1. A computer implemented system, comprising: a display device; a user interface that receives numerical and textual input; a graphical user interface displayed on the display device that receives input from the user interface and provides visual feedback to a user; a processor that is structurally configured or programmed to control the display device and the user interface to: generate and display the graphical user interface on the display device, wherein the graphical user interface allows a user to create new documents and to edit existing documents based on user interactions with the graphical user interface; display, in response to user input, a footnote editing interface that allows a user to create new footnotes and edit existing footnotes based on user interactions with the footnote editing interface, wherein footnotes may reference multiple sections on one or more pages of a document and are automatically formatted so that each footnote resides on only a single page; display an inactive section and a footnote area of a document; determine authorization rights of the user with respect to the inactive section; and based on the determined authorization rights, display the inactive section and an area of the footnote area as a blank or obscured area, wherein the area corresponds to a footnote from the inactive section, and wherein the layout and pagination of the document and the footnote area on a user's machine is actively updated while multiple users are editing the document even when these are changes to sections that the user is not permitted to access.
1. A computer implemented system, comprising: a display device; a user interface that receives numerical and textual input; a graphical user interface displayed on the display device that receives input from the user interface and provides visual feedback to a user; a processor that is structurally configured or programmed to control the display device and the user interface to: generate and display the graphical user interface on the display device, wherein the graphical user interface allows a user to create new documents and to edit existing documents based on user interactions with the graphical user interface; display, in response to user input, a footnote editing interface that allows a user to create new footnotes and edit existing footnotes based on user interactions with the footnote editing interface, wherein footnotes may reference multiple sections on one or more pages of a document and are automatically formatted so that each footnote resides on only a single page; display an inactive section and a footnote area of a document; determine authorization rights of the user with respect to the inactive section; and based on the determined authorization rights, display the inactive section and an area of the footnote area as a blank or obscured area, wherein the area corresponds to a footnote from the inactive section, and wherein the layout and pagination of the document and the footnote area on a user's machine is actively updated while multiple users are editing the document even when these are changes to sections that the user is not permitted to access. 5. The computer implemented system of claim 1 , wherein the processor is further structurally configured or programmed to: display document text in a text display area and footnotes in a footnote display area on document pages having multiple sections per page such that each footnote resides only on a single page.