(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a filing system including a data processing apparatus which captures image data, stores it on a storage device, transmits it to another data processing device, and copies it onto a copy sheet. The present invention also relates to a data processing method and a computer readable medium which are incorporated into the data processing apparatus in the filing system.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Recently, a number of centralized mainframe computers are shared by all users in an organization, and supplemented by workstations and personal computers located in departmental user rooms and private offices. With the increased number of machines has come the need to move data and files from one machine to another. A filing system is one approach to solving the file transfer problem. In the filing system, shared data is placed on a file server, and, when needed, individual machines are made to access data files located on the remote file server. This approach works well when the number of files that needs to be exchanged is not small.
In a conventional filing system, a data processing device (for example, a personal computer) is provided with a scanner, and the scanner captures image data by optically scanning the document to be copied or transmitted. However, when the number of documents that need to be exchanged between authorized users is large, the data capturing using the scanner becomes a considerably time-consuming task, and the access to the image data on the remote file server from the data processing device becomes a burdensome operation. This causes the delay of implementation of the conventional filing system. In addition, the contents of documents having confidential data, such as a password for the file access, may be revealed to the operator of the data processing device during the data capturing. The conventional filing system has such a problem of data security.
By taking account of the above-described problems, the inventors of the present invention have noted that image data of documents, which need to be stored in a filing system, are always first captured using scanners of copiers or facsimiles for corporate meeting uses or business purposes, and subsequently translated into usable signals using analog-to-digital converters. Hence, in order to eliminate the above-described problems, the inventors have designed a data processing apparatus and method, for use in the filing system, which creates identifications of the authorized users for such documents when the image data are first captured, and has the image data and the identifications stored on a storage medium of the filing system in a such a manner that the stored image data are subsequently accessible by the authorized users using the identifications. Further, the filing system must be designed to ensure security of the image data stored therein.