Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Communication
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-11
2001-04-24
Gandhi, Jayprakash N. (Department: 2841)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Communication
C358S296000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06222635
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the invention
The present invention generally relates to a print data control system, and in particular to system and method for processing and transferring data from a host computer to a printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been proposed several methods which expands print data to bit-map data at a high speed. For example, a print control method for a page printer has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 4-67964. According to this print control method, print data is mapped onto a bit-map memory by selectively using a mapping software program and a mapping-dedicated hardware circuit depending on conditions of print data.
However, under the limited transfer capability of an interface between a host computer and a printer, such an increasing speed of data mapping cannot provide expected performance. In other words, the interface produces a bottleneck in high-speed printing process.
Especially, in the case of a large amount of data such as full-color print data, the print speed is remarkably reduced. Further, in the case of print data including both full-color image ata and text data, the whole print speed cannot lead to reduced print time because it is difficult to reduce the time required to mapping the full-color image data.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide print data control system and method which can achieve high-speed printing in the case of a large amount of print data.
Another object of the present invention is to provide print data control system and method which can achieve high-speed data transfer from a host computer to a printer.
According to the present invention, a predetermined process for print data is stored in both the host computer and the printer and the predetermined process is shared between the host computer and the printer by transferring data from the host computer to the printer. Since the load of the predetermined process is shared between the host computer and the printer, resulting in high-speed printing.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, the print data process is shared between a host computer and a printer so as to minimize the amount of transfer data from the host computer to the printer. Therefore, the high-speed data transfer is achieved from the host computer to the printer.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, in a data processing method for processing input data to transfer processed data from a first processor to a second processor which are connected through an interface, at the first processor, a plurality of process steps are stored which are to be sequentially executed to produce output data. After determining a process step producing a minimized amount of processed data transferred to the second processor with respect to a predetermined attribute of the input data, a first sequence of process steps from an initial process step to the process step is executed to produce incompletely-processed data. And, the incompletely-processed data to the second processor is transferred to the printer. At the second processor, the process steps are stored and a second sequence of process steps following the process step is executed to produce the output data.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, in a system including a host computer and a printer which are connected through an interface, full-color input data is processed to produce full-color print data. At the host computer, a plurality of color process steps are stored which are to be sequentially executed to convert the full-color input data to the full-color print data. The host computer determines a data-minimizing color process step producing a minimized amount of processed data transferred to the printer with respect to a resolution of the full-color input data and then executes a first sequence of color process steps from an initial color process step to the data-minimizing color process step to produce incompletely-processed data. The incompletely-processed data is transferred to the printer. At the printer, the color process steps are also stored and a second sequence of color process steps following the data-minimizing color process step is executed to produce the full-color print data which is used for printing.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5402245 (1995-03-01), Motta et al.
patent: 5471563 (1995-11-01), Dennis et al.
patent: 5471564 (1995-11-01), Dennis et al.
patent: 4-67964 (1992-03-01), None
patent: 6-199000 (1994-07-01), None
patent: 7-334318 (1995-12-01), None
patent: 8-328789 (1996-12-01), None
patent: 9-9084 (1997-01-01), None
Gandhi Jayprakash N.
NEC Corporation
Ostrolenk Faber Gerb & Soffen, LLP
Tran Thanh Y.
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