For a page that has been decomposed into a set of primitive areas, a novel method for organizing the set of primitive areas into an ordered list is disclosed. The primitive areas in the ordered list are initially sorted using start point order relation ordering, which compares the start points of the primitive areas in the coordinate system of the page. The ordering of the primitive areas in the ordered list are then refined by using contextual order relation ordering, which compares primitive areas against each other according to coordinate systems local to the primitive areas being compared. A new ordered list is then created by transposing primitive areas that are incorrectly ordered according to contextual order relation ordering.