BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

This invention relates in general to methods for indexing and searching hardcopy documents, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for electronically indexing data elements in a hardcopy book or document and thereby searching and locating a particular data element in the hardcopy book or document.

2. Description of the Prior Art

Although electronic available books, such as available online, may have extensive indexing features when read via a computing device, unfortunately, hardcopy documents have not benefitted from sophisticated indexing and searching capability.

Conventionally, hardcopy documents, typically a book, are searched to find information they contain by using a table of contents or index, if available, and manually searching all data elements in the hardcopy document. Many kinds of books, for example novels, may not include an index or table of contents, and others, such as computer language reference books, are written fairly rapidly and include an index section and a table of contents section that are often not very complete.

Since the index typically is not complete, if one needs to look up something in the hardcopy document or book, the indexing mechanism in the back of the book may not be very helpful. Full text indexing, for example, is too big to include with the book. A complete index may require as much as an additional one third of the size of an associated book if printed along with the book. So readers in the past have had to accept this problem and rely on a subset of a full index in a book to assist in searching the book in order to keep the size of the hardcopy document or book to a commercially acceptable volume.

Other hardcopy documents, such as electrical drawings and maps, include data elements other than text, such as graphics, and suffer from a similar disadvantage of not being fully indexed and their data elements are not easily located or searched for. For example, a person may wish to locate a specific transistor in a complex circuit depicted in an electrical drawing or blueprint. Regrettably, the person would have to exhaustively search all data elements in the electrical drawing to locate the transistor without the benefit of an indexed search. It has been commercially impractical to provide a complete hardcopy index.

Additionally, since users in the past have only been able to manually search hardcopy documents by reading the limited index tables printed in the hardcopy document, the type of manual searching is limited typically to a linear alphabetical search of an index table. It is unfortunate that neither more complete searching nor more complex searching methods are available to hardcopy readers. For example, prior to the present invention it would have been impracticable for a reader of a hardcopy document to engage in complex boolean searching of multiple data elements in a hardcopy document.

Hardcopy documents, however, have distinct advantages. They are pleasant to read, easy to annotate, viewing distance and angle can be easily adjusted, they do not require network connectivity or depend on network speed, they are mobile, and so on. Hardcopy books, even in technical areas, will be popular for a long time.

Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus to eliminate those specific disadvantages of the prior art as discussed above, and particularly to significantly enhance the ability of a person to index search a hardcopy document.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1

is a block diagram of a hardcopy document delivery system, including, in particular, and index creation system according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIGS. 2 and 3

are operational flow diagrams illustrating operations of the system of

FIG. 1

according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4

is a block diagram showing an exemplary searching assistant computing device for use in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIGS. 5

,

6

, and

7

, are operational flow diagrams illustrating operations for the searching assistant computing device shown in

FIG. 4

according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The present invention solves the aforementioned problems by providing a means that allows a person to feasiblely perform much more exhaustive searching on hardcopy documents. Preferably, an index is compressed, encoded, and stored in a computer readable medium, and a computing device, such as a hand-held computing device, reads, decodes, and decompresses the information from the index and makes it available to a user of the device for searching the hardcopy document.

In one preferred embodiment of the present invention, the compressed complete index, or nearly complete index, can be printed in a computer readable format such as a 2D bar code as part of a hardcopy book. A user of the computing device can extract information from the index and use it to search the book. In a second embodiment, the full index or partial index information can be stored on the World Wide Web, and downloaded to a user's computing device, and used as above. Advantages of the present invention include:

First, one can provide a much more complete index, just for space reasons, than one would have found reasonable in the past to print in the back of a book because the more complete index is compressed, allowing storage of much more information in a relatively small volume, e.g., relatively few pages in the book. A user using a hand-held computing device, for example, can efficiently utilize a complete, or near complete, index for a book to get essentially full-text searching of the book. The index information can be stored in the back of book in a reasonable amount of space.

