Patent Application
20050213142
The present invention relates to achieving optimization during processing of print jobs in a rendering device, such as a printer. In one aspect, it relates to constructing display list objects, corresponding to the to-be-printed objects of the print job, and comparing the attributes thereof. In another, it relates to sharing attributes, in memory, if possible. Once shared, no-longer-needed memory locations can be freed and pointers can be modified to point elsewhere or eliminated. Objects of the display list may also be eliminated.
The art of printing with rendering devices, such as laser or other printers, is relatively well known. In general, printing results by creating a bitmap of the print job and sending the bitmap to appropriate printing mechanisms to obtain a hard copy output. During processing, some rendering devices create display lists to intermediately represent the to-be-printed objects. Appreciating that thousands of memory locations or more are required for this intermediate representation, rendering devices can mismanage their available memory which sometimes leads to print overruns. Moreover, memory mismanagement can slow the print job processing time. Accordingly, a need exists in the printing arts for achieving optimization in memory usage and processing time.
The above-mentioned and other problems become solved by applying the principles and teachings associated with the hereinafter described methods and apparatus for achieving optimization during processing of print jobs in rendering devices, such as printers.
Methods for achieving optimization include constructing display list objects for to-be-printed objects of a print job and comparing attributes thereof for sameness and compatibility. If the attributes are the same, they become shared and memory locations with redundant information are freed for use in other processing operations. They can also become shared by appending one or more together in related memory locations. Pointers of the objects can become modified to point from an original memory location(s) to the shared memory location(s) or can become eliminated altogether. The entire object may also be eliminated from the display list. Preferred attribute comparison includes comparing color values of ink attributes of objects for exactness or sameness and comparing vector drawing commands of region attributes for comparability or compatibility. Individual objects can be linked together on the display list in a variety of ways and a root preferably precedes the objects. After optimization, to-be-printed objects are rendered into device specific pages in memory. Rendering includes conversion of color values from a first color space into a second color space of the rendering device and applying halftoning. Rendering can occur on a page-by-page basis of the print job or after all pages of the print job are received. The device specific pages include bitmaps ready for hand-off to an engine interface to invoke the print mechanisms of the printer.
Printer drivers for installation on host devices and graphics engines in laser printers are preferred structures for practicing the foregoing. To store information, both have dedicated memory or access to non-dedicated memory. The graphics engine embodiment preferably includes an interface with one or more PDL emulators dedicated to processing a particular language type, such as PCL, Postcript or the like. It also includes an interface with an engine interface and, when processing is complete, the graphics engine hands off a bitmap, in device specific colors and halftoned, to an engine interface to invoke the print mechanisms of a laser printer to produce a hard copy output. The printer driver embodiment preferably includes computer executable instructions on optical disks or other storage medium and/or can be downloaded from the internet, for example.
These and other embodiments, aspects, advantages, and features of the present invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art by reference to the following description of the invention and referenced drawings or by practice of the invention. The aspects, advantages, and features of the invention are realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities, procedures, and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
In the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration, specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention, and it is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and that process, electrical, mechanical and/or software changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. The following detailed description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of the present invention is defined only by the appended claims and their equivalents. In accordance with the present invention, methods and apparatus for achieving optimization during processing print jobs in a rendering device are hereinafter described.
Appreciating users of the invention will likely accomplish some aspect of the methods in a computing system environment,
When described in the context of computer readable media having computer executable instructions stored thereon, it is denoted that the instructions include program modules, routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, patterns, trigger mechanisms, signal initiators, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types upon or within various structures of the computing environment. Executable instructions exemplarily comprise instructions and data which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or special or general purpose processing device to perform a certain function or group of functions.
The computer readable media can be any available media which can be accessed by a general purpose or special purpose computer or device. By way of example, and not limitation, such computer readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage devices, magnetic disk storage devices or any other medium which can be used to store the desired executable instructions or data fields and which can then be accessed. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of the computer readable media. For brevity, computer readable media having computer executable instructions may sometimes be referred to as software or computer software.
