Document browsing apparatus with concurrent processing and retrievel

• US 5,021,989 A
• Filed: 10/01/1990
• Issued: 06/04/1991
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/1986
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Hatakeyama, Atsushi, Fujisawa, Hiromichi, Hadano, Eiichi, Fujinawa, Masaaki
• Primary Examiner(s): Anderson, Lawrence E.
• Application Number:
  US07/593,260
• Time in Patent Office: 246 Days
• Field of Search: 364/200, 364/900
• US Class Current: 345/661
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/40 of multimedia data, e.g. slideshows comprising image and additional audio data retrieval of still image data G06F16/50; retrieval of audio data G06F16/60; retrieval of video data G06F16/70
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/54 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems

Abstract

An apparatus for document browsing, specifically for document retrieval systems. The browsing apparatus enables users to see multiple document pages on the same screen at the same time in a first mode and to see a bundle of pages on a screen in a second mode. The images shown on the screen are produced internally according to the user'"'"'s commands. The pages may be flipped in either direction and selected pages may be marked for later printing instructions.

Claims

1. An apparatus for displaying page images on a display screen, comprising;

large capacity storage means for storing a plurality of document images and page attributes of said documents;

high-speed buffer memory means for temporarily storing said document images having a plurality of pages and said page attributes;

display frame memory means for storing a display frame image;

means for displaying the display frame image in said display frame memory means on a display screen;

image processing means for carrying out image processing on the document image data in said high-speed buffer memory means and storing the processed document image data in said high-speed buffer memory means or said display frame memory means as a display frame image;

control means for controlling said display means and said image processing means such that an operation of accessing said large capacity storage means to read out document image data so as to transfer the data to said high-speed buffer memory means is carried out in parallel with said operation of image processing on other document image data in said high-speed buffer memory means and storing the processed document image data in said high-speed buffer memory means or said display frame memory means;

control signal input means for receiving commands from a user;

means for storing information which corresponds sections of the display frame image to the page attributes, said display frame memory means being divided into a plurality of sections; and

said apparatus displaying sectioned images of said pages of said document images in accordance with said information stored in said means for storing information, each page having attributes corresponding to sections of said display frame memory means, said sectioned images of said pages being displayed on said display screen and said apparatus transforming said sectioned images of said pages into individual page images separated from each other in response to commands received by said control signal input means.

2. An apparatus for displaying according to claim 1 further comprising:

a simultaneous display mode means for causing the simultaneous display of page images at a plurality of locations of a same document image, and for arbitrarily flipping the displayed page images in a forward or backward direction.

3. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 2 further comprising:

means for editing and combining a plurality of pages of document images to generate an image in a 3-dimensional form wherein a transition between a 3-dimensional display mode and a simultaneous display mode is enabled.

4. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 1 further comprising:

means for assigning a mark to a document image being displayed and for deleting the mark.

5. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 4 further comprising:

means for effecting, in response to a single instruction, a page flipping operation from a page image being displayed to a marked page.

6. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 5 further comprising:

means for indicating whether the page flipping operation is effected in the forward or backward direction.

7. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 4 further comprising:

means for printing a page image of only the marked page.

8. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 4 further comprising:

means for printing page images of pages other than the marked page.

9. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said large capacity storage means stores the document images in both an original size and a reduced size corresponding to the size of the sections.

10. An apparatus for displaying page images on a display screen, comprising:

large storage means for storing a large amount of page images;

image memory for temporarily storing a plurality of page images from said large storage means;

information memory means for storing information related to said page images to be read out from said large storage means;

display means for displaying page images from said image memory means on a display screen in a specific display manner, said specific display manner being a format representative of pages of a book;

display mode selection means for selecting a display mode which causes page images to be displayed on said display screen, said selected display mode causing said page images to be sequentially flipped in a forward or reverse direction;

image processing means for carrying out data processing on the page images read out form said large storage means in accordance with said display mode selected by said display mode selection means; and

control means for controlling said display means and said image processing means in such a manner that when a display mode is selected by said display mode selection means, an operation of processing page images read out from said large storage means in accordance with said information in said information memory means and transferring the processed page images to said image memory means, is carried out in parallel with an operation of reading out other page images stored by said image memory and displaying the page images on said display screen.

11. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 10 wherein a start point mark, indicating a display point of a page image first read from the large storage means, is displayed in a portion of the display screen of the display means.

12. An apparatus for displaying page images according to claim 10 wherein the page images displayed on the display screen are of the same size and display positions thereof in the display screen are obtained by shifting the page images in parallel by fixed distances in the vertical and horizontal directions.