6. A system which displays an image representation of a scanned document comprising: a computer, said computer comprising: a processor for executing instructions; a pointing device; a display for displaying the image representation of the document and for displaying a cursor or other representation corresponding to a reference position indicated by the pointing device; a computer readable medium; a computer program residing on the computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing the computer to: display from an image file, the image representation of the scanned document on the display; and responsive to a user activation of the pointing device said computer program having instructions causing the computer to: determine a word in a converted text file representation of the image that corresponds to a nearest word pointed to in the displayed representation by the pointing device, with the converted text file having a text element and positional information that associates the position of the text element in the image to the position of the text element in an original document representation of the image; determine whether coordinates associated with the pointer position on the image correspond to coordinates defining a boundary about a selected one of a plurality of regions of the image as displayed on the monitor; and for a selected one of the regions that encompass the coordinates of the pointer position; determine the closest line to the coordinates and for the closest line; choose one of the words of the line in accordance with whether the selected position is above or below an area defined about the line.
6. A system which displays an image representation of a scanned document comprising: a computer, said computer comprising: a processor for executing instructions; a pointing device; a display for displaying the image representation of the document and for displaying a cursor or other representation corresponding to a reference position indicated by the pointing device; a computer readable medium; a computer program residing on the computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing the computer to: display from an image file, the image representation of the scanned document on the display; and responsive to a user activation of the pointing device said computer program having instructions causing the computer to: determine a word in a converted text file representation of the image that corresponds to a nearest word pointed to in the displayed representation by the pointing device, with the converted text file having a text element and positional information that associates the position of the text element in the image to the position of the text element in an original document representation of the image; determine whether coordinates associated with the pointer position on the image correspond to coordinates defining a boundary about a selected one of a plurality of regions of the image as displayed on the monitor; and for a selected one of the regions that encompass the coordinates of the pointer position; determine the closest line to the coordinates and for the closest line; choose one of the words of the line in accordance with whether the selected position is above or below an area defined about the line. 11. The system of claim 6 wherein the system is a reading machine, and the computer program further comprises instructions for causing the computer to: synthesis speech from text selected by the instructions to have the reading machine read the selected text aloud to a user.