Document management and production system
AssigneeEastman Kodak Company
InventorsRobert M. Smith, David M. T. Ting, Jan H. Boer, Marvin Mendelssohn
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Abstract
An object-oriented document management and production system in which documents are represented as collections of logical components, or "objects", that may be combined and physically mapped onto a page-by-page layout. Stored objects are organized, accessed and manipulated through a database management system. At a minimum, objects contain basic information-bearing constituents such as text, image, voice or graphics. Objects may also contain further data specifying appearance characteristics, relationships to other objects, and access restrictions.
Claims20
A document management and production system for accepting and organizing document information, the system comprising:
- a. electronic data-storage means comprising a plurality of data locations;
- b. means for storing in said data locations, for each document, information representative of document components that collectively specify content, organization and appearance of the document, said information including:
- 1) logical document components defining structural divisions and structural relationships among information-bearing constituents of the document;
- 2) attributes, if any, of such logical document components;
- 3) layout document components that define how content is physically distributed and located within the document;
- and
- 4) attributes, if any, of such layout document components;
- c. database-management means for specifying ordinal and hierarchical relationships among logical document components and among layout document components;
- and
- d. document-management means for integrating the logical and layout components into a single, organized document;
- wherein at least some of the attributes associated with the logical document components contain information specifying locational preferences and positions of such components within the document, thereby facilitating mapping of logical document components that specify information-bearing constituents to layout document components to produce an integrated document.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.