Patent Application
20070154250
The present invention relates generally to image forming equipment and is particularly directed to printers of the type which print along edges of sheet media. The invention is specifically disclosed as a printer that simultaneously prints both on a “main” surface of a sheet of print media and along edges of that same sheet of print media, such that when the sheets are stacked after being printed, a predetermined image will appear along one or more of the sides of the stack, and this “side image” is formed by the dots that have been printed along the edges of the individual sheets.
Most conventional sheet printers, when printing on the front surface or back surface of sheets of print media, require a margin along all four edges. This conventional method prevents printing along the edge of such sheets of print media except by use of a secondary post-processing operation. Some conventional printing systems will print in a post-processing step from the side of a stack of sheets, so as to print some type of edge marking along those sides.
Other conventional sheet printers will print along the surface of a sheet of print media, and a later trimming step will be performed to allow some of the printed material to end up in a position right along the edge of the sheet. Of course, in such printing systems, the “edge portion” of the printed material is positioned along a “trimmed edge.”
Still other conventional sheet printers can print on the surface of a sheet of print media near the edge of that same sheet of print media, however, many of those printers merely create linear bars or rectangles along the planar surface near the side edge, in some cases these are to have the appearance of a bar code. Such printers are not designed to allow graphic design images, or custom images to be printed along the edges of a stack of sheet media, so as to produce a pattern that creates a customized image or other type of graphic design image in the stack when viewed from the side of that stack.
Conventional printing presses that use flat “plates” or cylindrical rolls (with bent “plates”) are typically capable of printing at virtually all locations on sheets or on a continuous roll of print media, but these machines use very different structures and processes to create the “image data” on those plates or rolls. Most of them use single (or multiple) plates with physical holes in the plates for the printing ink to flow therethrough, to the print media. Moreover, such presses handle their print media in very different ways than sheet printers, such as a laser printer or ink jet printer.
Accordingly, it is an advantage of the present invention to provide a printer that is capable of printing on both the main surfaces (or faces) of sheets of print media, as well as printing on one or more of the edges of that same set of sheets of print media, such that when a multi-page print job is stacked, the edge data will appear as an image when viewed from the side.
It is another advantage of the present invention to provide a printer and methodology capable of producing edge data on at least one edge (“edge printing”) of various sheets of a multi-page print job and for printing also on the main surfaces (“face printing”), in which the edge data is integrated into the normal bitmap data for printing on the face or main surface of the sheets of the multi-page print job.
It is yet another advantage of the present invention to provide a methodology by which edge data and surface data for a multi-page print job can be integrated and printed on multiple pages, and when those pages are stacked after passing through a printer, the edge data will appear as side images along one or more sides of the stack of sheet media, in which the images along the sides can be determined or designed by a user, or the user can use factory graphics for the side images.
It is still another advantage of the present invention to provide a methodology for printing on both the large face surfaces of sheet media and also the edges of that sheet media, so that the edge-printed side images will appear on the sides of a stack of sheet media for a particular print job, and in which the user determines the orientation of the side image data.
Additional advantages and other novel features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description that follows and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned with the practice of the invention.
To achieve the foregoing and other advantages, and in accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a method for printing edge data using a printing apparatus is provided, in which the method comprises the following steps: (a) providing a sheet printing apparatus having a print media input device, a printing station that applies image-forming material to a sheet of print media that is supplied by said print media input device, and an output pathway that directs said sheet of print media to an output area; (b) receiving a print job at said sheet printing apparatus, said print job including face image data that forms a first bitmap image on a surface of said sheet of print media, said print job also including edge image data that forms a second bitmap image along at least one edge of said surface of the sheet of print media; (c) integrating said first bitmap image and said second bitmap image into a single overall bitmap image data that is to be used for printing on said surface of the sheet of print media; and (d) moving said sheet of print media from said print media input device to said printing station and, according to said single overall bitmap image data, applying said image-forming material to said surface of the sheet of print media; wherein: (e) said second bitmap image is sufficiently small in width along said at least one edge of the sheet of print media that it is not highly visible when viewed from said surface of the sheet of print media; and (f) when said sheet of print media is stacked with other sheets of print media that are printed in the same print job, said second bitmap image forms at least a portion of a side image that is discernable when the stack is viewed from a side.