International Business Machines Corporation

Christopher Robert Smith

Gregory Paul Andrews

Clifton Malcolm Nock

Jacob A Kugel

James L Wright

Carl Clair Pecinovsky

A method, apparatus, system, and signal-bearing medium that, in an embodiment, receive vendor resource data and vendor logic from vendors, receive customer resource data from a customer, build a page based on the customer resource data and the vendor resource data, send the page to the customer, and invoke the vendor logic in response to a request from the customer via the page. The page may describe both the current inventory of resources at the customer (based on the customer resource data) and resources that are available for purchase from the vendors (based on the vendor resource data). In various embodiments, the vendor logic purchases the resource from the vendor, requests information from the vendor, or registers the customer with the vendor. If a determination is made that a new resource is needed, either by the customer or by analysis of the customer resource data and rules for purchasing new resources, then a purchase request is sent to the vendor for the new resource.

Inventory management of resources

A digital printing device is manually moved across a medium, and automatically prints an image on the medium by selectively engaging one or more print elements at positions corresponding to the image. Preferably, the printing device comprises a multi-element print head a pair of optical sensors which provide position and orientation data. A controller causes the print head to print the image responsive to the location and orientation determined by the optical sensors. The printing device may be hand-held and integrated into a personal digital assistant device.

Manually operated digital printing device

Two computer systems communicate with each other using active datastreams that each identify executable code for sending and receiving the corresponding active datastream, and for performing any processing required by the active datastream. Each active datastream also includes a unique datastream identifier. When a first computer system (source) has a request to send to a second computer system (target), the source computer system creates an active datastream object that represents the request. Once the active datastream object is created, a method on the active datastream object is invoked to send the active datastream object to the target. A datastream factory on the target reads the datastream identifier of the transmitted active datastream object, determines from the datastream identifier the class of active datastream object being received, and creates a new instance of the class corresponding to the datastream identifier. A datastream receive mechanism on the target is a method on the new instance, which is invoked to cause the instance to populate itself from the active datastream object received from the source. Logic for replying to the request may also be provided as one or more methods defined on the active datastream class.

Apparatus and method for communicating between computer systems using active datastreams

A method and computer program product are provided for implementing text conversion table compression. For implementing text conversion table compression, a character sequence is loaded from a full-size conversion table. The character sequence is checked for one of plurality of character patterns. Responsive to identifying one of the plurality of character patterns, the character sequence is compressed into a compressed conversion table for the identified one character pattern. Responsive to failing to identify one of the plurality of character patterns, the character sequence is copied into the compressed conversion table. The character sequence from the full-size conversion table is checked for one of the plurality of character patterns including a repeating character sequence, a ramping character sequence, and a repeating high byte character sequence.

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Christopher Robert Smith