With reference to
Although the exemplary environment described herein employs a hard disk 127, a removable magnetic disk 129 and a removable optical disk 131, it should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that other types of computer readable media exist which can store data accessible by a computer, including magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, removable disks, Bernoulli cartridges, random access memories (RAMs), read only memories (ROM), and the like. Other storage devices are also contemplated as available to the exemplary computing system. Such storage devices may comprise any number or type of storage media including, but not limited to, high-end, high-throughput magnetic disks, one or more normal disks, optical disks, jukeboxes of optical disks, tape silos, and/or collections of tapes or other storage devices that are stored off-line. In general however, the various storage devices may be partitioned into two basic categories. The first category is local storage which contains information that is locally available to the computer system. The second category is remote storage which includes any type of storage device that contains information that is not locally available to a computer system. While the line between the two categories of devices may not be well defined, in general, local storage has a relatively quick access time and is used to store frequently accessed data, while remote storage has a much longer access time and is used to store data that is accessed less frequently. The capacity of remote storage is also typically an order of magnitude larger than the capacity of local storage.
A number of program modules may be stored on the hard disk, magnetic disk 129, optical disk 131, ROM 124 or RAM 125, including but not limited to an operating system 135, one or more application programs 136, other program modules 137, and program data 138. Such application programs may include, but are not limited to, word processing programs, drawing programs, games, viewer modules, graphical user interfaces, image processing modules, intelligent systems modules or other known or hereinafter invented programs. A user enters commands and information into the computer 120 through input devices such as keyboard 140 and pointing device 142. Other input devices (not shown) may include a microphone, joy stick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, camera, personal data assistant, or the like. These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit 121 through a serial port interface 146 that couples directly to the system bus 123. It may also connect by other interfaces, such as parallel port, game port, firewire or a universal serial bus (USB).
A monitor 147 or other type of display device connects to the system bus 123 via an interface, such as a video adapter 148. In addition to the monitor, computers often include other peripheral output devices, such as speakers (not shown). Other output or rendering devices include printers, such as a laser printer 161, for producing hard copy outputs of sheets 1, 2, 3 . . . N of paper or other media, such as transparencies. In general, the hard copy output appears as a representation of what a user might view in a print preview screen 163 of an original program application displayed on the monitor. In this instance, the hard copy appears as three side-by-side objects, especially a red (interior-filled) vertically oriented rectangle, a green ring with a white interior and a blue (interior-filled) triangle, and all reside in a non-overlapping fashion near a bottom 7 of sheet 1. In one embodiment, the printer 161 connects to the computer or host device by direct connection to the system bus via a cable 167 attached to parallel port interface 165. In other embodiments, it connects via the serial port interface, USB, Ethernet or other. Often times a driver, for installing necessary software on the computer 120 for the computer and printer to interface properly and to provide a suitable user interface with the printer via the monitor, becomes inserted as the optical disk 131, the magnetic disk 129 or can be downloaded via the internet or retrieved from another entity as a file. Some forms of the present invention contemplate the driver as storing computer executable instructions for executing the methods of the present invention.
During use, the computer 120 may operate in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more other computing configurations, such as a remote computer 149. Remote computer 149 may be a personal computer, a server, a router, a network PC, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described above relative to the computer 120, although only a memory storage device 150 having application programs 136 has been illustrated. The logical connections between the computer 120 and the remote computer 149 include a local area network (LAN) 151 and/or a wide area network (WAN) 152 that are presented here by way of example and not limitation. Such networking environments are commonplace in offices with enterprise-wide computer networks, intranets and the Internet, but may also be adapted for use in a mobile environment at multiple fixed or changing locations.
When used in a LAN networking environment, the computer 120 is connected to the local area network 151 through a network interface or adapter 153. When used in a WAN networking environment, the computer 120 typically includes a modem 154, T1 line, satellite or other means for establishing communications over the wide area network 152, such as the Internet. The modem 154, which may be internal or external, is connected to the system bus 123 via the serial port interface 146. In a networked environment, program modules depicted relative to the computer 120, or portions thereof, may be stored in the local or remote memory storage devices and may be linked to various processing devices for performing certain tasks. It will be appreciated that the network connections shown are exemplary and other means of establishing a communications link between the computers may be used. Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including host devices in the form of hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, micro-processor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, computer clusters, main frame computers, and the like.
