WO2019243926A1

WO2019243926A1 - Digital document management system

Info

Publication number: WO2019243926A1
Application number: PCT/IB2019/054514
Authority: WO
Inventors: John Kam Yiu LO
Original assignee: Collatr Limited
Priority date: 2018-06-22
Filing date: 2019-05-31
Publication date: 2019-12-26
Also published as: GB202019953D0; CN112639762A; GB2589254A

Abstract

A method and system for managing digital documents. A plurality of digital documents are received in a specified order, each digital document aggregating at least two sequential pages and being received in a memory store by a processor of a computing device. At least one index is generated and stored in the memory store the index comprising separate entries corresponding to each digital document. The specified order of the digital documents and pages thereof are maintained upon modifying the aggregation of at-east some of the pages of one or more digital documents of the plurality of digital documents. Also, the original aggregation information of the pages of the digital documents is maintained upon modifying the specified order of the digital documents.

Description

DIGITAL DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

FIELD

The present disclosure relates to an improved digital document management system, particularly suitable for management of a plurality of separate electronic documents.

BACKGROUND

With the arrival of personal computers, documents that once had to be laboriously hand typed on manual typewriters could be produced rapidly, professionally and in a variety of file formats.

PDF (Portable Document Format) is one file format which has become an international open standard (ISO) for royalty free document transmission. PDF evolved with the objective of capturing documents from any application, for sending electronically anywhere in a form such that the user can view and print the document on any machine. PDF documents are thus intended to be independent of the application software, hardware and operating systems on which they have been created.

PDF documents are typically a combination of graphics (vector/raster/multimedia) and text elements which are combined according to a programming language specifying the layout; embedded fonts which travel with the document and a structured storage hierarchy for managing all of the information in the document.

Fundamentally, a PDF document is a container of individual page units aggregated in a specific sequence together to form a single document, and may include bookmarks for convenient navigation within that PDF document.

However, PDF documents are not particularly well suited to certain applications, such as in the legal profession, in the preparation of bundled documents for court submissions and the like.

In such environments, there is a need for the management of multiple documents, each with multiple pages; where each document (and thus the pages which make up the document) need to be presented in specific user specified order.

In some organisations, in view of the difficulties of managing multiple documents, recourse is had to traditional techniques of preparing document bundles, such as by printing and manually paginating documents.

Digital document management solutions have also been implemented. Typically, multiple documents (such as PDF documents) for a bundle of documents are managed digitally by naming each individual pdf document so as to obtain a particular sort order in a directory; or by merging /combining the individual PDF documents into a combined single PDF document.

Where multiple PDF files are combined to produce a single large PDF document, the original source PDF documents are no longer addressable as individual subsets of that large single PDF document. Instead, the single large PDF document is comprised of (a large number) of the usual individually addressable page units which make up a PDF file. Therefore, within the single large document it is difficult for a user to modify the document (e.g. to introduce a later discovered document) between previously separate source documents except on a page by page basis. The only navigability option available is through the use of chapter markers on the previously separate source documents.

Alternatively, if multiple PDF documents are maintained in a separate state in a specific directory, it is difficult to ensure the correct pagination across documents, order of documents (apart from limited sort options including alphabetical user specified file names or date of creation).

Problems arise in this environment, including where pagination has to be performed (either manually or applied electronically), particularly across multiple documents or in one single large PDF document.

Furthermore, there is limited flexibility to adapt to the situation where an additional document needs to be included- either by insertion into the large PDF document OR by appropriate file renaming and structuring in a separate multiple PDF structure. Both approaches have a significant likelihood of leading to inadvertent errors in page numbering, sequence or other issues in the document(s), particularly as such document management is often performed under significant time pressure by clerical personnel.

Accordingly, there exists a need to address at least some of the above problems and deficiencies or at least provide the public with a useful choice.

SUMMARY

Features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or can be learned by practice of the herein disclosed principles. The features and advantages of the disclosure can be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.

