AUTOMATED CAPTURE OF TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS FOR ELECTRONIC REVIEW AND DISTRIBUTION

Paper documents are automatically converted into a hypertext-based format so that they can be accessed through electronic networks, including the Internet, or via non-volatile transfer media such as disks or CD-ROMs. The invention generalizes the concept of form-based recognition while extending the concept of document retrieval to include document structure knowledge, thereby providing the advantages found in both form-based recognition (utilization of document structure knowledge) and image-based information retrieval (robustness). In a preferred embodiment, a method according to the invention enables direct translation of a paper document into a hypertext-based format so that it may be directly accessed through the Internet using current browsers such as Mosaic, Netscape and Microsoft's Explorer.