Information processing apparatus and image forming apparatus performing file conversion of handwriting comment and comment extraction method

An image forming apparatus comprising:

• a reading part configured to scan a manuscript and acquire image data;
• a comment acquiring part configured to search handwriting comment from the image data of the manuscript scanned by the reading part and acquire the handwriting comment in association with position information indicating the handwriting comment for an area of the manuscript;
• a filing part configured to convert the handwriting comment acquired by the comment acquiring part into a file;
• and
• an OCR part configured to perform OCR (optical character recognition), wherein
• the filing part is configured to
• perform OCR of the handwriting comment by the OCR part,
• determine whether the handwriting comment is recognizable as a character,
• when recognizable as a character, convert character data of the handwriting comment into the file,
• when unrecognizable as a character, acquire an area of the handwriting comment from the image data of the manuscript and convert the area into the file,
• determine whether source data, which is a version of the manuscript without the handwriting comment, is acquirable, and then when the source data is unacquirable, perform OCR by the OCR part of an area of the image data of the manuscript other than the area of the handwriting comment,
• delete the area of the handwriting comment from the image data,
• convert the image data, having the handwriting comment deleted, into electronic document data, and then
• add the character data of the handwriting comment from the file or the area of the handwriting comment from the file to the electronic document data.

A comment extraction method executed by a control part of information processing apparatus, comprising the steps of:

• searching handwriting comment from an image data of a scanned manuscript;
• making the handwriting comment OCR (optical character recognition);
• acquiring the handwriting comment in association with position information indicating the handwriting comment for an area of the manuscript;
• and
• determining whether the handwriting comment is recognizable as a character;
• when recognizable as a character, converting character data of the handwriting comment into a file;
• and
• when unrecognizable as a character, acquiring the area of the handwriting comment from image data of the manuscript and converting into the file;
• determining whether source data, which is a version of the manuscript without the handwriting comment, is acquirable, and then when the source data is unacquirable, making the image data of the manuscript OCR;
• deleting the area of the handwriting comment from the image data;
• and
• converting the image data, having the handwriting comment deleted, into electronic document data;
• and then
• adding the character data of the handwriting comment from the file or the area of the handwriting comment from the file to the electronic document data.