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a method for printing edge data using a printing apparatus is provided, in which the method comprises the following steps: (a) providing a sheet printing apparatus having a print media input device, a printing station that applies image-forming material to a sheet of print media that is supplied by said print media input device, and an output pathway that directs said sheet of print media to an output area; (b) receiving a print job at said sheet printing apparatus, said print job including face image data that forms a first bitmap image on a surface of said sheet of print media, said print job also including edge image data that forms a second bitmap image along at least two edges of said surface of the sheet of print media; and (c) moving said sheet of print media from said print media input device to said printing station and, in a single pass through said printing station, applying said image-forming material to said surface of the sheet of print media, incorporating both said first and second bitmap images; wherein: (d) when said sheet of print media is stacked with other sheets of print media that are printed in the same print job, said second bitmap image forms at least a portion of at least two side images that are discernable when the stack is viewed from a first side and from a second side.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, a method for printing edge data using a printing apparatus is provided, in which the method comprises the following steps: (a) providing a sheet printing apparatus having a print media input device, a printing station that applies image-forming material to a plurality of sheets of print media that are supplied by said print media input device, and an output pathway that directs said sheets of print media to an output area; (b) receiving a print job at said sheet printing apparatus, said print job including face image data that forms a first bitmap image on a surface of at least one of said plurality of sheets of print media, said print job also including edge image data that forms a second bitmap image along at least one edge of a surface of at least one of the plurality of sheets of print media; (c) processing said face image data and said edge image data for said plurality of sheets of print media of said print job; and (d) moving said plurality of sheets of print media from said print media input device to said printing station and, according to said first bitmap image and said second bitmap image, applying said image-forming material to said surface of the plurality of sheets of print media; wherein: (e) when said plurality of sheets of print media are stacked with one another, said second bitmap image forms at least a portion of a side image that is discernable when the stack is viewed from a side; and (f) said second bitmap image comprises a design that is determined in real time during said processing step of said print job.
Still other advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in this art from the following description and drawings wherein there is described and shown a preferred embodiment of this invention in one of the best modes contemplated for carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modification in various, obvious aspects all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and descriptions will be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.
The accompanying drawings incorporated in and forming a part of the specification illustrate several aspects of the present invention, and together with the description and claims serve to explain the principles of the invention. In the drawings:
Reference will now be made in detail to the present preferred embodiment of the invention, an example of which is illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein like numerals indicate the same elements throughout the views.
The present invention relates to printers that can print at, or very close to, the edge of a sheet of paper, such that the printed ink or toner (as “edge image data”) is visible when viewed from the edge of the sheet. The term “edge” as used in this patent document generally refers to a portion of the outermost perimeter of a planar sheet of print media; typically a single edge consists of a linear segment along this perimeter. One aspect of the invention is to control these “edge dots” so that, once a set of sheets is resting in the output tray, the sheet edge data will produce a distinctive pattern when viewed from that edge. (See
The pattern that is to be produced along the edge of the pages is broken into “page lines,” in which an edge of each sheet that will be printed will comprise one of these page lines. When several sheets are stacked in the output tray (or bin), the individual page lines are thereby grouped together to produce a predetermined pattern that is visible from that edge, but is not highly visible when viewed from the front or back of the individual sheet. The edge image data essentially is quite narrow in width to keep it from distracting the reader of the “main” surface of the printed document; the width of the edge image data may be only two dots, or perhaps a single dot, in size.
In one mode of the invention, this “edge” data pattern is integrated with the “normal” print job data that is planned for each individual sheet, and the edge data would be located in the margin area for most conventional print jobs. The “normal” print job data constitutes “face image data” that will be printed as a bitmap on the “main” surface of the sheet of print media, which is substantially performed by conventional methodologies used today in various modern printers.
The present invention prints the “edge” dots as part of a print job that is also simultaneously printing on either the front surface or back surface of a sheet of print media. In other words, the present invention does not perform a “post-processing” step of later printing (or otherwise “marking”) from the side of a stack of sheets of print media, that otherwise would need to occur after an earlier “normal” print processing step of printing on the front and/or back surfaces of those same sheets of media, and then placing these sheets of media in a stack so that the post-processing step could then be performed. In an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the face image data and the edge image data are integrated into a “single overall bitmap image data” by the image processing device, so that one (or more) edges will be printed during the same printing pass (through the printing station) that one of the faces (or “main” surfaces) of a single sheet of print media is printed. This aspect of the present invention will be discussed in greater detail below.
