1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to reduced image forming method and apparatus which are suitable for an electric filing apparatus for searching, displaying, and printing image data of a document stored with relation to predetermined managing information, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been published an electric filing apparatus for storing image data of a document formed by reading the document by a scanner, etc. with relation to document managing information and searching, displaying, printing the information, and the like. According to the electric filing apparatus, hitherto, in case of registering document managing information such as a document name, a number of pages, registered date, and a keyword, as and displaying a document list and a search result list, etc., the document managing information is displayed as information for identifying the document. However, it is difficult to identify the outline of the document by using only the document managing information. This situation results in further proposing an electric filing apparatus capable of forming and registering a reduced image of the document and displaying the reduced image in the document list and search result list.
FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a functional construction example of a general electric filing apparatus for displaying a reduced image in a document list and a search result list. The electric filing apparatus has; a document reading function unit 1000; a reduced image forming function unit 1001; a document storing function unit 1002; and a display control function unit 1003, as exemplified in FIG. 10. Among them, the document reading function unit 1000 reads image data of a document by a scanner device, etc. (not shown). The reduced image forming function unit 1001 forms image data which is reduced with a proper size by thinning out a dot, etc. from the image data of the document read by the document-reading function unit 1000. The document storing function unit 1002 stores the image data of the document read by the document reading function unit 1000 and the reduced image data of the document formed by the reduced image forming function unit 1001, with the relation therebetween. The display control function unit 1003 controls an operation for displaying the image data of the document and the reduced image which are stored in the document storing function unit 1002, for instance, displays a document list based on the reduced image shown in FIG. 11.
However, according to the conventional electric filing apparatus, in case of displaying the document list and the search result list, the outline of the document can be identified from the reduced image of the document, but only a layout of the whole document can be identified and a character written to the document cannot discriminated. This arises a problem that it is extremely difficult to identify a document having a similar layout and a document having no distinctive feature which has not large character and no figure from the reduced image. A preferable example is a reduced displaying example of a patent specification shown in FIG. 12.
The example indicates the reduced image of 2 pages in a publication of a U.S. patent application, and it is impossible to discriminate what is written in both of the pages displayed in the right and left in the least.