18. The method of claim 1 , further comprising testing a plurality of candidate gutter widths to identify an optimum gutter width from the tested candidate gutter widths, and providing for each segmented column to be spaced from an adjacent segmented column by the optimum gutter width.
1. A method for segmenting a document comprising: identifying a rectangular page frame using information from multiple pages of a document; matching the page frame to a page of the document; identifying elements within the matched page frame; for a zone of the document page having a zone width and comprising a set of the elements, the zone comprising at least a portion of the page frame width: a) for a first iteration: segmenting the zone regularly into a number of candidate columns, a width of each of the candidate columns being function of the number of the candidate columns and the zone width; for each of the candidate columns, identifying the elements in the set which are within the candidate column; where the candidate columns meet a threshold for identified elements and a gutter is found which spaces the candidate columns, assigning, to a set of segmented columns, those elements in the set which are within the segmented columns, and identifying remaining elements in the set which are not covered by the segmented columns, the segmented columns corresponding in number to the number of candidate columns and each segmented column being spaced by the computed gutter; b) where there are remaining elements after a), performing at least one of: i) at least one subsequent iteration which includes repeating a), wherein in each subsequent iteration, the set of elements is the remaining elements in the set, and wherein the segmenting of the zone regularly into a number of candidate columns segments the zone into a different number of candidate columns from the first iteration and all other subsequent iterations, and ii) considering the zone as a single segmented column only, identifying the elements in the set which are within the single segmented column; and where there are remaining elements in the set after a) and b), providing for a) and b) to be performed for at least one subsequent zone of the page, wherein for each subsequent zone, the set of elements includes remaining elements not covered by the segmented columns identified for any of the preceding zones.