With reference to
During use, as is known, when the host or other device has a print job ready for printing, the host sends data to the printer in a form ready for processing by the printer. Often, this data embodies the well known form of a PDL. In general, PDL is a language (expression protocol) indicating which parts of a page contain text characters and which parts contain graphic images. It also has instructions on how to draw a to-be-printed object and its control therefor. It further includes a protocol for describing bitmap data. Some of the more well known forms of PDLs include Hewlett Packard's printer control language (PCL), PCLXL, Adobe's POSTSCRIPT, Canon's LIPS, IBM's PAGES and IPDS, to name a few. Yet, the printer may not know how many host or other devices are connected to it, on which I/O port(s) they may reside and in what form the PDL print job will arrive. Accordingly, the input interface 210 of the printer performs the following two well known functions. First, it assesses (by looping through the I/O ports) which, if any, of the I/O ports have a print job for the printer and, if a print job exists, locks onto such port. Second, it supplies the print job to the appropriate PDL emulator 212 in accordance with the PDL language type. As shown in
As an example, consider the following PDL file, embodied as an imaginary POSTSCRIPT file, having programming language tokens or command operations, as in Lines 1-6, for rudimentarily printing a thin black line 310 (
As a preliminary matter, skilled artisans will appreciate the color (black) of the to-be-printed object (e.g., thin black line 310) first appears to the printer in a color space specified by the host or other device and it is incumbent upon the printer to convert such color space into whatever device color space it functions in. In this instance, the color received by the printer corresponds to red, green, blue (r, g, b) color values which, in turn, relate to the colors generated by the monitor 147 (
Interpreting these lines of code, the color (black) of to-be-printed object (i.e., thin black line 310) has a red color in the computer color plane corresponding to a zero value (please appreciate this number can range between a plurality of values which maps to about 256 possible different color selections), a green color corresponding to a zero value and a blue color corresponding to a zero value, or black. The object has a linewidth value of 1 point ( 1/72″, for example). With reference to
Regarding the interaction between the PDL emulator 212 and the graphics engine 214, it occurs in a well known iterative or back-and-forth manner. For example, the PDL emulator sequentially parses or processes a single command line of the above PDL file and relays it to the graphics engine. In response, the graphics engine returns information to the emulator notifying it of completion, for example, and then the PDL emulator goes and processes the next command line. The PDL emulator then communicates to the graphics engine about the next line of the PDL file, whereby the graphics engine responds, and so on until complete. In actuality, however, each individual command line need not require interaction with the graphics engine or any one single command line may invoke many interactions with the graphics engine and is well known in the art. To facilitate processing, each of the emulator and graphics engine have access to their own dedicated memory (M) for these and other purposes. In addition, during the “showpage” command operation, the 0,0,0 red, green, blue colors of the PDL file become converted into the CMYK toner colors of the rendering device printer. Preferably, the graphics engine performs this conversion and stores the printer colors in what artisans refer to as device specific colors or color planes. In this instance, since four colors exist in the printer (C, M, Y, K), the graphics engine stores four color planes. Skilled artisans also know color conversion from computers, or other hosts, into device specific colors occurs through well known processes often comprising specific entries in a look-up table and linear or other interpolation methods between the specific entries.
To actually invoke the lasers of the printer or other print mechanisms 218 (including, but not limited to, paper pick mechanisms, rollers, belts, photoconductive members, fusers, sheet feeders, toner cartridges, duplexers, and the like), the graphics engine 214 communicates directly with an engine interface 216. Preferably, the graphics engine supplies a bitmap rendered in device specific color and halftoned. The engine interface, in turn, supplies the requisite information, usually in the form of signals, to the print mechanisms to produce hard copy sheets 1, 2, 3 . . . N, for example.
