Cost Effective PDF to EPUB conversion

Käesolevas bakalaureusetöös kirjeldatakse rakendust, mille abil on võimalik kuluefektiivsel viisil konverteerida PDF dokumente EPUB 2.0.1 formaati. Töös on kirjeldatud tehnilisi lahendusi, mille abil on võimalik säilitada dokumendi algne struktuur ja luua sellest müügikõlblik e-raamat. Lisaks kirjeldatakse rakenduse loomisega seotud tehnoloogiaid ning võrreldakse loodud rakendust olemasolevate lahendustega.This thesis describes an application that can convert PDF to EPUB in a cost-effective way. The technical solutions to retain the original structure of the input PDF and create a valid EPUB 2.0.1 file are described. In addition, the thesis gives an overview of the technolo-gies used to create the application and includes the comparison of the application created under this thesis with some preexisting solutions

Pattern-based segmentation of digital documents: model and implementation

This thesis proposes a new document model, according to which any document can be segmented in some independent components and transformed in a pattern-based projection, that only uses a very small set of objects and composition rules. The point is that such a normalized document expresses the same fundamental information of the original one, in a simple, clear and unambiguous way. The central part of my work consists of discussing that model, investigating how a digital document can be segmented, and how a segmented version can be used to implement advanced tools of conversion. I present seven patterns which are versatile enough to capture the most relevant documents’ structures, and whose minimality and rigour make that implementation possible. The abstract model is then instantiated into an actual markup language, called IML. IML is a general and extensible language, which basically adopts an XHTML syntax, able to capture a posteriori the only content of a digital document. It is compared with other languages and proposals, in order to clarify its role and objectives. Finally, I present some systems built upon these ideas. These applications are evaluated in terms of users’ advantages, workflow improvements and impact over the overall quality of the output. In particular, they cover heterogeneous content management processes: from web editing to collaboration (IsaWiki and WikiFactory), from e-learning (IsaLearning) to professional printing (IsaPress)

The impact of digital technologies on reading, readers and the book

This thesis investigates the developments in contemporary reading that accompany the adoption of new reading technologies, principally the eReader and eBook. Using methods of interview and participant observation, the opinions and values of communities of readers have been collected and analysed to explore how those communities describe the experiences of reading and of books. This research focuses on four case studies: people who are members of reading groups, who have a reading habit which includes at least one book per week, and who describe reading as their main medium for leisure purposes. These are people who express a love of reading, and are comfortable with discussing their own reading experiences. The second case is people who have adopted an eReader for leisure reading. This group share a reading pattern that matches that of the first case in frequency. The third case study investigates Bookcrossing.com, a social network site which promotes a practice of sharing books as gifts, by leaving them in public spaces to form the token for a treasure hunt game, organised through the website. A community has formed around the website Bookcrossing.com, which serves as a record of both the treasure hunt game and the reading experiences for it users. Finally, using the work of Jane Fox and Irene Mensah, the thesis explores the use of Portable Document Format copies of books, where access to an original physical book is limited or unavailable. Material in each case is reviewed and interpreted with respect to the experiential, socio-cultural, and material nature of the data collected. Having established an understanding of the experiences of the reader, based on the interview material collected from the reading group participants, the subsequent case studies offer the opportunity to understand the experiences of reading with, and the use of, the replacement transitional objects, that are in the process of inculcation in literary society. This thesis uses the concept of the assemblage, adopted from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as a model for the book as an object, which simultaneously denotes significance for the experience of reading, of the text it contains as well as wide significance for knowledge, wisdom and the transcendent sign. The contemporary situation is one of transition, from the singular book as an object of reading, that holds a single text or aggregation of texts towards the ‘book’ as an electronic device. This new device for reading has the potential to deliver any text, where format, digital rights and storage conditions are met, and where the text itself holds the potential to connect out to any and all other texts, provided in a digital material form. The research method adopts the concepts of Ludic approach to understanding reading developed by Wolfgang Iser, deconstruction of the nature of language and discourse as developed by Jacques Derrida, and utilising the concepts of Theory of Mind and Metarepresentation elaborated by Lisa Zunshine. The experiences of reading captured in each case study are compared and exposed to the impact of technological developments changing both readers and books