In accordance with a first aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided a method for managing digital documents; the method comprising: receiving in a memory store coupled with a processor of a computing device, a plurality of digital documents in a specified order, each digital document aggregating at least two sequential pages;

generating and storing at least one index comprising separate entries corresponding to each digital document in the specified order,

wherein despite modification to the aggregation of at least some of the pages of one or more digital documents of the plurality of digital documents;

the specified order of the digital documents; the original aggregation information of the pages of the digital documents and the corresponding index entries thereof are maintained.

Preferably, the digital documents are Portable Document format (PDF) files.

Optionally, modifying the specified order of the digital documents may initiate an update to the corresponding index entries thereof.

The aggregation of at least some of the pages within at least one digital document may be selected from the group comprising combining at least some of the pages from a first document with the pages of a second document and extracting at least some of the pages from a first digital document to create at least one or more new digital document(s).

Modifying of the aggregation of at least some of the pages within at least one digital document may be user specified. Optionally, the user specified modification to the aggregation of at least some of the pages of an existing document creates a new document comprising an aggregation of the selected pages and a corresponding index entry.

Optionally, the generating of the at least one index is a first index comprising a first plurality of entries corresponding to a first plurality of documents; and further comprising creating a second index comprising a second plurality of entries corresponding to a second plurality of documents; and inserting into at least one of the first and second index an entry and corresponding document from the other index.

Advantageously, the method may include exporting all documents in the index of documents as a combined PDF file up to a predetermined maximum number of pages. Optionally, the predetermined maximum value may be 250 pages. The page numbering of each page of each document in the plurality of documents having a corresponding entry in the index of documents may be automatically sequentially incremented.

Advantageously, the sequential increment to the page numbering is user specified, automatic or a combination thereof. A plurality of pagination marks may be independently affixed at a predetermined position on each page for each document of the plurality of documents wherein each of pagination marks are separately and independently incremented.

The automatically incremented page number of successive pages of the documents in the plurality of documents may be determined by the sequential order of the pages of the digital documents and the order said documents are received.

Advantageously the file names of each document in the plurality of documents determines the entries in the index of documents.

Optionally, there is also provided a computer implemented system for managing digital documents; the system comprising:

a non-transitory memory store coupled with a processor of a computing device for receiving a plurality of digital documents in a specified order, each digital document aggregating at least two sequential pages;

a processor configured for generating and storing in the non-volatile memory store at least one index comprising separate entries corresponding to each digital document added to the processor in the specified order,

wherein the processor is configured such that despite modification to the aggregation of at least some of the pages of one or more digital documents of the plurality of digital documents;

In a further aspect of the disclosure there is also provided a computer program product including a non-transitory storage medium containing:

instructions stored in the non-transitory storage medium executable by a processor of a computing device to receive into the non-transitory storage medium a plurality of digital documents in a specified order, each digital document aggregating at least two sequential pages;

and where instructions stored in the non-transitory storage medium are also executable by the processor for generating and storing at least one index comprising separate entries corresponding to each digital document in the specified order, wherein the instructions are configured such that despite modification to the aggregation of at least some of the pages of one or more digital documents of the plurality of digital documents; the specified order of the digital documents; the original aggregation information of the pages of the digital documents and the corresponding index entries thereof are maintained. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and other advantages and features of the disclosure can be obtained, a more particular description of the principles briefly described above will be rendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which are illustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawings depict only exemplary embodiments of the disclosure and are not therefore to be considered to be limiting of its scope, the principles herein are described and explained with additional specificity and detail through the use of the accompanying drawings.

Preferred embodiments of the present Disclosure will be explained in further detail below by way of examples and with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which a user friendly application and method is provided for managing multiple electronic documents.

The present disclosure provides an intuitive user friendly,

FIG 1 shows a schematic representation of an exemplary computing system on which aspects of the present disclosure may be performed.

FIGS 2A (i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations respectively of an embodiment of the present disclosure demonstrating how the pages from one document may be combined into another document.

FIGS 2B (i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations respectively of an embodiment of the present disclosure demonstrating how the pages from one document may be split into multiple documents.