Second, because the complete index is readable by the computing device, a user can do complex searches of the book. For example, the user can search for “dog” and “cat” in the same paragraph. This type of searching would not have been possible using a static hardcopy printed index in a book. Further, the present invention allows boolean searches (combining terms with “and”, “or”, “not”, etc.), fuzzy/approximate searches, use of associated terms for query expansion, and so on.

Thirdly, a computing device assisted search of a hardcopy document can provide detailed location information of occurrence of a data element being searched for by the user. In the past, a user looking for a word in a book might only have a page number identified in an index in the book. Then, the user would have to scan the page to find the indexed word. This wasted significant time during searching. With the present invention, the index can, for example, provide chapter location, page number location, line number on a page location, etc., and searching and locating can be as accurate as desired and still be able to fit into a reasonable volume of printed material such as in the back of a book.

Furthermore, in the case that hardcopy document is not a book, for example it is a large engineering blueprint draft, an index can be provided that indicates, for example, where certain resistors are located in the hardcopy document, such as via a fine grid (X,Y) coordinate system representation.

Therefore, for example, by combining complete or near complete index information in a computer readable medium with a small computing device, the user can utilize the indexing information to perform complex and complete or nearly complete searches on an associated hardcopy document.

The index creation system

102

in FIG.

1

and the searching assistant system

402

in

FIG. 4

, each comprises computing systems that normally include at least one computing device and at least one computer readable medium as will be discussed more fully below. Each computing system includes, inter alia, at least a computer readable medium allowing a computer to read data, instructions, messages or message packets, and other computer readable information from the computer readable medium. The computer readable medium may include non-volatile memory, such as ROM, Flash memory, floppy disk, Disk drive memory, CD-ROM, and other permanent storage. Additionally, a computer readable medium may include, for example, volatile storage such as RAM, buffers, cache memory, and network circuits. Furthermore, the computer readable medium may include computer readable information in a transitory state medium such as a network link and/or a network interface, including a wired network or a wireless network, that allow a computer to read such computer readable information.

Referring to

FIG. 1

, the document delivery system

100

provides hard copy documents with full indexing capability for readers thereof. The document data such as text or graphics

103

is provided to an index creation system

102

to create an index for the resulting hard copy document such that a reader of the document could use the index to search the hard copy document for specific data elements such as text and graphics elements in the hard copy document. The document data text or graphics

103

preferably is provided electronically to the index creation system

102

. However, alternatively, the document data

103

could be read into the index creation system

102

by a document reader

104

, which is equipped with an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine for converting hardcopy documents to ASCII text. Once the document data, e.g., text and graphics,

103

is read by the index creation system

102

, it is temporarily stored in a memory

108

to further process the document data

103

to create an index table therefrom. The central processing unit

106

is coupled to the document reader

104

and to the memory

108

for providing computing function to the index creation system

102

, such as for storing the document data

103

that is read by the document reader

104

into the memory

108

. The CPU

106

is also coupled to an index engine

110

which provides the functions for creating the index table as will be discussed below. The CPU

106

is also coupled to a two-dimensional bar code encoder

112

and to the non-volatile memory

120

. The two-dimensional bar code encoder

112

creates a compressed version of the index tables in a two-dimensional bar code format which is then stored in the non-volatile memory

120

in the encoded index tables portion thereof

130

. This will also be more fully discussed below. The CPU

106

is also coupled to a user interface

114

which preferably includes a display

116

and a keyboard

118

for communicating with a user of the index creation system

102

. The non-volatile memory

120

also includes storage for a stop word list

122

for a dictionary

124

for a set of grammar rules

126

and it stores the index tables

128

in a non-compressed format as well. It can store the encoded index tables, such as the two-dimensional bar code encoded index tables in a portion

130

of the non-volatile memory

120

. The CPU

106

is also coupled to a printing system

140

to print the resulting hard copy index tables preferably in a two-dimensional bar code encoded format.

