REDUCING APPEARANCE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CODED AND NONCODED UNITS OF TEXT

Methods and apparatus, including computer program apparatus and systems, for processing text that includes coded (character based) and noncoded (image based) representations of text. The invention includes deriving a correction factor from a coded representation of a second unit of text and an original noncoded representation of the second unit of text, and modifying a representation of a first unit of text in accordance with the correction factor, where a common font typeface is attributed to both the first and second units. The correction factor can be calculated by rendering a coded representation of the second unit of text in the font typeface to generate a rendered representation, calculating a reference ratio from the rendered representation and an optical density of an original noncoded representation of the second unit of text, and inverting the reference ratio to calculate the correction factor. Where the first unit of text includes a word, the optical density of the word can be adjusted by modifying a bitmap representation of the word, where pixels are added to, or removed from, the bitmap, or the bitmap is left unchanged, according to the value of the correction factor.