FIGS 3A (i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations respectively of an embodiment of the present disclosure in which a plurality of digital documents are included in the application.

FIGS 3B i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations respectively depicts a of an embodiment of the present disclosure in which documents have been exported from an exemplary application according to an aspect of the present disclosure.

FIG 4 is a schematic representation of an aspect of the disclosure in which an index is generated from the documents. FIG 5A (i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations respectively of one exemplary way in which a user can interact with entries and documents by“copying and paste” between two instances of an exemplary application of the present disclosure.

FIG 5B (i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations of one exemplary way in which a user can interact with entries and documents by using“cut and paste” between two instances of an exemplary application of the present disclosure.

FIG 6A(i) and (ii) depict initial and modified schematic representations of the way in which an additional entry is included in an embodiment of the application according to the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Various embodiments of the disclosure are discussed in detail below. While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understood that this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled in the relevant art will recognize that other components and configurations may be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.

The disclosed technology addresses the need in the art for a user friendly, intuitive application for managing multiple digital documents where each digital document comprises containers of individual page units aggregated in a specific sequence together to form a single document.

By providing customisable document level grouping AND specific page level control on the aggregation, users are able to operate the method and software of the present disclosure to manage documents and the pages thereof more effectively.

The present disclosure is particularly suited to the legal environment particularly in view of the optional additional features of the present disclosure. In particular to facilitate preparation of electronic bundles, pages of legal documents may be consecutively numbered in an appropriate location, with this consecutive numbering maintained notwithstanding changes which are made to the order of the documents and/or to the pages comprising these documents by using the method and or software of the present disclosure.

Optionally the documents may be Portable Document Format (PDF) files, although other similar formats including text and/or graphical elements could be utilised without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

As would be appreciated by persons skilled in the art, the systems and methods of the present disclosure may be performed on apparatuses and/or systems which may be specially constructed for the desired purposes, or it may comprise a general purpose computing system selectively activated or configured by a program stored in the device. Such a program may be stored on a storage medium or stored on a portion of a memory device connected to such a computing system.

For example, referring now to FIG. 1 , there is illustrated a computing system 110 that may be utilized to implement one or more of the embodiments disclosed. It would be appreciated various general purpose systems may be used with programs in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct a more specialized apparatus to perform the desired method.

The computing system 110 in an exemplary embodiment may comprise a computing system suitable for executing software instructions to perform one or more of the processes described herein. System 110 may include a processor 112 coupled to a bus 114 and an electronic display device 116, also coupled to the bus 114.

Memory 118, coupled to the bus may comprise one or more devices any type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, CD-ROMs, magnetic-optical disks, read-only memories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMs), electrically programmable read-only memories (EPROMs), electrically erasable and programmable read only memories (EEPROMs), flash memory, magnetic or optical cards, or any other type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions, and capable of being coupled to a system bus for a computing device or other information handling system.

System 110 may further include input/output (I/O) interface 118, capable of transmitting and/or receiving information to the display 116, including from one or more types of input/output device, 122 (such as a pointing device or keyboard) which is processed by the processor 112 according to instructions stored in the memory 118.

Optionally the computer system 110 may be communicatively coupled to a network such as the internet via a communications interface 126 via wireless or wired means without limitation.

Representations subsequently depicted herein in Figs 2-6 may be displayed on the display 116 on a graphical user interface (GUI). A GUI may be configured to receive one or more inputs from computing system 110, such as by use of a input/output device 122. Additionally, the display device 116 may be capable of displaying a visual representation of one or more files and/or one or more electronic documents, and the visual representation may comprise a viewable document, as will be explained in more detail subsequently. It would be appreciated that as used herein digital documents may include content, such as digital images, audio, video, graphics or text, which may include formatting. These elements may be combined according to a programming language specifying the layout; embedded fonts which travel with the document and a structured storage hierarchy for managing all of the information in the document. For example, formatting may comprise the layout within the digital document, and may be consistent across the multiple pages of the document, such as a common header and/or footer on every page in the document. PDF (Portable Document Format) is an exemplary digital document which has become an international open standard (ISO) for royalty free document transmission. PDF evolved with the objective of capturing documents from any application, for sending electronically anywhere in a form such that the user can view and print the document on any machine. PDF documents are thus intended to be independent of the application software, hardware and operating systems on which they have been created. Fundamentally, a PDF document is a container of individual page units aggregated in a specific sequence together to form a single document, and may include bookmarks for convenient navigation within that PDF document.

