US 5,903,904 A · Iconic paper for alphabetic, japanese and graphic documents

Abstract

An example page taken from each document in a document database is processed by a page processor to yield an iconic representation for the example page. To form the iconic representation, the example page is segmented into text regions, line art regions, photograph regions, etc., and each region is reduced in a manner appropriate for that image type. Text is replaced with a block font and reduced, while graphics are reduced in level and/or spatial resolution. The reduced regions of the example page are then reassembled into the icon. When multiple icons are printed on a guide page, a user can visually identify the icon for an example page of a target document and supply the icon, or a label for the icon, to a document retrieval system, which selects candidate matching documents from the document database. For simplified processing characters can be blocked and words formed into solid line segments with lengths proportional to word lengths. For regular spacing type languages, such as Japanese, character density is used instead of word lengths to generate feature descriptors.

Claims12

Dependent claims

A method of generating an icon for a document in a document storage system, where an icon is a visible cue representing the document, the method comprising the steps of:

identifying an example page from the document;
segmenting the example page into regions such that the image region in any given region contains image elements of a particular type;
for each region, reducing the region image according to reduction rules specific to the particular type of image elements contained in the region to form a reduced region image for that region;
and
reassembling the reduced region images into a reduction of the example page to form the icon.

2 more elements

A document server, comprising:

a document database;
input means for document input which converts an input document into an electronic representation of the document suitable for storage in the document database;
a page processor, coupled to the input means, which generates an icon for the input document, the icon being a visible reduced representation of an example page of the input document, wherein each region of the example page having image elements of a unique type is reduced according to reduction rules specific to the type, at least one of the unique types being a function of a language type of text in a text region;
a key generator, coupled to the input means, which analyzes the electronic representation of the document and extracts distinguishing features of the input document to form keys relating to the input document;
index means, coupled to the key generator, for storing and associating keys with documents in the document database;
icon input means for inputting an icon of a target document;
icon analysis means, coupled to the icon input means, for extracting icon features from the icon;
a search engine, coupled to the icon analysis means and the index means, which converts the icon features into a query and uses the query to obtain references from the index means to at least one matching document, the at least one matching document including the target document;
and
presentation engine, for presenting the target document in a user-specified form.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Iconic paper for alphabetic, japanese and graphic documents

Life of this patent

Iconic paper for alphabetic, japanese and graphic documents

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims12