Forming a master page for an electronic document

• US 9,348,799 B2
• Filed: 07/10/2006
• Issued: 05/24/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Garg, Nitin Kumar
• Primary Examiner(s): Patel, Manglesh M
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hasty, Nicholas
• Application Number:
  US11/484,087
• Publication Number:
  US 20070133067A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,606 Days
• Field of Search: 715/243, 715/229, 715/200, 715/255, 358/462, 358/453
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

Embodiments of methods, apparatuses, systems and/or devices for forming a master page for an electronic document are disclosed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

determining that an electronic document lacks a master page based on a viewer application being unable to open the electronic document for viewing without the master page; and

based on determining that the electronic document lacks the master page;

determining a layout of at least some objects included in a page of the electronic document;

comparing the at least some objects or the determined layout of the at least some objects to at least one additional object included in at least one additional page of the electronic document to identify common objects or a common object layout between the page and the at least one additional page; and

based at least in part on the comparison, automatically generating;

a user-editable master page that is associated with the electronic document and that includes at least a portion of the identified common objects or object layout; and

at least one document object page that is associated with the electronic document and that omits the identified common objects or object layout of the master page.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic document comprises an electronic document in portable document format (PDF) format.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the master page does not include objects not common to both the page of the electronic document and the at least one additional page of the electronic document.

4. The method of claim 1, further including applying the automatically generated master page to the automatically generated at least one document object page, the master page providing the identified common objects and/or object layout to the at least one document object page.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising altering the identified common objects or objects layouts included in the at least one document object page in response to at least one portion of the master page being altered.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing the identified objects to the at least one additional object comprises:

generating a plurality of sequences of at least some pages from the electronic document, wherein each sequence includes the page and the at least one additional page and wherein each sequence is generated from pages having common objects; and

determining a sequence from the plurality of sequences having a highest common factor indicative of the sequence having a larger number of common objects than any other sequence of the plurality of sequences;

wherein the master page is generated based on the sequence having the highest common factor.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the common object layout between the page and the at least one additional page comprises determining that the at least some objects and the at least one additional object have identical positioning data and formatting data in both the page and the at least one additional page.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the common object layout between the page and the at least one additional page comprises determining that the page includes at least one frame for positioning document objects and that the at least one additional page includes at least one additional frame for positioning document objects, wherein the at least one frame and the at least one additional frame have common positioning data.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic document comprises a plurality of pages, wherein the master page comprises electronic data comprising at least one of a visual object, a formatting of visual objects, and a layout of visual objects, wherein the at least one of visual content, formatting of visual content, and layout of visual content in the plurality of pages is controlled by the at least one of the visual object, the formatting of visual objects, and the layout of visual objects.

9. A method of identifying layout patterns in an electronic document, comprising:

determining that an electronic document lacks a master page based on a viewer application being unable to open the electronic document for viewing without the master page; and

based on determining that the electronic document lacks the master page;

identifying a layout for at least one document object included in at least one page of an electronic document having a plurality of pages;

identifying an intersection comprising an occurrence of at least one document object or at least one layout being respectively included in at least two pages of the electronic document;

determining a measure of commonality between the at least two pages for the at least one document object or the at least one layout based at least in part on the identified intersection; and

based at least in part on the determined measure of commonality, automatically generating;

at least one user-editable master page associated with the electronic document that includes at least a portion of the least one document object or the at least one layout, wherein editing the at least one master pages updates the plurality of pages within the electronic document to reflect the editing of the at least one master page; and

at least one document object page that is associated with the electronic document and that omits the least one document object or the at least one layout common to the at least two pages.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the electronic document comprises an electronic document in portable document format (PDF) format.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the measure of commonality is determined for the at least one document object based on a weight assigned to the at least one document object.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising assigning a higher weight to the at least one document object than other types of document objects based on the at least one document object including graphics.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising assigning a higher weight to the at least one document object than other types of document objects based on the at least one document object including graphics.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein automatically generating the at least one user-editable master page based at least in part on the determined measure of commonality comprises:

generating a plurality of page sequences, wherein each page sequence of the plurality of page sequences includes a grouping of pages in the electronic document having a respective measure of commonality with respect to at least one respective object or at least one respective layout for the grouping of pages;

determining that a highest common factor sequence from the plurality of page sequences has a highest measure of commonality among pages of the page sequences, wherein the highest common factor sequence includes the at least two pages; and

generating the master page from the highest common factor sequence.

15. The method of claim 9, wherein automatically generating the at least one user-editable master page based at least in part on the determined measure of commonality comprises:

generating a plurality of page sequences, wherein each page sequence of the plurality of page sequences includes a grouping of pages in the electronic document having a respective measure of commonality with respect to at least one respective object or at least one respective layout for the grouping of pages;

determining that subset of page sequences from the plurality of page sequences have measures of commonality exceeding a threshold measure of commonality;

selecting at least one page sequence from the subset of page sequences having a number of pages greater than a threshold number of pages, wherein the at least one page sequence comprises the at least two pages; and

generating the master page from the at least one page sequence.

16. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions executable by a processor, the instructions comprising:

instructions for determining that an electronic document lacks a master page based on a viewer application being unable to open the electronic document for viewing without the master page; and

instructions for responding to determining that the electronic document lacks the master page by;

identifying the layout for at least one document object included in at least one page of an electronic document having a plurality of pages;

identifying an intersection comprising an occurrence of at least one document object or at least one layout being respectively included in at least two pages of the electronic document;

determining a measure of commonality between the at least two pages for the at least one document object or the at least one layout based at least in part on the identified intersection; and

based at least in part on the determined measure of commonality, automatically generating;

at least one user-editable master page associated with the electronic document that includes at least a portion of the least one document object or the at least one layout, wherein editing the at least one master pages updates the plurality of pages within the electronic document to reflect the editing of the at least one master page; and

at least one document object page that is associated with the electronic document and that omits the at least one document object or the at least one layout common to the at least two pages.

17. The machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein identifying layout data comprises extracting page data for one or more pages of the electronic document and determining one or more properties of the extracted data.

18. The machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein said storage medium further includes instructions comprising:

instructions for identifying at least a portion of the layout of a page of an electronic document;

instructions for comparing the identified layout to an identified layout of one or more additional pages of the electronic document, to identify recurring object and/or layout patterns; and

instructions for assigning a value to the intersection between the compared pages based at least in part on the comparison.

19. A system comprising:

a processor; and

a non-transitory machine-readable medium coupled to the processor;

wherein the processor is configured for executing instructions stored in the non-transitory machine-readable medium to perform operations comprising;

determining that an electronic document lacks a master page based on a viewer application being unable to open the electronic document for viewing without the master page; and

responding to determining that the electronic document lacks the master page by;

determining a layout of at least some objects included in a page of the electronic document;

comparing the identified objects or the determined layout of the objects to at least one additional object included in at least one additional page of the electronic document to identify common objects or a common object layout between the page and the at least one additional page; and

based at least in part on the comparison, automatically generating;

a user-editable master page that is associated with the electronic document and that includes at least a portion of the identified common objects or object layout; and

at least one document object page that is associated with the electronic document and that omits the identified common objects or object layout of the master page.