Document data processing apparatus using image data

Claim 5

A method according to Claim 1 or 2, further including: a step (21; 403) of presenting on the display screen a form display comprising the character and line patterns in the physical layout recognized in said first step; and a step (29; 403) of correcting in response to a user's key operation a portion of the character or line pattern included in the form display presented on the display screen, said second step conducting the layout conversion on the character and line patterns corrected.

Claim 7

A method according to Claim 4 further including a step (20) of detecting an inclination of the form document based on the image data supplied from the image input means and of correcting the inclination, said first step being executed on the image data undergone the inclination correction as the original data.

Claim 11

A method according to Claim 7 wherein said third step determines whether the field attribution of an input/output field indicates that input data from a keyboard is set to the field, that data read from a data file is set to the field, or that data obtained through a calculation using data set at least to an input/output field is set to the field.

Claim 14

A method according to Claim 9 further including a step (221) of attaining from the physical structure data normalized form data in which the layout of the character and line patterns are converted to be adaptive to an integral multiple of a basic pitch of a cursor movement on the display screen, said second step being conducted such that, in place of the physical structure data, the normalized form data is analyzed for the field recognition.

Claim 15

A method according to Claim 9 or 10 wherein said second step includes: a step (2222) of extracting a plurality of cell regions each including rectangular areas, each said area having at least three side lines formed with line patterns; a step (2226) of determining presence or absence of a character string contained in each said cell region and of identifying based on a content of a character string a zone in the cell as an input/output field or as a fixed field; and a step (2225) of detecting a particular word outside the cell region and of identifying a blank area adjacent to the word as an input/output field.

Claim 16

A data processing system for inputting data of a form display comprising: a first memory means (981) for storing therein a form document image having a plurality of blank fields in which character or numeric data items are to be written; a display means (91) disposed with a display screen having a predetermined basic pitch of a cursor movement for presenting a form display; key input means (91) for inputting character and/or numeric data items; and control means (94) for achieving a control operation such that data supplied from said key input means is inputted to a blank field indicated by a cursor in the form display presented in the display screen; said control means including: means (21) for recognizing based on the form document image stored in said first memory means a layout of a plurality of character and line patterns constituting a document and for producing physical structure data of the document; and means (221) for producing normalized document data from the physical structure data of the document by correcting the layout of the character and line patterns to be adaptive to an integral multiple of the basic pitch of the cursor, the normalized document data defining a form display presented on the display screen for a data input operation.

Claim 17

A data processing system for inputting data of a form display comprising: a first memory means (981) for storing therein a form document image having a plurality of blank fields in which character or numeric data items are to be written; a display means (91) disposed with a display screen having a predetermined basic pitch of a cursor movement for presenting a form display; key input means (91) for inputting character and/or numeric data items; and control means (94) for achieving a control operation such that data supplied from said key input means is inputted to a blank field indicated by a cursor in the form display presented in the display screen; said control means including: means (21) for recognizing based on the form document image stored in said first memory means a layout of a plurality of character and line patterns constituting a document and for producing physical structure data of the document; and means (221) for producing normalized document data from the physical structure data of the document by correcting the layout of the character and line patterns to be adaptive to an integral multiple of the basic pitch of the cursor, the normalized document data defining a form display presented on the display screen for a data input operation.

Claim 18

A data processing system for inputting data of a form display comprising: a first memory means (981) for storing therein a form document image having a plurality of blank fields in which character or numeric data items are to be written; a display means (91) disposed with a display screen for presenting a form display; input means (91) for inputting character and/or numeric data; second memory means (99) for storing therein a plurality of data records each comprising a plurality of items; knowledge base means (540; 972) loaded, for each word or term, with knowledge information of a plurality of items; control means (94) for achieving a control operation of data inputs to blank fields in the form display presented in the display screen; said control means including: first means (21) for recognizing based on the form document image stored in said first memory means a layout of a plurality of character and line patterns constituting a document and for producing physical structure data of the document; second means (222-223) for analyzing the physical structure data and for detecting data input/­output fields included in the document and item name respectively associated with said data input/output fields; third means (224) for referencing based on the item names the knowledge base and for respectively attaining for said input/output fields input sources of data to be set thereto or field attributions indicat­ing a generation rules; and fourth means (23) for automatically producing based on the field attributions a program to input data to blank input/output fields of the form display defined by the physical structure data and presented on the display screen, wherein when the program is executed, data inputted from said input means by the operator, data of either one of the items included in a record read from said second memory, and data obtained through a calculation are selectively set to the blank input/output fields of the form display.

Claim 19

A data processing system for inputting data of a form display comprising: a first memory means (981) for storing therein a form document image having a plurality of blank fields in which character or numeric data items are to be written; a display means (91) disposed with a display screen for presenting a form display; input means (91) for inputting character and/or numeric data; second memory means (99) for storing therein a plurality of data records each comprising a plurality of items; knowledge base means (540; 972) loaded, for each word or term, with knowledge information of a plurality of items; control means (94) for achieving a control operation of data inputs to blank fields in the form display presented in the display screen; said control means including: first means (21) for recognizing based on the form document image stored in said first memory means a layout of a plurality of character and line patterns constituting a document and for producing physical structure data of the document; second means (222-223) for analyzing the physical structure data and for detecting data input/­output fields included in the document and item name respectively associated with said data input/output fields; third means (224) for referencing based on the item names the knowledge base and for respectively attaining for said input/output fields input sources of data to be set thereto or field attributions indicat­ing a generation rules; and fourth means (23) for automatically producing based on the field attributions a program to input data to blank input/output fields of the form display defined by the physical structure data and presented on the display screen, wherein when the program is executed, data inputted from said input means by the operator, data of either one of the items included in a record read from said second memory, and data obtained through a calculation are selectively set to the blank input/output fields of the form display.

Claim 20

A system according to Claim 13 wherein: said control means further includes fifth means (221) for generating from the physical structure data of the document normalized data by correcting the layout of the character and line patterns to be adaptive to an integral multiple of the basic pitch of the cursor on the display screen; said second means analyzes the normalized data in place of the physical structure data; and said fourth means automatically generates a program to input data to blank input/output fields of the form display defined by the physical structure data and presented on the display screen.