Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for generating a halftoned image from an image compressed by a domain transformation yielding coefficients for resulting domain components and by a coding operation by which these coefficients are coded. The method includes performing a decoding operation by which decoded coefficients (yp) are obtained and performing a thresholding operation by which a bitmap is obtained, wherein only certain decoded coefficients (yp) verifying a selection criterion are selected and taken into account in the thresholding operation.

Abstract: A method of recognizing and indexing documents, using a scanner connected to a computer, the method including scanning the documents, then using a pointing device or member of the computer to designate an arbitrary point P in at least one box of the documents, and finally recognizing by OCR the characters in the box so as to store them in a first database connected to the computer to enable documents scanned in this way to be indexed. The designation step comprises a step of searching for and identifying the box of the document containing the point P designated by the user.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for generating a halftoned image from an image compressed by a domain transformation yielding coefficients for resulting domain components and by a coding operation by which these coefficients are coded. The method includes performing a decoding operation by which decoded coefficients (yp) are obtained and performing a thresholding operation by which a bitmap is obtained, wherein only certain decoded coefficients (yp) verifying a selection criterion are selected and taken into account in the thresholding operation.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for printing rasterized images while economizing printing resources, on the basis of input image data corresponding to a predetermined original format, are provided. The method includes reducing the input image relative to the original format; on the basis of the reduced-scale image, forming a raster of image points each defining either a point to be printed or a blank point of the rasterized image; enlarging the raster of points to return to the original format by inserting blank image points in the reduced raster by a predetermined filling procedure; and printing the image on the basis of the point raster enlarged to the original format.

Abstract: A method of recognizing and indexing documents, using a scanner connected to a computer, the method including scanning the documents, then using a pointing device or member of the computer to designate an arbitrary point P in at least one box of the documents, and finally recognizing by OCR the characters in said box so as to store them in a first database connected to the computer to enable documents scanned in this way to be indexed. The designation step comprises a step of searching for and identifying the box of the document containing said point P designated by the user.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for printing images wherein printing of individual dots is controlled by employing binary masks. M different complementary binary masks each having the form of a matrix of points occupying N rows and P columns are defined in such a manner that each of the N.times.P elements of a mask has a first binary value or a second binary value, each point of the matrix corresponding to an element having the first binary value in one mask and in one mask only. Each portion of the image is printed in M passes of the print head while using the M different masks in succession, such that during each pass, the print head scans a strip of the print medium, the same mask being used repetitively for each group of P columns and N rows, an image dot being released for printing during a pass when the corresponding element of the mask has the first binary value.