Integrated packaging solutions and hotplates for a miniature atomic clock and other microsystems

This thesis aimed at developing innovative packaging solutions for a miniature atomic clock and other microsystems in the cm-scale, i.e. somewhat larger than what is practical for full "chip-scale" device-package integration using clean-room technologies for fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Besides well-defined and robust mechanical attachment, such packaging solutions must provide reliable electrical interconnection with the other system components, and, if needed, additional functions such as local temperature control, insulation from electrical magnetic or temperature perturbations, chemical separation (hermeticity). In order to accomplish this objective, different packaging technologies and modules were developed, fabricated and characterized in the frame of this thesis, with particular emphasis on the packaging of a miniature double-resonance (DR) rubidium atomic clock, which is an ideal demonstration platform given the associated large variety of requirements. First, the possibility of encapsulating the reactive Rb metal in ceramic / glass substrates using soldering was explored, with the aim to achieve simple and reliable fabrication of miniature atomic clock elements such as the reference cell and the Rb lamp. After a thorough literature review investigation of the metallurgical interactions between rubidium and materials used in packaging such as solder (Sn, Pb, Bi..) and thick-film metallizations metals (Ag, Pd, Au, 2 Pt...), an innovative design for a Rb reference cell (dimensions 10 × 12 mm ) is presented. The cell is based on a multifunctional low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) spacer, closed by two glass windows allowing light transmission and acting as lids. Bonding is achieved by low-temperature soldering, avoiding exposing Rb to high temperatures. The use of LTCC as the main substrate material for Rb vapor cells in principle allows further integration of necessary functions for the Rb lamp and reference cell, such as temperature regulation, excitation / microwave resonator electrodes, impedance-matching passive components (lamp), and coil for static magnetic field generation (reference). In this work, to test the hermeticity of the bonding, a pressure sensor was integrated into the cell by replacing one of the glass windows by a membrane comprising an integrated piezoresistive Wheatstone bridge. In this frame, a new lamination technique for LTCC is proposed. The technique consists in applying a hot-melt adhesive on top of the LTCC green tape, and allows good bonding of the tapes even at low lamination pressure. This technique is particularly attractive for the lamination of LTCC microfluidic devices or membrane pressure sensors, because the low pressure applied during lamination does not affect the shape of the channels in a microfluidic device, or the membrane of the sensor. The resulting cells are shown to be hermetic, and a Rb response could be measured by the project partners. However, heating resulted in loss of this response, indicating Rb depletion by undesired reactions between Rb and the sealing metals or contaminants. This result is somewhat in line with studies made in parallel with the present work on low-temperature indium thermocompression bonding. Therefore, although the results are promising, further optimisation of metallizations, solders and package design is required. An important generic function that may be integrated into LTCC is temperature control. In this frame, a multifunctional LTCC hotplate was designed, fabricated and studied. This device allows controlling the temperature of any object in the cm-scale, such as the abovementioned Rb vapor cells (reference or lamp) and other temperature-sensitive elements used in miniature atomic clocks such as lasers and impedance-matching passive components. Full thermal analysis, mathematical calculations, finite-element simulations and laboratory experiments were performed. The excellent structurability and modest thermal conductivity of LTCC make it much better suited than standard alumina for integrated hotplates, resulting in conduction losses in the LTCC structure being small compared to surface losses by conduction and convection. It is therefore concluded that insulation and/or vacuum packaging techniques are necessary to achieve optimized low-power operation. Although we have seen that LTCC is an excellent integrated packaging platform, there are some limitations for carrying relatively massive components such as the DR atomic clock resonator cavity structure, which in general is a solid metal part. Therefore, an alternative hotplate technology platform, was developed, based on the combination of standard fiberglass-reinforced organic-matrix printed-circuit board (PCB), combined with thick-film alumina heaters. The PCB acts as high-strength, low-cost and readily available mechanical carrier, electrical interconnect and thermal insulator, and the thick-film heaters provide local temperature regulation, with the high thermal conductivity of alumina ensuring good local temperature uniformity. Therefore, such a hybrid PCB-Al2O3 platform constitutes an attractive alternative to LTCC hotplates for benign operating conditions. In conclusion, this work introduced several innovative packaging solutions and techniques, which were successfully applied to various dedicated modules carrying the elements of miniature atomic clocks. Beyond this application, these developments allow us to envision efficient packaging of a wide variety of new miniature devices. Also, new areas for further investigations are suggested, such as long-term metallurgical interactions of alkali metals with solders, hermeticity, optimization of temperature distribution and thermal insulation techniques, as well as reliability at