CopyFinder

"lets paper documents live in the digital domain ..."

Project Summary

For documents that need to make the paper-digital round trip, the road is now shorter and less bumpy. The reason: Copyfinder, which, simply put, reunites paper and digital documents.

Run a paper document through a multifunction device and, upon command, Copyfinder will, through its search-like interface, locate the original electronic file, or versions of that file such as previous drafts. This ability to reunite paper and digital documents reduces confusion, helps users to quickly locate the version of the document they need and allows versions to be quickly reconciled, so revisions can be quickly compared.

Say, for example, you've got only one page of a document and you want to see the whole thing. Or somebody has a printed document filled with OCR errors. Or somebody wants to see what revisions have been made to a paper document. Or you have a report, and want to find out where it came from. Or you've got the paper version, but want the electronic one so you can make changes.

Copyfinder lets you do all of these things.

So, you may ask yourself what happens when the paperless office arrives? That's difficult to answer, as the paperless office isn't any closer to reality than it was decades ago when the phrase first became popular. Xerox studies of real-world offices indicate paper is just as essential as computers. In fact, companies that have tried to go paperless have created employees who felt the need to "hide" their dependence on paper, sneaking hardcopies around their offices to get their jobs done.

What's needed, Xerox researchers found, is not an unrealistic and unenforceable goal to eliminate paper, but a way to seamlessly move between hardcopy and digital.

XRCE has worked extensively on understanding and bridging this gap. Electronic media is in often incapable of satisfying all of the requirements that people have for documents. Electronic is great for storage, for retrieval and for repurposing. It's a Godsend for the ways in which people work, but for some other things paper is equally important. So rather than just thinking of technology to replace paper the centre also tries to think of ways to integrate paper into the electronic world, making it easier to work with.

CopyFinder, which works under the "SOAP" protocol (a combination of XML and HTTP) as a Web Service, employs linguistic techniques to extract best keywords and distance algorithms to compare the pool of retrieved documents. It's also based on multithreading processes and wrapping techniques to ensure its performances.

Currently it's able to search Docushare and Google. DocuShare is Xerox's Web-based document management application that gives workgroups and organizations a secure environment for capturing, managing, and sharing information - as a document repository, robust content management system, portal, or collaborative project management application. Copyfinder will be introduced with a product which will be included on some multifunction devices - thus helping to escort documents - and the people who need them - along the paper/digital trail, where ever that might lead.

Contacts

For more information please email the CopyFinder team

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