The present invention has several possible uses: (1) print a user's name; (2) print a “Confidential” stamp; (3) print a bar code; (4) print a color, along the entire edge, or a major portion of the edge; (5) print a company name, or logo; (6) print an image along the edge, such as line art, or possibly gray level contones; (7) print an arrow (or other) pattern with (proximal to) a number, in which the arrow points to the first page of a chapter within the stack of print media. Certainly additional uses are possible within the scope of the present invention; moreover, multiple permutations and combinations of the above listing are possible, including in combination with other additional uses.
As noted above, the present invention will print along the edges of a page of sheet media such that when a stack of the sheet media is observed from the side, a graphic image or customized text can be displayed. The present invention takes the edge data and breaks it into “page lines” that are similar to “scanlines” that make up the bitmaps of printed images in most modem printers. As such, a single pageline represents a portion of the image that will be created along the edge of a single sheet of print media. When a multiple-page print job is processed, the sheets that are to have dots placed along the edges of predetermined single sheets of paper in the print job will be processed as part of the overall print job for either the front surface or the back surface (or perhaps both) of that sheet of print media. Each of the sheets in the stack that represents the entire print job will be printed with their appropriate pageline data, and upon completion of the print job, a predetermined image will be observed from the side of the printed stack of paper.
As will be discussed in greater detail below, the present invention can make the edge image orientation “right side up” in the output stack of papers, or it can make the image oriented “upside down.” Moreover, the edge images along the sides of the output stack of papers can be oriented at a 90° angle as compared to the “right side up” or upside down types of images. These possibilities are discussed below and illustrated in this patent document.
The edge image data will be placed along the actual edges of the sheet of print media, and will comprise a very narrow row or column of dots made of either toner or ink (for a laser printer or an ink jet printer, for example). This edge image data is not highly visible when viewing the front or back of the individual sheets of print media, and thus the edge image data is not distracting. When the edge data is printed along the sheet media edges, it will tend to bleed over the edge (when printing with ink or toner, for example) and thus be visible from the edge, particularly so that a stack of sheets so printed will create a “side image” that is discernable when viewed from that side of the stack.
Some of the advantages of the present invention are that the edge data will undergo image processing in an integrated manner, and will be printed along with the normal front or back surface print data, and thus time will be saved by not requiring a post-printing procedure solely for the edges themselves. When documents have edge coding printed thereon, it can make finding the appropriate documents easier. Edge coding of documents that use color coding, or perhaps a type of bar coding can make individual pages easier to associate with a document if those pages have become separated. For example, when a loose sheet that has edge data printed thereon is inserted into the document in the wrong place, the edge image would tend to show a discontinuity. Another advantage is that multiple documents that have been printed and placed within the output bin of a shared printer will be more easily found by the appropriate user, when that user comes to the printer to pick up his or her print job. For example, a print job that has a bar code printed thereon could be scanned without removing the multi-sheet print job from a file folder. This could also be true for other types of codes that may not necessarily rely on traditional bar code-type markings, in which the user's name (for example) comprises the edge data.
Another possible use is placing markings in color along the edge of a stack of print media, which could be used with a color laser printer or a standard color ink jet printer. In this manner, sheets could be color-coded as “separator sheets” without the need to stock different colored papers. This would be more economical than some of the practices in conventional printing systems. The use of “chapter locators” in thick documents can be implemented using the edge markings of the present invention. Arrows or other shapes with chapter numbers nearby can be used, in which the arrows (or other shapes) can point to the first page of a chapter; or the arrows could have the shape of a pyramid, in which either the tip or the base of the pyramid represents the first page of a chapter. This could replace the small cutouts in pages of dictionaries, for example.
Referring now to
In PC 10, the I/O circuits are connected to an input buffer 40, which may be part of the system main memory, which is depicted at the reference numeral 14. A typical PC will have a microprocessor, depicted on
A typical PC will have a video monitor 20, a keyboard 22, and a pointing device 24, such as mouse or a trackball. Video monitor 20 is connected to the video driver circuit 16 over a signal line 30. Keyboard 22 is connected to the keyboard driver circuit 18 by a signal line 32. The mouse/trackball 24 is connected to some type of pointing driver circuit over a signal line 34. The mouse/trackball 24 may interface to a separate driver circuit, or perhaps to the keyboard driver circuit 18, particularly if the PC 10 is some type of portable device, such as a laptop or a palm pilot, for example. These are well-known interface circuits and hardware components.
