document processing

Document processing encompasses all activities involved in capturing, editing, preparing, managing, transporting and storing documents with an electronic system.

A distinction is made between techniques and systems that only recognize the appearance of the documents, image processing, and systems that also include the logical elements and content in the processing.

Each individual activity, such as document processing,in turn includes many aspects such as the layout of the documents with the structuring of the individual files or the typography for the headlines and the font selection. Document preparation, for example, includes all the functions that support the output of the documents on a printer or imagesetter, and document management includes the filing systems for storing and retrieving the documents.