Determining actions involving captured information and electronic content associated with rendered documents

Abstract

Information is captured from a rendered document with a handheld document data capture device. Electronic information associated with the rendered document is applied to determine the system's actions and/or behaviors in response to the data capture. In some embodiments, the electronic information is markup data or an action map associated with the rendered document. In some embodiments, an electronic counterpart corresponding to the rendered document is located, and information associated with the electronic counterpart is applied to determine actions and/or behaviors available to a user of the handheld document data capture device.

1 . A method in a computing system, comprising:
 receiving text captured from a human-perceptible textual portion of a printed document using a handheld information capture device; and   in response to receiving the captured text, determining a plurality of actions that would be appropriate to perform in response to the capture of the captured text based on an analysis of the captured text.   
   
   
       2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 determining a location in the printed document from which the captured text was captured; and   receiving information related to the determined location.   
   
   
       3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein receiving information related to the determined location further comprises:
 information related to at least one of a title, heading, caption, footnote, endnote, or citation.   
   
   
       4 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 determining distances between the location of the captured information and context points within the printed document; and   selecting an action to be performed based at least in part on the determined distances.   
   
   
       5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein selecting an action to be performed further comprises:
 determining a likelihood that a user of the handheld information capture device will select the action.   
   
   
       6 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the determined distance is at least one of a word distance, a sentence distance, a paragraph distance, or a physical distance. 
   
   
       7 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the context points within the document are located in at least one selected from the group of a title, a heading, a photo, an illustration, a caption, a footnote, an endnote, a citation, a keyword, a name, a location, a phone number, and an address. 
   
   
       8 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 identifying supplemental information in the received information; and   determining the action to be performed at least in part on the identified supplemental information.   
   
   
       9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein determining an action to be performed further comprises:
 identifying at least one keyword in the received information;   locating the at least one keyword in supplemental information associated with the printed document; and   performing the action associated with the located keyword in the supplemental information.   
   
   
       10 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving supplemental information associated with the printed document.   
   
   
       11 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 determining at least one category to which the printed document belongs; and   selecting the action based at least in part on the determined category.   
   
   
       12 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein determining at least one category further comprises:
 referring to categories previously determined for the printed document.   
   
   
       13 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising:
 identifying an electronic counterpart associated with the printed document; and   determining the action based on the identified electronic counterpart.   
   
   
       14 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein receiving information from a printed document further comprises:
 receiving information identifying a region the printed document from which the received information was captured; and   determining the action at least in part on the received information related to the region.   
   
   
       15 . (canceled) 
   
   
       16 . The method of  claim 14 , wherein receiving information from a printed document further comprises:
 receiving information identifying a type of the identified region of the printed document.   
   
   
       17 . The method of  claim 16 , wherein receiving information identifying a type of the identified region of the printed document further comprises:
 identifying at least one of an advertising region, a product or products region, a sports region, a news region, a political region, a science region, a technology region, a hobby region, an entertainment region, an opinion region, a finance region, a business region, a classifieds region, an arts region, a real estate region, or a subject region.   
   
   
       18 . The method of  claim 14 , wherein determining the action at least in part on the received information related to the region further comprises:
 combining actions determined from more than one region identified as comprising the captured information.   
   
   
       19 . The method of  claim 14 , wherein determining the action at least in part on the received information related to the region further comprises:
 combining actions determined from regions of more than one related documents.   
   
   
       20 . The method of  claim 14 , wherein determining the action at least in part on the received information related to the region further comprises:
 combining actions determined from regions of multiple documents in a document hierarchy.   
   
   
       21 . The method of  claim 20 , wherein the document hierarchy further comprises:
 a page within an article within a magazine, a page within a section within a newspaper, or a page within a chapter within a book within an anthology.   
   
   
       22 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 displaying to a user an indication of the action to be performed; and   upon the user selecting the action to be performed, performing the determined action.   
   
   
       23 . A method in a computing system for providing a choice of actions for selection by a user, comprising:
 receiving text captured from a human-perceptible textual portion of a printed document using a handheld information capture device;   applying markup data associated with the received text in order to determine a plurality of actions to be performed; and   providing a menu of choices to the user that includes at least a portion of the determined plurality of actions.   
   
   
       24 . The method of  claim 23 , further comprising automatically performing one of more of the determined plurality of actions. 
   
   
       25 . A system that performs an action in response to a capture of data from a printed document, comprising:
 a hand-held device, the hand-held device comprising a data capture component that stores human-perceptible textual data captured from the printed document and a context component that determines context information that is current at the time of the data capture; and   an action component that receives the captured textual data and the determined context information and performs an action based on the received captured data and the received context information.   
   
   
       26 . One or more computer memories collectively containing an action map data structure comprising a plurality of entries, each entry comprising both (a) information identifying a portion of the text contained by each of one or more documents, and (b) markup data identifying one or more actions that are candidates to be performed in response to a user using a text capture device to capture human-perceptible text from a printed document among the identified portions of text.