A second element of the present invention is a printer, generally designated by the reference numeral 70. Printer 70 has an input/output circuit 72, an input buffer 74, a processing circuit 76, and a memory circuit 78. In addition, many printers have a processing capability known as “raster image processing,” which is also referred to as a “RIP processor,” designated by the reference numeral 80 on
A typical printer 70 will include some type of print media input device, such as an input paper tray, that feeds sheets of print media to a printing station, such as a print engine of a laser printer or a printhead of an ink jet printer. (On the other hand, the print media input device could merely be a hand-fed opening in the printer's housing.) The printing station will apply some type of image-forming material to the sheets of print media, as that print media passes through the printing station. In many modern sheet printers, the image-forming material will be toner (for most laser printers), ink (for ink jet printers), or some other colorant material such as colored wax for some modern jet-type or nozzle-type printing devices. For the purposes of this patent document, all references to a print engine or printhead will also encompass other types of printing station devices, including those that dispense toner, ink, wax, or other compounds or materials that could be developed in the future. Moreover, the principles of the present invention apply both to monochrome printers and multi-color printers.
After the sheets of print media pass through the printing station of printer 70, the sheets will be directed to an output pathway. A typical output pathway will lead to an “output area,” such as an output paper tray, or a surface of the printer's housing where the sheets of print media will end up, essentially in a stack. This form of output pathway is designated by the reference numeral 86 on
A second type of output pathway could lead to a “duplexing station” that can flip the sheets of print media to their opposite side and then send the sheets back through the printing station so that their opposite side may be printed. Such duplexers are common in many modern laser printers, and could be provided in virtually any type of printing apparatus. The use of double-sided printing is thus a conventional methodology, and the present invention can use duplexing operations in a new way, as discussed below in greater detail.
Most printers have some type of operator panel, which is generally designated by the reference numeral 90 on
It will be understood that the printer 70, and personal computer 10 could have many more components than described above, or perhaps could be missing some of the circuits described above, while still falling within the principles of the present invention. Some of the functions that are performed in the present invention could be performed by either the PC 10 or the printer 70. Both devices typically have image processing capabilities, although the present trend is to have the more time-intensive processing functions performed by a PC (including laptops or palm pilots, for example), which will allow a printer to use a less powerful (and hence less expensive) processing circuit.
Usually a printing system requires a “source” to originate a print job, and that source often is a PC or other processing device. (It could be a Fax machine, or a copier, for example, that can output an image to a PC, and/or to a printer.) While printers can produce certain images without any outside data source, such internally-produced images tend to be “test” images when setting up the printer, for example. When an external image source is used, the data must be communicated to the printer; in
It will be understood that the communications link can be in many forms, such as a parallel printer cable, a USB cable, or even a non-contact optical transmission/reception system (using modulated infrared light, for example). In modern printers, a typical input port could be a USB port or a network ETHERNET port, but also other types of ports can be used, such as parallel ports and serial ports. The input buffer 40 can be part of the overall system RAM of the main memory 14, or it can be a separate set of memory elements or data registers, if desired. A print job arriving at printer 70 could thus come from a dedicated PC (such as the PC 10), or from a PC sending print data over a communications network, or from a network server over a communications network, for example.
It will also be understood that the printer 70 will not necessarily need all of the processing circuits that are depicted on
Referring now to
The sides of the stack 100 are also designated by letters and reference numerals in
As can be seen from the above description and the view of
Each of the corners of the individual sheets in the stack 100 will be placed upon one another as the stack is formed. These corners end up comprising a line segment in essence, and these lines segments are designated by the reference numerals 130, 132, 134, and 136 on
Referring now to
Referring now to
Referring now to
The “left” and “right” stack margins 154 and 156 are also potentially user-controlled in size, and these margins are similar to the left margin and right margin of a typical print job that will be printed on the main surface of a sheet of print media. For the “left” margin 154 and the “right” margin 156, these are not the same thing as top and bottom stack margins as described above, which represent the top or bottom margins that constitute sheets that have no edge printing whatsoever. Instead, the left and right stack margins 154 and 156 represent portions along the edge of the individual sheets of print media where no edge data is placed intentionally, but there can be some edge data printed on these sheets. This leaves a rectangle inside the overall larger rectangle that represents the physical stack of sheets. This inner rectangle is designated by the reference numeral 158, and thereby represents the “side area” in which edge data can be printed. Once again, if the user decides that the margins are to be zero in size, then the inner rectangle 158 would have the same dimensions as the overall size of the sheets of print media, i.e., the side 114. It is assumed that most users will choose to have some type of top and bottom stack margins (150 and 152) and left and right stack margins (154 and 156) for many applications using the edge printing methodology of the present invention. Of course, this stack margin concept is not a requirement.
