Capturing Symbolic Information From Documents Upon Printing

• US 20090100334A1
• Filed: 10/17/2008
• Published: 04/16/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Graham, Jamey, Van Olst, Daniel G., Hull, Jonathan J., Erol, Berna, Moraleda, Jorge, Sakikawa, Ichiro
• Granted Patent: US 8,201,076 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/255
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/583 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/95 structured as a network, e.g. client-server architectures
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/414 Extracting the geometrical structure, e.g. layout tree; Block segmentation, e.g. bounding boxes for graphics or text

Abstract

An MMR system for publishing comprises a plurality of mobile devices, an MMR gateway, an MMR matching unit, and an MMR publisher. A computer includes a document authoring application, plug-in, and printer driver. The MMR matching unit receives an image query from the MMR gateway and sends it to one or more of the recognition units to identify a result including a document, the page and the location on the page. The list of results and links are sent back to the MMR gateway for presentation on the mobile device. The present invention also includes a number of novel methods including a method for capturing symbolic information from documents and for capturing printer dll functions.

Claims

1. A method of capturing symbolic information in a document, comprising:

modifying data sent to a printer driver uniquely identifying symbolic information in an electronic document without altering a layout of the electronic document;

saving a target associated with the symbolic information as a symbolic hotspot file;

in response to a print command, determining coordinates for the symbolic information for saving as a page description file; and

merging the page description file with the symbolic hotspot file to create a merged hotspot file.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein modifying further comprises inserting fiducial marks into the data.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the fiducial marks comprise a special font with no glyphs.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein a plug-in to a document authoring application provides instructions for modifying the data and saving the target.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the document authoring application is selected from word, acrobat, internet explorer, and quark xpress.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the symbolic information is a URL.

7. A computer readable storage medium storing instructions for executing by a processor, the instructions comprising:

modifying data sent to a printer driver uniquely identifying symbolic information in an electronic document without altering a layout of the electronic document;

saving a target associated with the symbolic information as a symbolic hotspot file;

in response to a print command, determining coordinates for the symbolic information for saving as a page description file; and

merging the page description file with the symbolic hotspot file to create a merged hotspot file.

8. The computer readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein modifying further comprises inserting fiducial marks into the data.

9. The computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the fiducial marks comprise a special font with no glyphs.

10. The computer readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein a plug-in to a document authoring application provides instructions for modifying the data and saving the target.

11. The computer readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the document authoring application is selected from word, acrobat, internet explorer, and quark xpress.

12. The computer readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the symbolic information is a URL.

13. A method performed by a print capture dynamically linked library, comprising:

intercepting commands intended for a printer graphics dynamically linked library;

performing received commands on a memory buffer; and

in response to a command to print a page, saving a raster image of the page.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising creating a printer device monitoring object in response to a call to create a physical device instance.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising creating the memory buffer as a secondary surface.

16. The method of claim 13, further comprising, in response to the command to print the page, saving a symbolic description of content on the page.

17. The method of claim 13, further comprising monitoring calls received at the print capture dynamically linked library.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising passing on the received calls to the printer graphics dynamically linked library.

19. The method of claim 13, wherein the print capture dynamically linked library is a forwarding dynamically linked library.