Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Communication
Reexamination Certificate
1999-10-20
2004-09-14
Wallerson, Mark (Department: 2622)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Communication
C358S296000, C358S296000, C399S027000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06791704
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of managing resources of one or more printing products available in a printer, for printing a document stored in the form of digital data, for example in a computer, the latter being able to control said printer, which is associated with it directly or indirectly via a network. The invention also concerns a device for implementing the method.
2. Discussion of Related Art
A computerised printer contains at least one and generally several printing product reservoirs. Some reservoirs can be integrated into one and the same cartridge. For example, a black and white inkjet printer contains a single reservoir of black ink. For a colour printer, other different colour printing products are necessary, notably cyan, magenta and yellow. On certain high-performance printers, it is possible to use printing products with different densities of these three colours. It is also possible to use other colours such as red, blue, green, white, silver and gold. The printing of a document will use all or some of the printing product or products present in the different reservoirs. Obviously, the quantity of a particular printing product used depends notably on the content of the document to be printed. A simple typed document will require a printing product of a single colour, usually black. On the other hand, an illustrated report can contain images and graphs using colours. In this case, the printer will consume at least black, blue, magenta and cyan in variable proportions.
The quantity of printing product consumed also depends on the configuration of the printer at the time of printing. Some printers make it possible to choose one printing mode amongst several possible ones, low, medium or high resolution, both in black and white and in colour. Consequently, the same printer can consume very different quantities of printing products, for the same document stored in digital form, according to the print mode selected.
The quantity of printing product consumed also depends on the physical characteristics of the printing means. It depends notably, for an inkjet printer, on the type of reservoir or cartridge used, the diameter of the ink ejection nozzles on the print head and the very nature of the printing product, the size of the droplets ejected depending on the pigments used, and therefore on the colour.
The quantity of printing product consumed also depends on the characteristics of the paper used. For example, a heavyweight glazed paper will receive a larger quantity of printing product than an ordinary paper.
Finally, it should be noted that the quantity of printing product consumed also depends on the characteristics of the environment: relative humidity, pressure, temperature, etc. These characteristics are unstable by nature and falsify predictions. All the others can be predetermined or known.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,636,032 describes a system for estimating the number of pages which a printer is capable of printing. When the document is stored in the form of digital data, it is converted in order to constitute a table describing a monochromatic component of the document in the form of pixels. Reading such a table makes it possible, in the case of an inkjet printer, to control the ejection of the droplets of liquid printing product at predetermined locations on the sheet of paper, constituting the coordinates of the different pixels. It is said that a pixel is “switched-on” in such a table if the cell corresponding to this pixel contains an item of information indicating that a droplet of printing product must be ejected at this pixel location.
According to the teachings of this prior patent, at the very moment of printing of one of the pages, the number of switched-on pixels in this page is counted and the or each quantity of printing product used for printing is deduced. To this end, for each ink reservoir which can be used by the printer, the mean volume of ink necessary for printing a pixel has been stored. However, the process can produce only a relatively imprecise estimation of the quantities needed since it is implemented simultaneously with the printing of a page. Estimation therefore assumes that all the pages which remain to be printed will require the same quantity of the printing product as the previous one. Such is not always the case, in practice.
Independently of such an estimation process, some printers are provided with means of measuring the or each quantity of printing product available in a reservoir or cartridge compartment in the course of use. Such a printer is for example described in the application PCT 97/00366. If the printer is connected to a computer, the measurements can be transmitted to it via an interface card and can be processed and/or displayed on a control screen of this computer.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The main object of the invention is to improve the management of the resources of one or more printing products used by the printer, notably in connection with the computer, by combining the advantages of a prediction of the or each quantity of printing product necessary for printing a document and an actual measurement of the or each quantity of printing product available in the reservoir or reservoirs of the printer at the moment when it is wished to print.
More precisely, the invention concerns a method of managing the resources of at least one printing product available in a printer, characterised in that it consists of predicting the quantity of said printing product necessary for printing a document stored in the form of digital data by describing this document by pixels and counting the switched-on pixels corresponding to said printing product, also measuring, before printing, the quantity of printing product actually available in a corresponding reservoir of said printer, comparing the predicted quantity and the measured quantity and, according to this comparison, at least sending a message and/or triggering the implementation of a processing.
Amongst the messages which can be displayed, there can be mentioned not only the prediction itself of the quantities of printing products necessary for printing a document under consideration but also, by comparison with the available quantity or quantities, information on the possibility or impossibility of actually printing the document without having to change at least one reservoir. The information broadcast can also indicate the number of copies of the document which is possible to print without having to change at least one reservoir, or, failing this, the number of the page of the document or of the n
th
copy which it will be possible to print without intervention.
Amongst the processings which it is possible to envisage from the comparison of the predicted quantities and the measured quantities, it is notably possible to mention the prohibition on printing or the automatic change to an economical printing mode making it possible to satisfy the user requirement. In addition, as will be seen later, correction factors can be produced and used so that a predicted quantity is as close as possible to a measured quantity of an actual consumption of a printing product. The comparison can therefore automatically and unbeknown to the user trigger the implementation of a processing updating the correction factor or factors. These correction factors make it possible notably to take into account overall the characteristics which have an influence on the quantity of printing product consumed and which are unstable or impossible to parameterize, notably the environmental characteristics (relative humidity, pressure, temperature, etc) and the usual tolerances of the components, such as for example the diameter of the ejection nozzles, or the degree of filling of a reservoir.
The method which has just been set out can preferably be essentially implemented in a computer connected to a printer. Moreover, it is more and more frequent to use computers in a network. Under these conditions, if a computer contains a document stored in dig
Lorgeoux Mickaël
Moreau Jean-Jacques
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