categories of interest block 355 and enters query predicates based on the definition of the selected category or categories block 360 the method 350 retrieves all the annotations that obey the query predicates regardless of the annotation structure block 365 the annotation content can be returned as written or alternatively filtered or modified in a way that depends on the context of the reader if needed the method 350 performs the transforming loop 290 as discussed above in connection with fig5 fig8 illustrates a method 400 for querying for particular data in the context of the annotations which method 400 is therefore said to be annotation centric the reader 27 selects the annotation category or categories of interest block 405 and enters query predicates based on the definition of the selected category or categories block 410 the method 400 retrieves all the annotations and the data items associated with the annotations that obey the annotation query predicates block 415 the annotation content can be returned as written or alternatively filtered or modified in a way that depends on the context of the reader optionally the method 400 can sort the retrieved data and annotations by the type of the data collection block 420 if needed the method 400 performs the transforming loop 290 as discussed above in connection with fig5 it is to be understood that the specific embodiments of the invention that have been described above are merely illustrative of one application of the principles of the present invention numerous modifications.