TERMINAL EQUIPMENT FOR MERGING IMAGING DATA AND TEXT DATA, AND TRANSMITTING AND RECEIVING THE SAME ON-LINE

Terminal equipment for electronically making patent and utility patent applications. The terminal equipment converts various formats of text data generated by an external device into the internal format of the terminal equipment, retrieves the converted text data, merges the text data with a procedure, and transmits the procedure. The merging operation in which image data is merged with text data is simplified whereby the operator can make applications with a simple operation without special skill and knowledge when an application document is transmitted and received on line. The terminal equipment includes a text converting portion for converting the external format of text data into the internal format of the terminal equipment and for retrieving the converted text data, a procedure generation processing portion for merging the retrieved text data with a procedure, a text processing portion and paragraph number assigning portion for editing the merged text and image data within the terminal equipment, a text checking portion for checking the text of the edited procedure document, a transmission file generating portion for converting the format of the checked procedure document into a transmission format, and an online application portion for transmitting the data in the transmission format to the outside of the terminal equipment.