Systems and methods for comparing documents containing graphic elements
AssigneeEastman Kodak Company
InventorLawrence Croft
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system and methods for comparing a plurality of documents comprising graphic elements is described. Attributes of graphic elements amongst the documents are examined to identify sufficiently similar graphic elements. A merged document can be automatically produced based on the comparison. Graphic elements in the resulting document may be associated with a document layer. Methods may advantageously be applied to a plurality of documents representing different versions of a document.
Claims16
A memory for storing software for comparing a plurality of documents, the software comprising:
- logic for obtaining a plurality of documents, each of the documents comprising a plurality of graphic elements;
- logic for associating a plurality of unique element identifiers with the graphic elements of the plurality of documents wherein, upon determining that a first graphic element of a first document is sufficiently similar to a second graphic element of a second document, the method comprises associating the same unique element identifier with both the first graphic element and the second graphic element;
- logic for organizing the plurality of unique element identifiers into a plurality of lists corresponding to the plurality of documents wherein entries in a list correspond to a display order of graphic elements of a document;
- and
- logic for merging a plurality of version documents into a layered document,
- wherein the plurality of documents comprises a plurality of version documents, each representing a version of a document.
A memory for storing software for comparing a plurality of documents, the software comprising:
- logic for obtaining a plurality of documents, each of the documents comprising a plurality of graphic elements, wherein the plurality of documents comprises a plurality of version documents, each representing a version of a document;
- logic for associating a plurality of unique element identifiers with the graphic elements of the plurality of documents wherein, upon determining that a first graphic element of a first document is sufficiently similar to a second graphic element of a second document, the method comprises associating the same unique element identifier with both the first graphic element and the second graphic element;
- and
- logic for merging elements from the plurality of version documents into a layered version document.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.