Additionally, in the preferred embodiment, the printing system

140

prints the hard copy document data text and graphics

103

along with a hard copy representation of the two-dimensional bar code encoded index tables to create a complete indexed hard copy document. This hard copy document can then be distributed to readers and users who can efficiently search the hard copy document as will be more fully discussed below. Alternatively, the index creation system

102

includes a web server

150

which is coupled to the CPU

106

and also coupled via a communication link

151

to the Internet World Wide Web

152

. This web server

150

can provide an electronic version of the index tables

128

, such as on a web page for a publisher of the hard copy document. In this way, as will be more fully discussed below, a reader of the hard copy document is able to download from the Internet the electronic index tables for the hard copy document to be used for searching the hard copy document as needed.

In the preferred embodiment, the index engine

110

operates to extract the data elements from the document, such as the words, sentences, phrases and graphic elements from the document data

103

and following certain indexing rules creates the index tables

128

for the hard copy document. These indexing rules, for example, will ignore stop-word list words

122

, such as the words “a”, “the”, “and”, etc. which do not contain relevant context for indexing or searching in a hard copy document. The index engine

110

utilizes a dictionary

124

and a set of grammar rules

126

to parse through the data elements of the document and capture a set of indexable data elements such as text, words, phrases or sentences to include in the index tables

128

.

With reference to

FIG. 2

, the index creation system

102

operates to create the index tables and to print the two-dimensionally encoded bar code index tables along with the hard copy document. With reference to

FIG. 3

, a more detailed description of the functional steps involved in generating the text index are illustrated. specifically, starting with

FIG. 2

, the index creation system

102

upon commencing an index creation operation reads the data elements of the hard copy document at Steps

202

,

204

, and then generates a text index set of tables at Step

206

, as will be discussed below. The two-dimensional bar code encoder

112

then takes the index table information

128

and encodes the text index, for example, into an encoded index table

130

, at Step

208

. The encoded index table

130

is then stored in the non-volatile memory

120

for subsequent use by the index creation system

102

. The index creation system

102

then controls the printing system

140

and provides the encoded index tables

130

to the printing system

140

to print the text index encoded as a two-dimensional bar code index table information along with the hard copy document, at Step

212

and then exits the printing at Step

214

. In this way, the index creation system takes document data such as text and/or graphics at

103

and prints a table including index information for a hard copy document that can be read and used by readers of the hard copy document as will be discussed in more detail below.

As shown in

FIG. 3

, the index table generation Step

206

includes the steps of extracting text information from the document information at Step

302

, then tokenizing and tagging the text information data elements such as words and phrases at Step

304

, and then further analyzing sentences for context at Step

306

. Once the sentences have been analyzed, the system extracts words and phrases at Step

308

and then at Step

310

it creates a list of these words and phrases that will be indexed into the hard copy document.

This list of words usually includes multiple occurrences (for multiple locations) of the same word or phrase in the document data elements and so there is a merging step at Step

312

where the multiple occurrences are consolidated into a single entry in the table for each word and/or phrase in the list that is to be indexed. Lastly, at Step

314

, the system creates a complete list of words, phrases and other data elements for the hard copy document and includes indexing information such as page number, line number and possibly coordinates such as X and Y to locate the data element in the hard copy document. Once the index table with the indexing information is built, at Step

314

, the system returns at Step

316

to continue the index table printing operation, as discussed with reference to FIG.

2

.

FIG. 4

illustrates a searching assistant computing device

402

, such as provided with a personal digital assistant, a hand-held computing device, or the like. In one embodiment, the searching assistant

402

includes a two-dimensional bar code scanner

414

which is coupled to a two-dimensional bar code decoder

418

for scanning and decoding printed hard copy two-dimensional bar codes index tables

416

that are included with a hard copy document. The device

402

also may include an optical scanner

404

and an optical character recognition module

408

for optically scanning text and/or data elements from a hard copy document

406

, as will be discussed below. The searching assistant

402

also includes a display

415

for communicating information to a user of the searching assistant system

402

and it includes a user input

422

such as including a keypad

424

and a pen input device

426

for capturing input from the user of the searching assistant device

402

. A searching engine module

410

is coupled to a CPU

411

for handling the searching functions for the searching assistant device

402

as will be discussed in more detail below. A memory

412

coupled to the searching engine

410

into the CPU

411

stores indexing tables

420

which can be searched and used to provide indexing information to a reader of the hard copy document.