Optionally, the software application described herein may utilise a number of pre-existing software libraries and/or frameworks in performing the methods and steps disclosed.

For example, the application may utilise a .NET framework or similar framework without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. Optionally the application software may be encoded in a C# language, although other languages may be used.

A .NET component such as Apitron PDF Rasterizer may be used to render, create, combine, split, edit PDF (specifically adding page numbers) . It would be appreciated that other similar PDF modification components could also be utilised without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

The user interface and embodiment depicted herein is exemplary only and may be created using packages, frameworks and approaches familiar to those skilled in the art. Advantageously, in the creation of the embodiment of the present disclosure as is discussed in more detail below.

A docking windows control AvalonDock for Windows presentation foundation (WPF) environment enables creation of customizable layouts using a full featured window docking system. Drag and drop functionality in the Windows Presentation environment (and control over such interactions) can be mediated by libraries such as Gongsolutions Drag and Drop as is known to persons skilled in the art. The presentation environment may utilise controls and styles such as Modern Ul to present the elements which comprise the user interface in a customisable format. Customisations of various controls may be facilitated by such software as WPFCustomMessageBox or similar, providing additional buttons and functionality to the native Message Box of Windows Software.

Separation of the model (where the data is extracted) from the actual view presented may be managed by a library such as MVVM light, in a variant of the model-view-controller pattern familiar to persons skilled in the art. This facilitates testing and development of the underlying data structure independent of the User Interface; and customisation of the look without significant modification to the underlying data.

Open XML SDK or other similar applications or libraries may be used to facilitate writing index information to Microsoft Word ® compatible file format from an XML data source.

Pdfium viewer may be used to render PDF documents on screen for .NET apps. iText Sharp PDF library allows the creation, adaption inspection and maintenance of documents in Portable Document Format (PDF), adding PDF functionality. Functionality used in the present application includes the generation of documents and reports based on data from an XML file or a database; addition of bookmarks, page numbers, watermarks, and other features to existing PDF documents; split or concatenate pages from existing PDF files. it would be appreciated that the underlying data structure in which exemplary files; information and index entries discussed below may be any data structure suitable for the purposes; including fundamental generalised data structures/containers such as arrays, linked lists, records, classes, graphs, binary trees etc. and variants thereof; and specialised versions thereof as implemented in the libraries of the relevant programming framework and language utilised and discussed above.

Referring now to FIGs 2A - FIGS 6, there is provided an exemplary schematic representations of an embodiment of an application screen according to the present disclosure in which the window 10 includes a left pane 12 and right pane 14.

As depicted, the left pane includes a number of index entries 20, 22, 24 which link to the first page of corresponding documents 30, 32, 34.

Irrespective of the order of the index entries, the linkage between the index entry and the document (or more specifically the page of the document to which the index entry is associated) is maintained during subsequent operations. In an embodiment it is possible for the index entry to be automatically generated based upon the file name of the document to which it corresponds. It would be appreciated that such user may or may not be user editable depending on specific controls which may be set in the application. The three documents 30,32,34 are depicted as each having two pages (30a, 30b, 32a, 32b, 34a, 34b) in the right pane 14; and have been arranged in the order depicted. However, it would be appreciated that any number of pages could be included in any of these documents; and these documents could be arranged in any particular order without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. The dotted lines 31 indicate the groupings of the pages into documents for clarity purposes only; and may/may not be present on the actual application depending on need.

In the arrangement depicted in FIG 2A (i), the user desires to combine the pages of documents corresponding to index entries 20,22 (i.e. pages 30a, 30b, 32a) into a new index entry 20a and document 30b); as shown in the left pane 12 of the arrangement depicted in the FIG 2A (ii).

