Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1. Document Conversion
1.2. The name: upCast

1.1. Document Conversion

The value of your legacy documents should not be underestimated. The term legacy documents does in no way denote that the content of your documents is outdated. In fact it describes the state of your documents' storage format: it is proprietary and therefore unsuitable for long term storage and future reuse.

It is our challenge at infinity-loop to first extract and then save your documents' real value, the contents and its logical structure in the form of so-called value-added documents. The term value-added as an attribute to document denotes the characteristic of your documents that once they are converted, they possess more explicit usable information than it was the case before. Your documents are in a format that may be used for long term storage. They are easily searchable and reusable. All conditions for the future oriented processing of your documents are fulfilled.

On the other hand, document conversion solutions and products may likewise be used as add-on products in order to turn your company-wide established document processing applications (even though being proprietary) into XML authoring environments, without requiring users to learn a new software package. This reduces software expenses and training costs, whereas at the same time you make the essential step forward into the future of document processing and management.

With upCast, we offer you the seamless integration of your documents into the electronic future of your company that is based on forward-looking technologies like structured documents and XML.

1.2. The name: upCast

For one part the name upCast comes from the computer programming term cast which stands for the conversion of some object into some other object. In our case we are converting so called graphically marked-up documents (e.g. documents created with MS Word or Sun's StarOffice) into logically marked-up documents (e.g. XML documents).

In graphically marked-up documents authors simply specify for certain words, phrases or document parts how they are to be visually rendered (e.g. bold, as a sequence of lines with no indent) whereas in logically marked-up documents the authors are specifying the meaning of certain document passages (e.g. a definition, a paragraph, a list).

Since it is obvious and widely accepted that logically marked-up documents are more useful and future oriented than graphically marked-up documents (especially in connection with computers and their capabilities of searching, user customized publishing, …) a conversion process that converts graphically marked-up documents into logically marked-up documents is up-valuating the documents. And from this up-valuating we draw the second constituent of the name upCast, up.