Additionally, a network adapter

428

is coupled to the CPU and can be coupled via a link to the web Internet

430

for downloading index table information such as from a web page being hosted by a publisher of the hard copy document. In this way, a publisher of the hard copy document, for example, can provide indexing information to readers so the readers can efficiently search the hard copy documents provided by the publisher. The searching assistant

402

in this example is capable of downloading such indexing information from a web page provided by a publisher of the hard copy document via the Internet

430

.

Alternatively, the searching assistant

402

includes a communications interface to a personal computer

432

such that the interface

432

interfaces to a personal computer

434

that can then link up an interface with the Internet or web

430

and thereby access and download from the publisher's web page the index table information for particular hard copy documents. The index table information can be downloaded from the web

430

via either the network adapter

428

or via the personal computer and interface

434

and

434

(?) and then stored in the memory

412

in an index table portion of the memory

420

. In this way, the searching assistant

402

is capable of storing the indexing table information

420

in the memory

412

by downloading from the web

430

either via the network adapter

428

or via a personal computer

434

coupled to the communications interface

432

or the searching assistant

402

can scan the two-dimensional bar codes provided with the hard copy document

416

and then decode those two-dimensional bar codes to provide the indexing information to store in the memory

412

in the location for the indexing tables

420

.

Once the indexing information is in the indexing tables

420

in the memory

412

, the searching assistant

402

can accept user input

422

such as via pen input

426

or keypad input

424

and can display search results via the display

415

. In this way, a user of the searching assistant

402

can search a hard copy document for specific data elements such as text and/or graphics as will be discussed below.

With reference to

FIG. 5

, the searching assistant

402

operates to store indexing information into an index table in memory

412

. The searching assistant

402

at Steps

502

and

504

scans the two-dimensional bar code information from the hard copy document at Step

504

and then decodes the two-dimensional bar code information at Step

506

and then stores the decoded two-dimensional bar code information into the index table in the memory

412

at Steps

508

and

510

. In this way, the two-dimensional bar code information is read from the hard copy document and stored into the indexing tables

420

in the memory

412

in the searching assistant

402

. This is a preferred mode of operation for the searching assistant

402

. Specifically, this allows indexing of hard copy documents even without having access to the Internet or to any electronic network because the indexing information is available in hard copy form along with the hard copy document. By utilizing two-dimensional barcodes, it compresses the indexing information and significantly saves on hard copy document volume which is important to make this a usable system for indexing information from hard copy documents. In one preferred mode, the indexing information is organized into multiple index tables such as an index table for each alphabetical letter of indexing such as A, B, C, and so on for each letter of the alphabet having a specific index table thereby a user of the index table can tab or index into a particular alphabetical first letter of a piece of text that is being searched for. These indexing tables are efficiently stored on hard copy in a compressed two-dimensional format. They require very few pages preferably in the back of a hard copy document and allow a reader to have powerful and extensive searching function as will be discussed below. With reference to

FIG. 6

, an alternative mode of storing the indexing information in the indexing tables

420

and the memory

412

, includes the steps of connecting to the web

430

via a network interface

428

or via a personal computer interface

432

as was discussed above, at Steps

602

and

604

. Then the searching assistant

402

downloads extended index table information from the web

430

such as from a web page for the publisher of the hard copy document, at Step

606

, and stores the downloaded information into the memory

412

into the indexing table portion

420

, at Step

608

and

610

. In this way, an electronic download of indexing information from a publisher's web page via the web

430

can be then stored into the memory

412

in the indexing tables portion

420

for use by the searching assistant

402

in assisting a user to search via indexing a hard copy document.

