1. A method of representing and managing documents having rich text for use by applications, the method performed by a computer processor comprising: representing rich text in a memory structure representation; providing one or more classes for use by the applications to create the memory structure representation, the one or more classes including a rich text list class to create a rich text list node and to manage one or more rich text nodes and a rich text class to create the one or more rich text nodes each representing a unit of the rich text, wherein the rich text is edited as plain text using an applet which runs within a web browser; providing well-formed segments of text to the one or more current rich text nodes from a rich text list node to initialize the current rich text nodes for representing rich text in a document; transforming the text from memory format into string representations, wherein the transforming comprises converting the rich text into extensible markup language (XML) and using a compressed format where various attributes of the rich text nodes are captured along with a text value for each of the rich text nodes; and displaying the transformed text in the document, wherein: the rich text is edited in a frame when the web browser does not provide native support for rich text edit, and the frame comprises a first sub-frame for editing the rich text as the plain text and a second sub-frame for displaying a result of the rich text as it is edited.