high-temperatures and under severe thermal cycling.This thesis aimed at developing innovative packaging solutions for a miniature atomic clock and other microsystems in the cm-scale, i.e. somewhat larger than what is practical for full "chip-scale" device-package integration using clean-room technologies for fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Besides well-defined and robust mechanical attachment, such packaging solutions must provide reliable electrical interconnection with the other system components, and, if needed, additional functions such as local temperature control, insulation from electrical magnetic or temperature perturbations, chemical separation (hermeticity). In order to accomplish this objective, different packaging technologies and modules were developed, fabricated and characterized in the frame of this thesis, with particular emphasis on the packaging of a miniature double-resonance (DR) rubidium atomic clock, which is an ideal demonstration platform given the associated large variety of requirements. First, the possibility of encapsulating the reactive Rb metal in ceramic / glass substrates using soldering was explored, with the aim to achieve simple and reliable fabrication of miniature atomic clock elements such as the reference cell and the Rb lamp. After a thorough literature review investigation of the metallurgical interactions between rubidium and materials used in packaging such as solder (Sn, Pb, Bi..) and thick-film metallizations metals (Ag, Pd, Au, 2 Pt...), an innovative design for a Rb reference cell (dimensions 10 × 12 mm ) is presented. The cell is based on a multifunctional low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) spacer, closed by two glass windows allowing light transmission and acting as lids. Bonding is achieved by low-temperature soldering, avoiding exposing Rb to high temperatures. The use of LTCC as the main substrate material for Rb vapor cells in principle allows further integration of necessary functions for the Rb lamp and reference cell, such as temperature regulation, excitation / microwave resonator electrodes, impedance-matching passive components (lamp), and coil for static magnetic field generation (reference). In this work, to test the hermeticity of the bonding, a pressure sensor was integrated into the cell by replacing one of the glass windows by a membrane comprising an integrated piezoresistive Wheatstone bridge. In this frame, a new lamination technique for LTCC is proposed. The technique consists in applying a hot-melt adhesive on top of the LTCC green tape, and allows good bonding of the tapes even at low lamination pressure. This technique is particularly attractive for the lamination of LTCC microfluidic devices or membrane pressure sensors, because the low pressure applied during lamination does not affect the shape of the channels in a microfluidic device, or the membrane of the sensor. The resulting cells are shown to be hermetic, and a Rb response could be measured by the project partners. However, heating resulted in loss of this response, indicating Rb depletion by undesired reactions between Rb and the sealing metals or contaminants. This result is somewhat in line with studies made in parallel with the present work on low-temperature indium thermocompression bonding. Therefore, although the results are promising, further optimisation of metallizations, solders and package design is required. An important generic function that may be integrated into LTCC is temperature control. In this frame, a multifunctional LTCC hotplate was designed, fabricated and studied. This device allows controlling the temperature of any object in the cm-scale, such as the abovementioned Rb vapor cells (reference or lamp) and other temperature-sensitive elements used in miniature atomic clocks such as lasers and impedance-matching passive components. Full thermal analysis, mathematical calculations, finite-element simulations and laboratory experiments were performed. The excellent structurability and modest thermal conductivity of LTCC make it much better suited than standard alumina for integrated hotplates, resulting in conduction losses in the LTCC structure being small compared to surface losses by conduction and convection. It is therefore concluded that insulation and/or vacuum packaging techniques are necessary to achieve optimized low-power operation. Although we have seen that LTCC is an excellent integrated packaging platform, there are some limitations for carrying relatively massive components such as the DR atomic clock resonator cavity structure, which in general is a solid metal part. Therefore, an alternative hotplate technology platform, was developed, based on the combination of standard fiberglass-reinforced organic-matrix printed-circuit board (PCB), combined with thick-film alumina heaters. The PCB acts as high-strength, low-cost and readily available mechanical carrier, electrical interconnect and thermal insulator, and the thick-film heaters provide local temperature regulation, with the high thermal conductivity of alumina ensuring good local temperature uniformity. Therefore, such a hybrid PCB-Al2O3 platform constitutes an attractive alternative to LTCC hotplates for benign operating conditions. In conclusion, this work introduced several innovative packaging solutions and techniques, which were successfully applied to various dedicated modules carrying the elements of miniature atomic clocks. Beyond this application, these developments allow us to envision efficient packaging of a wide variety of new miniature devices. Also, new areas for further investigations are suggested, such as long-term metallurgical interactions of alkali metals with solders, hermeticity, optimization of temperature distribution and thermal insulation techniques, as well as reliability at high-temperatures and under severe thermal cycling