Accordingly, the user selects either the entries or pages it wishes to combine (either by mouse, cursor or shortcut key or any combination thereof) and an updated association of pages (together with index entry if applicable) is generated.

This is reflected in FIG. 2A (ii) which shows the pages 32a, 32b (previously document B) have now been combined together with pages 30a, 30b of Document A +B1 ; which remains accessible via link 20a. It would be appreciated that a partial combination of some of the pages of the documents could also be effected (not shown).

In the embodiment depicted, the order of the documents remains the same, and so too the pages in those documents, however there are changes to which pages are associated with which specified documents. It would also be appreciated that the page order of an individual document could be changed; and then the subsequent resulting document could be further merged with another document as disclosed in the earlier example without departing from the present disclosure.

Analogously, the reverse operation is also possible as depicted in FIG. 2B (i) and (ii).

As shown in FIG. 2B(i) schematic representation, the index entry 20 exists for Document“A” ; which comprises pages 30a and 30b. On activation of the“Split” command (e.g. by activating a predetermined shortcut, or menu command), the user may manually position a separator (represented by a line 40) between the pages using the cursor, mouse or other keys to“split” Document A between page 30a and 30b. Execution of the split command can create a new Document comprising page 30b; and corresponding index entry 23; as depicted in schematic representation FIG. 2B(ii). Corresponding updates to the data structures used would be performed in the memory under the control of the processor. Referring to FIG 3A (i) and (ii) there is depicted an exemplary schematic representation of one way in which the index entries 20,22,24 may be generated; showing the initial and final states respectively.

As shown, the index entries are generated in the order in which the documents are dragged into the (initially empty) right pane of the application; representing the inclusion by the software of the documents in a memory store under operation of the processor. It would be appreciated that this order could readily be changed by the user, for example, by sorting alphabetically, dragging and dropping or otherwise modifying with user operable devices such as a mouse or track pad either the index entry in the left pane or the corresponding document in the right pane in a conventional manner. If the order of the documents is changed in this way, then the order of the index entries will also correspondingly be changed.

Advantageously, as discussed in further detail below, the index entries may be used to navigate to the first page of the documents, as a quick“handle” to rearrange the order of the document (and pages which comprise the document) and as the basis for a table of contents.

Referring now to FIG. 3B (i) and (ii) documents in the application could be exported into a single document complying with the well-known Portable Document Format (PDF). Advantageously, the index entries (representative of the various documents) (20,22,24) could be converted into chapters or“bookmarks” in this format (50,52,54). Optionally, consecutive page numbers could be presented at various locations on the page, as depicted by 60,62,64 according to the specifics of the particular application for which the document is required.

Referring now to FIG. 4, there is depicted a further optional feature of the present disclosure in which the index entries 10,12,14 can be exported from the application into a user editable text processing program such as Microsoft ® Word or similar. Advantageously, this may be performed by exporting information from the data structure into text format for inclusion in a word processing application.

Referring to FIG. 5A (i) and (ii), there is depicted a schematic representation of copying index entries and corresponding documents between two instances 10a, 10b of the application in initial and subsequent states respectively.

Upon user selection of either the entries 20,22 or corresponding pages of documents 30a, 30b, 32a, 32b, and activation of the appropriate trigger; these pages can be copied between the two instances of the application using the known“drag and drop” functionality. Accordingly, the initially empty instance of the application 10b is readily populated with corresponding index entries (and associated pages arranged into documents) in the specified order as depicted in lower right hand instance shown (10b). The original entries in the first instance 10a are left behind; and retained in that instance for future modification/export.

By contrast, referring to FIG. 5B (i) and (ii), there is depicted an analogous“move” functionality, whereby the pages in the selected documents (and documents and corresponding index entries) are moved from the first instance of the application 10(a) into the second (initially empty) instance 10b.

