Table form document synthesis by grammar-based structure analysis

Document structure is an important issue not only for document analysis but for document synthesis. This paper presents a computer assisted document synthesis system based on the grammar-based structure analysis. The system is designed to accomplish the analysis and synthesis of table form documents cooperatively by a user and computer; namely, the user interprets the document meaning and gives the entry data to be filled in, while the computer detects the boxes formed by horizontal and vertical rules and determines the logical relations of adjacent boxes. First, the document is decomposed into a set of boxes and they are classified semi-automatically into four types: blank, insertion, indication and explanation. Then the box relations between the indication box and its associated entry one are analyzed based on the semantic and geometric knowledge defined in the document structure grammar. Finally, the system generates LATEX codes of the synthesized documents whose blank and insertion boxes are filled with the text and image data given by user. Experimental results have shown that the system analyzed successfully several kinds of table forms and yielded synthesized documents as expected