Referring to

FIG. 7

, the searching assistant

402

can be utilized to assist a reader of a hard copy document to search efficiently the hard copy document via indexing information stored in the indexing tables

420

and the memory

412

. Specifically, at Steps

702

and

704

, the searching assistant verifies whether the user, i.e., the reader of the hard copy document, is requesting a manual entry for search words or query words to index into the document. If the user, at Step

704

, enters certain query words or search words for indexing, then at Step

706

the searching assistant

402

accepts the query words from manual entry via the user input

422

and then at Step

708

, the searching assistant

402

searches with the searching engine

410

to find the particular index entries in the index table

420

, at Step

708

. Then, at Step

710

, the searching assistant

402

displays a result of the search to the user, at Step

710

, and then exits the searching operation at Step

712

.

Alternatively, the searching assistant

402

may receive a request from a user, at Step

714

, to select a query word from a list of available words. This facilitates entry for a user by merely selecting a word on the display that is already available for selection. If the user selects from a list of query words, at Step

714

, then the searching assistant

402

displays the list of candidate query words, at Step

716

, and then accepts a selection from the user for one of the entries on the list being displayed, at Step

718

. Subsequently, searching assistant

402

at Step

708

uses the selected query words to search the index table and then at Step

710

displays results of the search and exists at Step

712

. A third alternative means of selecting query words for the searching assistant

402

, i.e., for the exemplary embodiment including an OCR scanner and decoding software, allows the user to scan for a word from the hard copy document such as selected at Step

720

. In such event, if the user desires to scan a word and makes the selection at Step

720

, the searching assistant, at Step

722

, scans a word from the hard copy document at Step

722

such as using the optical scanner

404

and the optical character recognition module

408

to provide the query word for the search function. After the word is scanned at Step

722

, the searching assistant

402

does the recognition of the word at Step

724

and then provides the query word for a searching operation at Step

708

. Once the word is searched in the index table at Step

708

, the searching assistant

402

displays the results of the search at Step

710

and then exits at Step

712

. In this way, as illustrated above, the searching assistant

402

is able to assist a reader of a hard copy document in a number of ways to search the indexing tables information

420

from the memory

412

to provide efficient searching within a hard copy document for a user of the device

402

. Additionally, complicated boolean searching can be accomplished which is not available in any conventional index table implementation using purely hard copy documents and hard copy printed index tables.

Therefore, as has been discussed above, a user of the searching assistant

402

is capable of reading a book or a hard copy document anywhere, and conveniently scanning the hard copy document for indexing information and then using the indexing information from the hard copy document or book to search into the book for particular data elements or words in the book without requiring any network connection to download information.

Additionally, the searching can be done with an extensive indexing function that can locate not only pages and line number as is commonly accomplished, but additionally it can locate specific coordinates in a hard copy document. For example, a resistor element may be located in a particular blueprint hard copy document by an X and Y coordinate. Additionally, a map can be indexed to locate a particular map element such as a city or road or intersection precisely with a coordinate location for the data element. This is accomplished effectively and efficiently via the searching assistant

402

and the index information which preferably is compressed and encoded and stored and printed in a hard copy format along with the hard copy document.

Alternatively, from a publisher's web page, a user can download an ASCII file, for example, to include all the indexing information required for a hard copy document in an index table

420

in the memory

412

of the searching assistant

402

. In this way, the user can search efficiently the hard copy document by indexing using the searching assistant

402

.

This efficient searching feature is a significant advantage of the present invention that it is not available in any known prior art hard copy indexing system. A user can scan for individual text elements, for example, the word “java”, or can search for more complex groups of words, such as “java virtual machine”. Additionally, the user can obtain detailed specific location information for particular data elements such as a word or phrase within a document. Furthermore, the user can search for combinations of words such as “cat” but not “dog” in the same paragraph. These types of complex boolean searching are unheard of in any conventional hard copy indexing system.

Although specific embodiments of the invention have been disclosed, it will be understood by those having skill in the art that changes can be made to the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. The scope of the invention is not to be restricted, therefore, to the specific embodiments, and it is intended that the appended claims cover any and all such applications, modifications, and embodiments within the scope of the present invention.