As shown in the remaining instances after the operation has taken place in FIG. 5B(ii); the pages of the documents A& B (30a, 30b, 32a, 32b) and the corresponding index entries (20,22) are no longer present in the first instance 10a but are present in the second instance 10b. The only remaining document (“C”) having pages 34a, 34b and corresponding index entry 24 remains in the first instance 10a of the application.

Advantageously, the technology of the present disclosure may also provide the capacity to have automatically sequentially incremented page numbers, spanning across all pages of the documents in the order in which the documents are arranged. Optionally, this may be configured to automatically updated when the changes are made to the order of the documents (and the corresponding index entry); and also when the order of the pages within a specified document is modified.

In an aspect of the present disclosure, the automatically incremented page numbering is made possible by separately incrementing the page numbers in an exemplary data structure (such as an array, stack or other data structure), storing sequential pages of the final order of the pages (dictated by the final order of documents and user operations) into another data structure (such as another array, stack or appropriate data structure); and at the same time maintaining the association of the pages with a document (using further data structures). In this way, the page number information is separate from the pages and the documents, and can be automatically updated (or manually updated according to user requirements).

Optionally, the page numbering may be configured to increment up to a maximum number of pages, which may be according to specific usage environment requirements. Advantageously, in a legal environment this maximum may be set to 250 pages or some other value as specified in court rules from time to time.

In an embodiment of the disclosure, the user may specify the format, page location, starting value of the page numbers and type of ordinal numbers which are sequentially incremented. In still a further aspect, multiple page number markings may be independently affixed to separate locations on the page, and independently incremented. Advantageously, where the page numbering is automatically incremented, the order of the documents and the order of the page which comprise the documents determines the (incremented) page number which is applied.

Referring now to FIG. 6A(i), there is provided an optional aspect of the present disclosure.

A user may need to include an additional document 20b in between other documents as shown. This may be because the subsequent document has been located at a later stage than all of the other documents which may have already been submitted (e.g. into court). The additional document may need to have a special page numbering applied, which makes it clear that it supplements the originally provided document. Hence, rather than including the document and corresponding index entries as shown in the typical arrangement in the FIG. 6A(i), the document may be imported as discussed above, but having special numbering manually applied. It may then be selected and marked and the pages numbered to reflect that it is an additional or supplementary document to the original as shown schematically in FIG. 6A(ii). Such information may be stored in the underlying data structure in a plurality of ways as would be appreciated by a person skilled in the art, including by linked references to further and additional separate data structures.

The above embodiments are described by way of example only. Many variations are possible without departing from the scope of the disclosure as defined in the appended claims.

The present disclosure provides a convenient way of storing and arranging digital documents, and is particularly suited to the legal environment, where it is necessary to modify digital document“bundles” and include pagination.

Advantageously, the technology of the present disclosure provides a digital way in which users can interact with pages of documents, or documents themselves which are grouped within bundles of documents.

The present disclosure provides a significant improvement to the physical way in which users have to interact with physical documents, and with digital documents“bundled” in a directory.

With physical documents located in physical bundles, users were able to interact with documents contained in multiple folders or lever arch files (in a grouping or bundles of documents). It is possible with physical documents, although somewhat cumbersome, to combine documents (e.g. by restapling), add documents, divide documents and move documents between each folder/file. This capacity has been lacking on the whole with digital documents.

However, the present disclosure teaches a convenient way in which re-organisation of documents in bundles of documents can be performed digitally. It provides a significant advance in working with digital documents, with the technology of the present disclosure facilitating numerous and various operations, including the addition of documents to folders/files, division of documents, and reorganisation of pages of documents and document locations between various folders/files. In addition, in a further aspect, pagination aspects of the presnet disclosure may then be applied to the reorganised files holistically and conveniently, incrementing successive pages across the bundle of documents using the unique addressability of individual pages of the documents that the approach of the present disclosure provides.

Further, the present disclosure teaches a convenient way of creating new documents from groupings of pages of old documents. Copying and pasting pages of documents in new locations within documents, and bundles of documents is also facilitated by the technology of the present disclosure. As would be appreciated, and as disclosed above, the documents in digital format may be rendered as physical documents (including optional pagination) by printing as disclosed above.

