Patent ID: 7475336

Claim:
A document information processing apparatus comprising: a document input and output section that is able to at least input or output a document as image data, said document input and output section including at least one of an image reader that scans a document and generates image data from the scanned document or an image communication section that sends and receives image data of a document via fax or e-mail; an operation section that designates a file format of image data generated by said document input and output section; a format conversion section that converts the image data into the file format designated by the operation section; an operation timing detection section that detects predetermined operation timing for said document; a metadata acquisition section that acquires metadata for searching or editing of said document based on said operation timing; a metadata description section that describes said metadata in a predetermined format based on instance data of said document at predetermined timing with respect to the input or output of said document; processing unit that controls the operation of said document input and output section, said operation timing detection section, said metadata acquisition section, and said metadata description section, wherein said processing unit controls said metadata description section such that the metadata acquired by said metadata acquisition section is described in a file converted by said format conversion section; and an image analysis section that acciuires layout information by analyzing an image file, performs the reading of text information in areas that are recognized as text or character areas by using an optical character reader, and uses the data obtained as metadata.