Video interaction using pen-based technology

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em InformáticaVideo can be considered one of the most complete and complex media and its manipulating is still a difficult and tedious task. This research applies pen-based technology to video manipulation, with the goal to improve this interaction. Even though the human familiarity with pen-based devices, how they can be used on video interaction, in order to improve it, making it more natural and at the same time fostering the user’s creativity is an open question. Two types of interaction with video were considered in this work: video annotation and video editing. Each interaction type allows the study of one of the interaction modes of using pen-based technology: indirectly, through digital ink, or directly, trough pen gestures or pressure. This research contributes with two approaches for pen-based video interaction: pen-based video annotations and video as ink. The first uses pen-based annotations combined with motion tracking algorithms, in order to augment video content with sketches or handwritten notes. It aims to study how pen-based technology can be used to annotate a moving objects and how to maintain the association between a pen-based annotations and the annotated moving object The second concept replaces digital ink by video content, studding how pen gestures and pressure can be used on video editing and what kind of changes are needed in the interface, in order to provide a more familiar and creative interaction in this usage context.This work was partially funded by the UTAustin-Portugal, Digital Media, Program (Ph.D. grant: SFRH/BD/42662/2007 - FCT/MCTES); by the HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative 2006; by the project "TKB - A Transmedia Knowledge Base for contemporary dance" (PTDC/EAT/AVP/098220/2008 funded by FCT/MCTES); and by CITI/DI/FCT/UNL (PEst-OE/EEI/UI0527/2011

MIDAS: Multi-device Integrated Dynamic Activity Spaces

Mobile phones, tablet computers, laptops, desktops, and large screen displays are increasingly available to individuals for information access, often simultaneously. Dominant content access protocols, such as HTTP/1.1, do not take advantage of this device multiplicity and support information access from single devices only. Changing devices means restarting an information session. Using devices in conjunction with each other poses several challenges, which include the presentation of content on devices with diverse form factors and propagation of the content changes across these devices. In this dissertation, I report on the design and implementation of MIDAS - architecture and a prototype system for multi-device presentations. I propose a framework, called 12C, for characterizing multi-device systems and evaluate MIDAS within this framework. MIDAS is designed as a middleware that can work with multiple client-server architectures, such as the Web and context-aware Trellis, a non-Web hypertext system. It presents information content simultaneously on devices with diverse characteristics without requiring sensor-enhanced environments. The system adapts content elements for optimal presentation on the target device while also striving to retain fidelity with the original form from a human perceptual perspective. MIDAS reconfigures its presentation in response to user actions, availability of devices, and environmental context, such as a user's location or the time of day. I conducted a pilot study that explored human perception of similarity when image attributes such as size and color depth are modified in the process of presenting images on different devices. The results indicated that users tend to prefer scaling of images to color-depth reduction but gray scaling of images is preferable to either modification. Not all images scale equally gracefully; those dominated by natural elements or manmade structures scale exceptionally well. Images that depict recognizable human faces or textual elements should be scaled only to an extent that these features retain their integrity. Attributes of the 12C framework describe aspects of multi-device systems that include infrastructure, presentation, interaction, interface, and security. Based on these criteria, MIDAS is a flexible infrastructure, which lends itself to several content distribution and interaction strategies by separating client- and server-side configuration

Technology 2003: The Fourth National Technology Transfer Conference and Exposition, volume 2