For clarity of explanation, in some instances the present technology may be presented as including individual functional blocks including functional blocks comprising devices, device components, steps or routines in a method embodied in software, or combinations of hardware and software.

Methods according to the above-described examples can be implemented using computer- executable instructions that are stored or otherwise available from computer readable media. Such instructions can comprise, for example, instructions and data which cause or otherwise configure a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function or group of functions. Portions of computer resources used can be accessible over a network. The computer executable instructions may be, for example, binaries, intermediate format instructions such as assembly language, firmware, or source code. Examples of computer-readable media that may be used to store instructions, information used, and/or information created during methods according to described examples include magnetic or optical disks, flash memory, Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices provided with non-volatile memory, networked storage devices, and so on.

Devices implementing methods according to these disclosures can comprise hardware, firmware and/or software, and can take any of a variety of form factors. Typical examples of such form factors include laptops smart phones small form factor personal computers, personal digital assistants, and so on. Functionality described herein also can be embodied in peripherals or add-in cards. Such functionality can also be implemented on a circuit board among different chips or different processes executing in a single device, by way of further example.

The instructions, media for conveying such instructions, computing resources for executing them, and other structures for supporting such computing resources are means for providing the functions described in these disclosures.

Although a variety of examples and other information was used to explain aspects within the scope of the appended claims, no limitation of the claims should be implied based on particular features or arrangements in such examples, as one of ordinary skill would be able to use these examples to derive a wide variety of implementations. Further and although some subject matter may have been described in language specific to examples of structural features and/or method steps, it is to be understood that the subject mater defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to these described features or acts. For example, such functionality can be distributed differently or performed in components other than those identified herein. Rather, the described features and steps are disclosed as examples of components of systems and methods within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims

1 . A method for managing digital documents; the method comprising:

receiving in a memory store coupled with a processor of a computing device, a plurality of digital documents in a specified order, each digital document aggregating at least two sequential pages;

generating and storing at least one index comprising separate entries corresponding to each digital document in the specified order;

wherein despite modification to the aggregation of at least some of the pages of one or more digital documents of the plurality of digital documents, the specified order of the digital documents, the original aggregation information of the pages of the digital documents and the corresponding index entries thereof are maintained.

2. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to claim 1 wherein the digital documents are electronic documents in portable document format (PDF).

3. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to claim 1 wherein modifying the specified order of the digital documents initiates an update to the corresponding index entries thereof.

4. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the modifying the aggregation of at least some of the pages within at least one digital document is selected from the group comprising combining at least some of the pages from a first document with the pages of a second document and extracting at least some of the pages from a first digital document to create at least one or more new digital document(s).

5. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the modifying of the aggregation of at least some of the pages within at least one digital document is user specified.

6. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to claim 5, wherein the user specified modification to the aggregation of at least some of the pages of an existing document creates a new document comprising an aggregation of the selected pages and a corresponding index entry.

7. The method for managing digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the at least one index is a first index comprising a first plurality of entries corresponding to a first plurality of documents;

and wherein the method further comprises creating a second index comprising a second plurality of entries corresponding to a second plurality of documents; and

inserting into at least one of the first and second index an entry and corresponding document from the other index.

8. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims comprising exporting all documents in the index of documents as a combined PDF file up to a predetermined maximum number of pages.

9. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to claim 7 wherein the predetermined maximum value is 250 pages.

10. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the page numbering of each page of each document in the plurality of documents having a corresponding entry in the index of documents is automatically sequentially incremented.

11 . The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to claim 8 wherein the sequential increment to the page numbering is user specified, automatically generated or a combination thereof.

12. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims wherein a plurality of pagination marks are independently affixed at a predetermined position on each page for each document of the plurality of documents and wherein each of pagination marks are separately and independently incremented.

13. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the automatically incremented page number of successive pages of the documents in the plurality of documents are determined by the sequential order of the pages of the digital documents and the order said documents are received.

14. The method for managing a plurality of digital documents according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the file names of each document in the plurality of documents determines the entries in the index of documents.