Document Page Reduction via Bidirectional Scanning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional page reduction processing often wastefully targets non-reducible regions and fails to efficiently minimize the number of printed pages, as it processes from the top of the document without considering optimal page ranges for reduction.
Innovation Solution
An information processing apparatus that scans document data from both directions to extract necessary page ranges for reduction, allowing for the efficient elimination of blank regions within these ranges, thereby optimizing the number of pages printed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If page reduction processing is performed from the top of the document in order, then the processing follows a simple sequential approach, but processing is performed wastefully on regions that are not page-reducible targets
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by first scanning the entire document to identify all page-reducible target regions before performing the actual page reduction processing. This allows the system to pre-determine which pages should be processed and which should be skipped, avoiding wasteful processing of non-reducible regions while maintaining a straightforward processing approach.
2Productivity
If conventional page reduction processing is performed, then blank spaces can be reduced, but the number of printed pages is not efficiently minimized due to processing non-reducible regions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies segmentation by dividing the document into distinct page ranges based on reducibility characteristics. The extraction unit identifies and segments page-reducible target regions from non-reducible regions, allowing the page reduction unit to process only the relevant segments. This targeted approach improves page reduction efficiency by focusing computational resources on pages that can actually be reduced while avoiding unnecessary processing of other pages.
Data Source
AI summary
An information processing apparatus includes an extraction unit configured to scan document data in a direction from a first page to a last page to extract a first page range required for reducing one page and to scan the document data from the last page in the first page range in a direction opposite to the direction of scanning the first page range to extract a second page range required for reducing one page, and a page reduction unit configured to execute page reduction processing by reducing a blank region included in a page in the second page range if a number of pages included in the second page range is smaller than a number of pages included in the first page range.