Referring now to
In
The actual images that are printed along the sides of a stack of sheet media can be supplied by the printer manufacturer, if desired, or they can be supplied by the user. If the word LEXMARK is used (as in
On the other hand, if the user supplies the graphics, such as the designation USER A1001 as in
Referring now to
The bottom side 116 has two sets of edge data, 182 and 184. And the left side 110 has two sets of edge data 170 and 172. As before, this edge data can be at various heights on the stack of individual sheets of print media.
For the purposes of discussion in this patent document, the printing on the large surfaces will be referred to as “face printing,” and the printing along the four edges of the sheet of media will be referred to as “side printing.” It is clear from viewing
In
Referring now to
Assuming the user has selected some type of edge printing on the side of the stack of sheet media, the logic flow will travel from the YES output of decision step 210 to another decision step 220. At step 220, the system determines if the user wishes to print on side A. If so, a step 222 is executed, which allows the user to determine formatting options, such as the side orientation or placement of the edge data, stack margins, and rotation (side orientation) of the edge data to be printed along the side A.
A step 224 now is executed, where the user can determine whether a factory graphic will be used, or a user-determined graphic. If a user-determined graphic is used, then a step 226 allows the user to build a bitmap image and store it as an image A. This image A will be used as part (or all) of the edge data to be printed on side A. Step 226 allows a user to build a bitmap image if the user has decided to use his or her own user-determined graphic. On the other hand, if a factory graphic is selected, then step 226 will build a bitmap based on that factory graphic. In either case, the bitmap will be built and stored as image A. Image A will be divided into individual pageline data, so that each of the sheets of print media that will be part of this print job will have the appropriate edge data along side A printed when the appropriate sheet passes through the print engine (or printhead) of a laser printer (or ink jet printer), for example.
The logic flow is now directed to a decision step 230, where the system determines whether or not any edge data will be printed on side B. The logic flow would also have arrived here if the user had not selected any edge data for side A. If side B is to have edge data printed thereon, then the user has the same choices as described above for side A. For side B, these are the steps 232, 234, and 236, where the user first determines formatting options, then determines a user-defined graphic or use of a factory graphic, and if a user graphic is used, step 236 allows the user to build the bitmap and store it as image B. The logic flow now is directed to a decision step 240.
After side B has been processed or passed by (depending on the result at step 230), the system now determines whether or not edge data will be printed on side C at step 240. If the answer is YES, then similar functions will be executed at the steps 242, 244, and 246, including the formatting options, the determination of use of a factory graphic or a user-determined graphic, and building a bitmap and storing it as image C. The logic flow is now directed to a decision step 250.
At decision step 250, the system determines whether or not any edge data will be printed on side D. If YES, then steps 252, 254, and 256 will be executed, which will determine the formatting options, determine whether a user-determined graphic or a factory graphic is used, and finally a bitmap image will be built and stored as image D. After this has occurred, the logic flow is directed to the page counter step 212. At this time, all of the edge data will have been processed, and the page counter numeric value will be passed on to the remaining portions of the flow chart, on
Referring now to
At step 264, the system will determine whether there are any user-determined graphics or factory graphics to be used. If so, that information will be passed to step 266. At step 266, the bitmap image is built and stored as image E. It should be noted that the steps 262, 264, and 266 are essentially well known in the art for printing on any surface of any sheet of print media by any modem printer that receives or builds bitmap images, and prints them.
In a step 270, the system determines whether or not any image data will be printed on the surface F. Referring back to
At this stage in describing the flow charts of
In the present invention, the image data for the images A, B, C, and D are integrated into the image data for the surfaces E and F. If, for example, only surface E was going to be printed for a particular sheet of print media, then the image data for images A-D would be integrated with the image data for surface E, so that the entire print job will be executed in one pass through the print engine (or printhead) of a laser printer (or an ink jet printer), for example. On the other hand, if both surfaces of a particular sheet of print media were to be printed, then the side data A-D could be printed in either pass, either for printing the surface E or the surface F, through the print engine (or printhead) of a printer. As a further alternative, side data (or “edge data”) could be printed on both surfaces E and F for the same sheet of print media. In that instance, there would be two sets of pageline data for that particular sheet (i.e., one pageline data set for the top surface E and a second pageline data set for the bottom surface F).