For any given print job, the PDL file (through the PDL emulator) will eventually signal or indicate to the graphics engine that the graphics engine has been presented with or received all to-be-printed objects for a given page of a print job. In some instances, this occurs when the PDL emulator calls for the graphics engine to perform the “showpage” command. With reference to
The rendering of to-be-printed objects occurs, first, by having the graphics engine build, create or otherwise construct a display list having one or more to-be-printed objects for a given to-be-printed page. In essence, the display list comprises pluralities of data structures found in addresses or locations linked in memory that together describe a given to-be-printed object(s) and a to-be-printed page. A display list root begins the display list and points to the first object. The first object then points to the second object and so on until all objects are connected, in memory, for a given to-be-printed page of a print job. Preferably, all object(s) on the display list occur in the same exact order that the PDL file presented them to the graphics engine.
In more specificity,
In one embodiment, the object type attribute corresponds to whether the to-be-printed object is an image, such as a jpeg, a stencil, such as a rectangle, or a character (a, b, c . . . x, y, z, 0, 1, 2, . . . ). In other embodiments, it could correspond to a group of related objects. The object region attribute corresponds to the physical location of the to-be-printed object on the to-be-printed page and the geography of the object type, such as the pixel dimensions of a rectangular stencil. It may also include information useful in processing the object such as a region bounding box (not shown). The object ink attribute corresponds generally to how to “paint” each pixel within the object region. With more specificity, the painting of each pixel means 1) what color to apply to each pixel for that to-be-printed object; and 2) how to apply pixel coloring in instances when pixels of multiple objects overlap one another on the to-be-printed page. In category 2), this typically includes a math or logic function specified, in a well known manner by the PDL as part of the PDL file, such as a Boolean expression, when the PDL emulator is of PCL language type, or an algebraic expression for PDF languages. As a representative example, a PCL language has 256 possible logic functions. A PDF language has about 16 math or logic functions. Although shown in a given order on the display list object 500, the attributes may occur in any order desirable and the actual memory locations representing the attributes of the object need not be contiguous or sequential. With reference to
With reference to
With reference to
With reference to
In each of
Still further, the advantage realized by freeing redundant memory locations for use with other processing operations can also be accomplished for other attributes of the objects on the display list and includes the object type attributes and object region attributes or other known or hereinafter invented attributes. Thus, with reference to
With reference to
By comparing
The advantage realized by combining memory locations can also be accomplished for other attributes of objects on the display list and includes the object type attributes and object ink attributes or other known or hereinafter invented attributes. Thus, with reference to
Hereafter, the graphics engine renders the to-be-printed objects into device specific pages in memory. In one embodiment, this includes the graphics engine ascertaining the object type attribute 502-1 of the to-be-printed object; ascertaining the object region attribute 504-1; and converting the color information, on a pixel-by-pixel basis for that to-be-printed object, into the device specific colors (e.g., CMYK) as previously described. Next, it performs well-known halftone operations for the to-be-printed object so it will appear properly to the human eye when viewed as a hard copy output. Next, the memory addresses or locations corresponding to that object, i.e., the display list object 500-x, are released or freed so that the graphics engine or other structure can use them for future operations as necessary. If additional to-be-printed objects appear on the display list that require rendering, the graphics engine repeats the process until all to-be-printed objects are rendered in memory. At this point, the graphics engine can hand-off the bitmap, in device specific colors and halftoned, directly to the engine interface 216 (
In general, it is known to have either host based control of printing or to have device or printer based control of printing. Heretofore, printer based control has been exclusively described. In an alternate embodiment, however, the foregoing could be implemented through host-based control wherein the printer driver, installed on the host from some sort of software media, e.g., optical disk 131 (
The present invention has been particularly shown and described with respect to certain preferred embodiment(s). However, it will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art that a wide variety of alternate embodiments, adaptations or variations of the preferred embodiment(s), and/or equivalent embodiments may be made without departing from the intended scope of the present invention as set forth in the appended claims. Accordingly, the present invention is not limited except as by the appended claims.
