Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Communication
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-01
2003-12-16
Garcia, Gabriel (Department: 2624)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Communication
C358S001900
Reexamination Certificate
active
06665083
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium exchanged between a customer and a printing service provider upon placing an order of photograph print, and more specifically to a data structure of the ordering information to be recorded in the recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
An order of photograph print is placed by filling an order sheet with the name and address of an orderer, the frame number and the quantity of photographs to be printed, the size of the photograph print, and the like.
However, digitization of photographic services has been taking place recently, and it is being realized to order photograph print by bringing in a medium such as an MO disc, a Zip disc, and a CD-R wherein image data having been digitized by reading a film are recorded. Alternatively, a method has been proposed wherein image data are registered in a server computer of a service provider in advance and printing is carried out without exchanging a medium.
Following the digitization, it has been proposed that ordering information, which used to be provided from a customer to a service provider in an order sheet, should also be provided as digital data.
In the current printing services using image data, an order is placed by filling an order sheet with a file name of image data to be printed among image data recorded in a recording medium brought in (or among image data having been registered in a server computer). Therefore, as a method to describe ordering information taking the form of digital data, a data format has been proposed wherein the content of a conventional order sheet is merely digitized as it is. More specifically, the size of a field for each kind of information is defined, such as the first 16 bytes of the name of an orderer, the following 48 bytes the address, and thereafter, for each order, 12 bytes of a file name, 2 bytes of the quantity, and 2 bytes of the size.
Following the spread of personal computers and the Internet, a variety of completely new needs have been arising regarding photograph printing services.
As one of such needs, it is expected to enrich the kinds of image data to be specified as printing targets. In other words, following the proposals of network photograph systems or the like which receive printing orders on the Internet, a need of printing a photograph image available on the Internet, not a photograph the customer has at hand, emerges for example.
However, since the network photograph systems which have been proposed so far are the systems to order printing of photographs which printing service providers manage (for example, the photographs which a customer of a printing service provider has registered), the case such as the above has not been considered. Therefore, if a customer wishes to print a photograph managed (published) on a server computer by a party other than the printing service provider of the customer, the customer has to download the image file, store the file in a removable medium and order printing in the same manner as for his/her own photographs in hand.
Another expectation is to enrich the kinds of image processing to be carried out on image data. In other words, in a digital photograph service which is different from exposure printing, various kinds of image processing can be carried out on image data. Therefore, it is expected that a customer who used to grumble about the bad finish of a photograph and have no choice but to give up and nationalize that it is a failure of photographing will now be able to place a detailed order regarding image processing, such as including red eye correction data in the order and thus be satisfied with the finish.
The content of the image processing which a service provider can provide as photograph image finishing processing may vary in accordance with the improvement of technologies. Following this change, it is possible for the data format of ordering information to change frequently. Furthermore, if delivery processing of finished prints becomes automated, the number and the kind of programs which refer to the ordering information for processing will increase. On this occasion, the ordering information exploring the conventional data structure described above is not preferable, because all programs incorporated in a photograph finishing system need to be modified regarding a field referred therein (i.e., every time the data structure is changed).
Therefore, it is preferable that the data structure of ordering information be able to deal with the new needs described above and flexibly cope with the needs which may emerge in the future.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention includes a computer-readable recording medium for recording photograph print ordering information therein, wherein the ordering information is recorded as a structured storage file having a hierarchy structure, the structured storage file comprising an orderer stream describing information regarding an orderer and at least one order storage describing the content of an order, and the order storage comprising a link information stream describing link information to photograph image data to be printed and an order content stream describing the content of the order regarding the photograph image data having been pointed out by the link information.
The structured storage file having a hierarchy structure herein referred to is used when different kinds of applications handle one file. One structured storage file has a hierarchy structure which is similar to a directory in a conventional file system, and each component thereof can be handled by different applications. A stream is a component of structured storage and a storage stores a stream (equivalent to the function of a conventional directory). Since the structured storage is widely known as a technique used in Component Object Model (COM) proposed by the Microsoft Corp., its detailed explanation is not provided here.
The ordering information of the present invention described above has only the name and address as the information regarding an orderer, for example. When the function is extended so that the ordering information includes an E-mail address, the photograph finishing system in order to deal with the ordering information has to be modified only with regard to the programs referring to the information regarding an orderer, and does not need to be modified on the other programs such as programs for image processing, for example. In other words, labor for program modification due to a change in a function will be greatly saved.
Another feature of the present invention is to specify a target of printing by link information, not by the name of a file thereof. The link information means, for example, a character string such as “\fujifilm.co.jp\filename.fpx”. This is to specify a target of printing in a more general form adaptable to a network, and a conventional file name can be treated as a kind of link information by including a path name therewith such as “C:\IMAGES\filename.fpx”.
A system of the present invention receives ordering information stored on such a data structure and creates photograph prints. In other words, the system deals with the computer-readable recording medium for recording the ordering information of photograph prints, and includes recording means which store a digitized photograph as image data, ordering information reading means which reads the ordering information recorded in the recording medium, printing target searching means which receives from a predetermined object instance recognizing means a pointer for handling the photograph image data by providing to the object instance recognizing means the link information included in the ordering information having been read by the ordering information reading means, and print generating means which generates the print by referring to the image data by using the pointer obtained by the printing target searching means.
As in a conventional system, the “recording means” means a removable mediu
Haneda Norihisa
Itoh Shinji
Nakajima Nobuyoshi
Ohtsuka Shuichi
Shiota Kazuo
Birch & Stewart Kolasch & Birch, LLP
Fuji Photo Film Co. , Ltd.
Garcia Gabriel
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