Patent Document ID: 5465304
Application ID: 08230073

Base Claim:
1. In a character recognition system, a method for segmenting portions of a medium representation into text and non-text types, said method comprising the steps of: a) accessing said medium representation, said medium representation comprising a plurality of scanlines; b) extracting a set of run lengths from said plurality of scanlines; c) generating a set of run length classifications by generating a run length classification for each run length of said set of run lengths, said run length classification determined according to a length of each run length; d) constructing a plurality of rectangles using said set of run length classifications, each of said plurality of rectangles representing a portion of said medium representation; e) classifying each of said plurality of rectangles as either a non-text type or an unknown type; and f) merging a plurality of rectangles of said unknown type into a plurality of text blocks.

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Claim 7:
7. The method of claim 1 further comprising a step of ordering said plurality of text blocks including the following steps: assigning a first value to each text block of said plurality of text blocks based on a top to bottom positioning of said plurality of text blocks; assigning a second value to each text block of said plurality of text blocks based on a left to right and top to bottom positioning of said plurality of text blocks; modifying said second value for a text block if said second value is identical to that of a different text block; and assigning an order to each text block of said plurality of text blocks based on said second value.