Patent Document ID: 5438628
Application ID: 08220926

Base Claim:
1. A method for matching a test string to a plurality of documents the steps of: converting each of the plurality of documents to a character shape code representation by mapping each character of said documents to one of a plurality of character shape codes, wherein each code of said plurality of said character shape codes represents a partial collection of all characters of said documents, wherein each character of said partial collection shares spatial features related to the x-line and baseline of all characters of said documents; converting the character shape code representation to a reduced binary data string for each of the plurality of documents, wherein the reduced binary data string is less than a binary data string corresponding to the characters of the documents; storing the reduced binary data string for each of the plurality of documents to a database; inputting a test string; converting the test string to the character shape code representation; converting the character shape code representation of the test string to the reduced binary data string; matching the reduced binary data string of the test string to the reduced binary data string of each of the plurality of documents; and outputting a list of matching documents.

---

Claim 3:
3. The document matching method of claim 1, wherein the character shape code converting steps each comprise converting the plurality of documents and the test string using a reduced set of said character shape codes, wherein said reduced set of character shape codes is a subset of said plurality of said character shape codes.