Space font: using glyphless font for searchable text documents

摘要

Systems and methods are described that facilitate mitigating searchable electronic document size increases associated with embedded font definition files by embedding only font size information. When a document is scanned or converted into a PDF or XPS document image, glyphless font size information describing character dimensions for fonts used in the document is embedded into the document image. The glyphless font size information is on the order of a few kilobytes in size, and is later read by a searcher to facilitate highlighting search terms identified in the document image in response to a user query. A highlight block is generated to have a width substantially equal to the combined widths of the characters in the queried term, which are described in the glyphless font information. The highlight block is then overlaid on the image of the queried term, and presented to the user.