Method and apparatus for extracting anchorable information units from complex PDF documents

A system for processing an unstructured multimedia data file to provide information supporting user navigation of multimedia data file content, comprising:

• a page layout analyzer to establish page layouts for each page of the unstructured multimedia data file, the analyzer creating a structure of for each page layout including text sections and image sections of each page;
• a content parser to identify previously unidentified text and image content of a data file, the content parser applying text extraction rules to identify text and identify a document structure, wherein context is defined for the identified text based on its associated document structure;
• a black and white image processor for processing said identified image content to identify embedded text content by applying object templates, the image processor comprising a pixel smearing component reducing text to a rectangular block of pixels and an image filtering component for cleaning a smeared image;
• a text sorter for parsing said identified text and said identified embedded text to locate text items in accordance with predetermined sorting rules;
• a document processor for hyperlinking a plurality of keywords within the identified text and identified embedded text to a related document by creating an anchorable information unit file, wherein the plurality of hyperlinked keywords are anchorable information units;
• and
• memory for storing a navigation file containing said text items and said anchorable information unit file.