It may be preferred that the side data for images A-D always be printed on the surface E pass, if duplex printing is going to be used. However, if only the back or rear surface (i.e., surface F) was going to be printed for a particular sheet of print media, then the edge data for sides A-D would preferably be printed at the same time as the “back” surface F data, so that this sheet would only need one pass through the print engine. In a realistic duplex printer, this particular sheet of print media may have to go through the printhead or print engine twice, even though the front surface E is not to be printed at all. This would be a function of a particular design of a duplex printer, and this “double passthrough” step will not always be necessary for each print job where only the back surface F is to be printed.
The logic flow has now arrived at a step 280, where the page count's row of bitmap data from the images A, B, C, and D are merged into the “surface” bitmap data for images E and F. This is the step where the edge data that has been broken into individual pageline data will be integrated into the “standard” bitmap data for either the front surface (image E) or the rear surface (image F) for each appropriate sheet of the print job. Once this has been accomplished, the images can be printed at a step 282, by directing the sheet of print media through the print engine of a laser printer, or through a printhead of an ink jet printer, for example. A step 284 now increments the page counter value.
The logic flow now is directed to a decision step 290 that determines whether or not there is another page to be printed in this particular print job. If the answer is NO, then this print job is finished, and the logic flow is directed to a “DONE” step 292. On the other hand, if there are more pages, then the logic flow is directed out the YES output from step 290, back toward decision step 260.
The image data for the sides A-D was already determined for all of the sheets of this print job in the logic steps on page 9 of this flow chart. Therefore, the appropriate edge data will be available in memory and waiting until the correct page count has been reached to be integrated into the image data for the surfaces E and/or F. In this manner, the image processing is streamlined for the print job, because all of the edge data is processed at one time, before any of the surface image processing begins. It should be noted, however, that an alternative methodology that is not streamlined in this manner could be implemented, and would still fall within the principles of the present invention.
It will be understood that the term “print media” herein refers to a sheet or roll of material that has toner or some other “printable” material applied thereto by a print engine, such as that found in a laser printer, or other type of electrophotographic printer. Alternatively, the print media represents a sheet or roll of material that has ink or some other “printable” material applied thereto by a print engine or printhead, such as that found in an ink jet printer, or which is applied by another type of printing apparatus that projects a solid or liquified substance of one or more colors from nozzles or the like onto the sheet or roll of material. Print media is sometimes referred to as “print medium,” and both terms have the same meaning with regard to the present invention, although the term print media is typically used in this patent document. Print media can represent a sheet or roll of plain paper, bond paper, transparent film (often used to make overhead slides, for example), or any other type of printable sheet or roll material.
It will also be understood that the logical operations described in relation to the flow charts of
It will be further understood that the precise logical operations depicted in the flow charts of
As used herein, the term “proximal” can have a meaning of closely positioning one physical object with a second physical object, such that the two objects are perhaps adjacent to one another, although it is not necessarily required that there be no third object positioned therebetween. In the present invention, there may be instances in which a “male locating structure” is to be positioned “proximal” to a “female locating structure.” In general, this could mean that the two male and female structures are to be physically abutting one another, or this could mean that they are “mated” to one another by way of a particular size and shape that essentially keeps one structure oriented in a predetermined direction and at an X-Y (e.g., horizontal and vertical) position with respect to one another, regardless as to whether the two male and female structures actually touch one another along a continuous surface. Or, two structures of any size and shape (whether male, female, or otherwise in shape) may be located somewhat near one another, regardless if they physically abut one another or not; such a relationship could still be termed “proximal.” Moreover, the term “proximal” can also have a meaning that relates strictly to a single object, in which the single object may have two ends, and the “distal end” is the end that is positioned somewhat farther away from a subject point (or area) of reference, and the “proximal end” is the other end, which would be positioned somewhat closer to that same subject point (or area) of reference.
All documents cited in the Detailed Description of the Invention are, in relevant part, incorporated herein by reference; the citation of any document is not to be construed as an admission that it is prior art with respect to the present invention.
The foregoing description of a preferred embodiment of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Any examples described or illustrated herein are intended as non-limiting examples, and many modifications or variations of the examples, or of the preferred embodiment(s), are possible in light of the above teachings, without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. The embodiment(s) was chosen and described in order to illustrate the principles of the invention and its practical application to thereby enable one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to particular uses contemplated. It is intended to cover in the appended claims all such changes and modifications that are within the scope of this invention.
