Method and apparatus for identifying words described in a page description language file

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention provides a method and apparatus for identifying words stored in a page description language file.
The present invention can identify words from characters and strings of characters even though they are scattered within the file by processing the characters in a display order.
The apparatus of the present invention includes a system for identifying words in a page description language file.
A computer device stores a page description language file which includes characters that have not been identified as words by the page description language.
A word identifying mechanism reads the page description language file and groups characters to form a word or a number of words from the characters.
The system preferably transfers words to a client process capable of processing the words.
The system preferably retrieves one character at a time from the page description file by executing PDL commands stored in the page description file.
The system optionally sorts the characters into a display order prior to grouping the characters into words.
Each character preferably has an associated x coordinate and y coordinate which define an x,y coordinate pair indicating where said character is to be displayed on a page.
The system can sort the characters first by the y coordinates and then by the x coordinates prior to grouping the characters.
The system also includes a line buffer which stores characters having the same y coordinate read from the page description language file so that these characters can be grouped together into words.
The system also includes a word buffer, where the system sequentially stores characters from the line buffer into the word buffer until a word break is detected.
A word break is determined by the first detection of a termination character, an end of the line buffer, or a space.
A space, for example, is detected by a heuristic which considers the difference in x coordinates between adjacent characters in the line buffer.
The present invention further includes a method for identifying words from a collection of characters having associated character position data, such as in a page description file