance data structure may also have a number of levels. Each level contains a complete set of values for the attributes of that scheme. User input is used to determine which level should be applied to each component. A user specifies an amount value indicating number of components affected and a diversity value indicating diversity of scheme attributes affecting the components. A threshold value for each component indicates a range of difficulty for changing default values for attributes of that component. A method also applies values in a determined scheme level to components of a composition in response to user input.