Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1995-11-07
2001-12-04
dela Torre, Crescello N. (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S589000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06326983
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image processor/generator for representing a complex color raster image as a collection of objects in a hierarchical and device independent format and, more particularly, to an SI format that includes not only source data, but also the image processing operations required for rendering them and supports re-editability, customization and enhancement, automatic image assembly, and high performance imaging using an appropriate user interface.
2. Description of Related Developments
Commercially available packages in use today require considerable memory to operate. For example, Adobe Photoshop® stores three copies of the full size raster during interactive editing. Thus, a typical 24-bit color image (8½×11 at 300 dpi) can require 24 megabytes of memory for each image copy.
Further, commercial software often exhibits sluggish to poor performance when editing large imagery. Again, Photoshop® must store, as discussed above, three copies of the image (no matter how large it is). Since every interactive operation processes the full image, performance is extremely slow.
Additionally, typical commercial software stores output imagery as complete rasters. Therefore, for each new version of an image, a complete raster must be written out and you cannot undo the operations contained in those versions. At 24 megabytes per image, as discussed above, disk requirements can be extensive. Also, archiving such imagery can require extensive storage space as well.
Further, a critical need exists for an image processor in the commercial printing arena with the ability to create a job template for constructing multiple, customized images. Few, if any, commercial image processing packages exist that will allow the creation of such job application templates. Additionally, commercial image processing software packages, such as Photoshop®, have limited ability to render the output image optimized for the output device. Typically, color correction and simple resolution conversion is all that may be applied.
Additionally, in typical commercial image processing software, the ability to edit the list of image processing operations performed by the operator is also very limited. For example, Photoshop® allows only one undo operation. Also, typical commercial software does not allow for the optimization of image processing. That is, once an image is created, the ability to combine operations and increase performance on high resolution imagery is lost.
Finally, there exists a strong industry interest in structured document theory and how this technology can affect products and services. Current structured document theory considers a raster image as a simple content block with no hierarchical nature or image processing operations associated with it. For a page oriented description, see IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications Journal, March 1991, pages 71-78, “Constructive Page Description,” by J. Schonhut, H. Wiedling and V. Samara. For a general description of structured documents, see “Structured Documents”, by J. Andre, R. Furuta and V. Quint, Cambridge Series on Electronic Publishing, 1989.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is thus an object of the invention to obviate the foregoing drawbacks by providing an Si format that can operate on display resolution imagery with minimal memory requirements yet capable of producing high resolution, high quality printed images. Si is a base technology capable of addressing the entire gamut of acquisition of objects, storage, edit/preparation and delivery/transmit to output rendering.
It is another object of the invention to provide an Si format capable of operating interactively on display resolution imagery and, therefore, having good interactive performance. Further, high resolution output can be generated by merely requesting an Si to be rendered, or rasterized, at high resolution. The rendering process will automatically use appropriate source imagery and device dependent information to render for specific devices. Although other image editors can use display resolution images, SI will pick the resolution of the image according to the task.
It is still another object of Si to store imagery as a text file containing pointers to component objects. Output rasters are not generated until required for display or printing. Therefore, hundreds of versions of an SI can exist in the amount of disk space required typically by one raster image. Since an SI does not store the rasters of the component objects within the SI file, the use of archival imagery such as clip art, for example, becomes much more efficient as only one copy of the source is required.
It is also an object of the invention to provide Sls that can be created to contain undefined references to both component objects and image processing parameters. Such an SI can be rendered by providing the undefined information as, for example, command line arguments. The SI can be rendered many times with different input data to generate custom output rasters. The ability to have valid Sls containing undefined references enables customization and automatic image assembly.
It is another object of the invention to have Sls store all component data in “native” form (i.e., text is stored as ASCII, graphics stored in CGM format or some other appropriate format, etc.). Appropriate render procedures will convert the native form to rasters using device dependent characteristics to optimize the rendering. Proper scaling of component data is inherent to SI rendering.
Finally, it is still another object of the invention to provide Sls that contain pointers to original component data and a description of all image processing operations applied to the image. Editing prior operations can be as simple as editing a text file. Interactive editors based on SI can allow editing of the operations interactively through either text editing, or through a structured image editor. Image processing operations can be added, deleted and modified with appropriate user commands.
In order to achieve the foregoing and other objects, and to overcome the shortcomings discussed above, an SI is defined which, in its simplest form, is described by a set of representations and a pasteboard. Representations specify the content of the SI; the pasteboard specifies the “frame” of the SI. The concept of multiple raster representations is understood in the art and is currently in use in several available applications. With SI, however, the idea of multiple representations is expanded to include non-raster data such as text, graphics and image composites which specify the image processing and merging of multiple component objects. Component objects such as text and graphics are stored in their native format for editability. The requirement of a valid representation is that it be renderable into raster form, and that all representations of a single SI have the same “look” when rendered, i.e., all representations must have an essentially similar appearance. They may have different dimensions or encodings but must clearly be renderings of the same image.
Other objects, advantages, and salient features of the invention will become apparent from the detailed description which, taken in conjunction with the annexed drawings, disclose the preferred embodiments of the invention.
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Bollman James E.
Campanelli Michael R.
Fuss William A.
Nagao Takashi
Venable Dennis L.
dela Torre Crescello N.
Oliff & Berridg,e PLC
Palazzo Eugene O.
Xerox Corporation
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