A collaborative supporting method between document processing and hypertext construction

A new method of collaborative unification between document image understanding and hypertext construction is presented. Document image understanding is indispensable to electronic library systems, but document understanding technologies are still immature. Moreover, hypertext links are difficult to acquire by hand. In the approach presented, document image understanding is taken as classification of text blocks to classes of bibliographic items which compose the understanding thesaurus. Hypertext links are obtained implicitly with functions corresponding to classes, and thus they are obtained automatically from understanding results. These classes include incompletely recognized classes distinctly to offer utilization of incompletely recognized text blocks as they are. Using this approach, large scale and practical electronic library systems can be offered