Proceedings from symposia of the Technology 2003 Conference and Exposition, Dec. 7-9, 1993, Anaheim, CA, are presented. Volume 2 features papers on artificial intelligence, CAD&E, computer hardware, computer software, information management, photonics, robotics, test and measurement, video and imaging, and virtual reality/simulation

Acquisition de liens sémantiques à partir d'éléments de mise en forme des textes: exploitation des structures énumératives

The past decade witnessed significant advances in the field of relation extraction from text, facilitating the building of lexical or semantic resources. However, the methods proposed so far (supervised learning, kernel methods, distant supervision, etc.) don't fully exploit the texts: they are usually applied at the sentential level and they don't take into account the layout and the formatting of texts.In such a context, this thesis aims at expanding those methods and makes them layout-aware for extracting relations expressed beyond sentence boundaries. For this purpose, we rely on the semantics conveyed by typographical (bullets, emphasis, etc.) and dispositional (visual indentations, carriage returns, etc.) features. Those features often substitute purely discursive formulations. In particular, the study reported here is dealing with the relations carried by the vertical enumerative structures. Although they display discontinuities between their various components, the enumerative structures can be dealt as a whole at the semantic level. They form textual structures prone to hierarchical relations.This study was divided into two parts. (i) The first part describes a model representing the hierarchical structure of documents. This model is falling within the theoretical framework representing the textual architecture: an abstraction of the layout and the formatting, as well as a strong connection with the rhetorical structure are achieved. However, our model focuses primarily on the efficiency of the analysis process rather than on the expressiveness of the representation. A bottom-up method intended for building automatically this model is presented and evaluated on a corpus of PDF documents.(ii) The second part aims at integrating this model into the process of relation extraction. In particular, we focused on vertical enumerative structures. A multidimensional typology intended for characterizing those structures was established and used into an annotation task. Thanks to corpus-based observations, we proposed a two-step method, by supervised learning, for qualifying the nature of the relation and identifying its arguments. The evaluation of our method showed that exploiting the formatting and the layout of documents, in combination with standard lexico-syntactic features, improves those two tasks.Ces dernières années de nombreux progrès ont été faits dans le domaine de l'extraction de relations à partir de textes, facilitant ainsi la construction de ressources lexicales ou sémantiques. Cependant, les méthodes proposées (apprentissage supervisé, méthodes à noyaux, apprentissage distant, etc.) n’exploitent pas tout le potentiel des textes : elles ont généralement été appliquées à un niveau phrastique, sans tenir compte des éléments de mise en forme.Dans ce contexte, l'objectif de cette thèse est d'adapter ces méthodes à l'extraction de relations exprimées au-delà des frontières de la phrase. Pour cela, nous nous appuyons sur la sémantique véhiculée par les indices typographiques (puces, emphases, etc.) et dispositionnels (indentations visuelles, retours à la ligne, etc.), qui complètent des formulations strictement discursives. En particulier, nous étudions les structures énumératives verticales qui, bien qu'affichant des discontinuités entre leurs différents composants, présentent un tout sur le plan sémantique. Ces structures textuelles sont souvent révélatrices de relations hiérarchiques. Notre travail est divisé en deux parties. (i) La première partie décrit un modèle pour représenter la structure hiérarchique des documents. Ce modèle se positionne dans la suite des modèles théoriques proposés pour rendre compte de l'architecture textuelle : une abstraction de la mise en forme et une connexion forte avec la structure rhétorique sont faites. Toutefois, notre modèle se démarque par une perspective d'analyse automatique des textes. Nous en proposons une implémentation efficace sous la forme d'une méthode ascendante et nous l'évaluons sur un corpus de documents PDF. (ii) La seconde partie porte sur l'intégration de ce modèle dans le processus d'extraction de relations. Plus particulièrement, nous nous sommes focalisés sur les structures énumératives verticales. Un corpus a été annoté selon une typologie multi-dimensionnelle permettant de caractériser et de cibler les structures énumératives verticales porteuses de relations utiles à la création de ressources. Les observations faites en corpus ont conduit à procéder en deux étapes par apprentissage supervisé pour analyser ces structures : qualifier la relation puis en extraire les arguments. L'évaluation de cette méthode montre que l'exploitation de la mise en forme, combinée à un faisceau d'indices lexico-syntaxiques, améliore les résultats