PROCESSING TECHNIQUES FOR VISUAL CAPTURE DATA FROM A RENDERED DOCUMENT

• US 20110022940A1
• Filed: 03/22/2010
• Published: 01/27/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyocera Corporation
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Grove, Dale L., Kushler, Clifford A., Stafford-Fraser, James Q., King, Martin T.
• Granted Patent: US 8,874,504 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/229
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/382 using citations hypermedia G06F16/94
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9032 Query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9554 by using bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/268 Lexical context

Abstract

A facility for navigating an electronic document is described. The facility receives user input selecting a portion of the content of a rendered document that constitutes a sentence fragment. In response to receiving the user input, the facility identifies an electronic document contained in a corpus of electronic documents, the identified electronic document containing the selected document portion. In response to receiving the user input, the facility further identifies a position within the identified electronic document at which the selected document portion occurs.

Claims

1. A method in a computing system for navigating an electronic document, the method comprising:

receiving user input selecting a portion of the content of a rendered document, the portion constituting a sentence fragment;

in response to receiving the user input;

identifying (1) an electronic document contained in a corpus of electronic documents, the identified electronic document containing the selected document portion, and (2) a position within the identified electronic document at which the selected document portion occurs; and

causing to be made available to a user actions associated with the identified position in the identified electronic document, wherein at least one of the identified actions was associated with the identified position before the receipt of the received user input.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

accessing a markup layer that relates to the identified electronic document;

identifying actions defined by the markup layer for the identified position in the identified electronic document; and

making the identified actions available to a user who provided the received user input.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the identified electronic document and the identified position are identified without determining a standard-character-set representation of the selected document portion.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the identification is done using an image of the selected document portion.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the identification is done using a convolution-encoded representation of text contained by the selected document portion.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising encoding both of two selected document portions into a convolution-encoded representation, the two selected document portions containing text of two different natural languages.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising encoding data that is independent of the textual content of the selected document portion in the convolution-encoded representation by including an invalid value in the convolution-encoded representation.

8. The method of claim 3 wherein the selected document portion is unique among the corpus of electronic documents, and a version of the selected document portion from which a single word is deleted is not unique among the corpus of electronic documents.

9. The method of claim 3 wherein the selected document portion is contained by a plurality of electronic documents of the corpus, the method further comprising:

identifying a user who provided the received user input;

retrieving context information for the identified user; and

identifying a document among the plurality of electronic documents most likely to correspond to the rendered document based upon contents of the retrieved context information.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving user input specifying an annotation relative to the identified position in the identified electronic document;

storing the specified annotation together with an indication of the identified electronic document and position in a location outside the identified electronic document;

in response to a user request for the specified annotation;

retrieving at least a portion of the identified electronic document containing the identified position;

displaying a region of the identified electronic document containing the identified position;

retrieving the specified annotation; and

displaying the specified annotation in connection with the displayed document region at a position proximate to the identified position.

11. A computer-readable medium having contents capable of causing a computing system to perform a method in a computing system for navigating an electronic document, the method comprising:

receiving user input selecting a portion of the content of a rendered document, the portion constituting a sentence fragment; and

in response to receiving the user input;

identifying (1) an electronic document contained in a corpus of electronic documents, the identified electronic document containing the selected document portion, and (2) a position within the identified electronic document at which the selected document portion occurs; and

causing to be made available to a user actions associated with the identified position in the identified electronic document, wherein at least one of the identified actions was associated with the identified position before the receipt of the received user input.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, the method further comprising:

accessing a markup layer that relates to the identified electronic document;

identifying actions defined by the markup layer for the identified position in the identified electronic document; and

making the identified actions available to a user who provided the received user input.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 11 wherein the identified electronic document and the identified position are identified without determining a standard-character-set representation of the selected document portion.

21. The computer-readable medium of claim 20 wherein the identification is done using an image of the selected document portion.

22. The computer-readable medium of claim 20 wherein the identification is done using a convolution-encoded representation of text contained by the selected document portion.

23. The computer-readable medium of claim 22, the method further comprising encoding both of two selected document portions into a convolution-encoded representation, the two selected document portions containing text of two different natural languages.

24. The computer-readable medium of claim 22, the method further comprising encoding data that is independent of the textual content of the selected document portion in the convolution-encoded representation by including an invalid value in the convolution-encoded representation.

25. The computer-readable medium of claim 20 wherein the selected document portion is unique among the corpus of electronic documents, and a version of the selected document portion from which a single word is deleted is not unique among the corpus of electronic documents.

26. The computer-readable medium of claim 20 wherein the selected document portion is contained by a plurality of electronic documents of the corpus, the method further comprising:

identifying a user who provided the received user input;

retrieving context information for the identified user; and

identifying a document among the plurality of electronic documents most likely to correspond to the rendered document based upon contents of the retrieved context information.

27. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, the method further comprising:

receiving user input specifying an annotation relative to the identified position in the identified electronic document;

storing the specified annotation together with an indication of the identified electronic document and position in a location outside the identified electronic document;

in response to a user request for the specified annotation;

retrieving at least a portion of the identified electronic document containing the identified position;

displaying a region of the identified electronic document containing the identified position;

retrieving the specified annotation; and

displaying the specified annotation in connection with the displayed document region at a position proximate to the identified position.

12-18. -18. (canceled)

28. A computing system for navigating an electronic document, comprising:

a receiver that receives user input selecting a portion of the content of a rendered document, the portion constituting a sentence fragment;

a processor that, in response to receiving the user input in the receiver;

identifies (1) an electronic document contained in a corpus of electronic documents, the identified electronic document containing the selected document portion, and (2) a position within the identified electronic document at which the selected document portion occurs, and

causes to be presented to a user actions associated with the identified position in the identified electronic document, wherein at least one of the identified actions was associated with the identified position in the identified electronic document before the receiver received the user input.