Eastman-Kodak Company

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Ag

Nexpress Digital LLC

Nexpress Solutions, Inc.

Heidelberg Digital L.l.c.

David R Hansen

Robert K Holzwarth

Douglas B Beaudet

Tomas Roztocil

Michael P Tompkins

Russell L Godshalk

Karl Heinz Kremer

Jennifer S DeYoung

Charles M Tufano

Michael D Swinarski

Ronald F Savino

A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality to create, manage and manipulate compound documents as ordered collections of documents.

System and method for implementing compound documents in a production printing workflow

A system and method for interfacing with production scanners is disclosed. A driver is provided which enables real-time communications between a scanning application and scanner devices. The driver includes an application program interface which is coupled with one or more personality modules, one for each scanner device. The personality module facilitates the command and control of a particular scanner device. The application program interface can communicate with more than one personality module at any given time to enable parallel simultaneous operation of multiple scanner devices. The driver delivers resultant image data from the scans to a commonly accessible buffer where the scanning application can asynchronously retrieve it.

System and method for interfacing with a production scanner

System and method for interfacing with multiple production scanners

A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality for efficient page level modifications to documents at the job preparation stage. This functionality allows such modifications to be easily made to selected pages, shared among different documents, and collected into standardized libraries.

System and method for representing and managing pages in a production printing workflow

A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality for efficient page level modifications to documents at the job preparation stage. This functionality allows such modifications to be easily made to selected pages and visually verified by displaying visual representations of the modifications on visual representations of the pages. In particular, the insertion and attributes of ordered media, such as tab separator pages, is visually represented. This allows an operator to visually verify ordered media ordering and placement and coordinate with the production output device to properly insert and efficiently utilize the ordered media.

System and method for visual representation of tabs in a production printing workflow

A system and method are disclosed for providing production printing instructions for a printed end document to a job preparation station. The printed end document is made up of a plurality of other documents received from the customer which are to be inserted in a predefined order and in a predefined format. The job submission station includes a computer and a receiver which receives the plurality of documents in electronic format. An input device, such as a keyboard or a mouse, is used to provide the job submission station operator with the ability to provide input instructions to the computer. The operator uses the input device to arrange all of the documents into an electronic folder, such as a directory, and to arrange the documents in the order in which the documents are to be printed to compose the end document. The computer is programmed to automatically convert the document into a ready for printer format file and merged the plurality of documents together to create a single document. The computer also generates an electronic job ticket that provides global attributes for the printed end product.

Automated job creation for job preparation

An electrophotographic copier/printer reproduction apparatus includes a marking engine that has a job image buffer (JIB) that queues jobs from a scanner and a raster image processor (RIP). The scanner supports the copier function of the apparatus and processes original documents by scanning the images thereon to form copier image data that is processed and stored in the JIB. The RIP processes printer data from a computer and transmits this data also to the JIB for further processing and storage. The RIP operates in two printer modes. In a first printer mode, data is sent to the JIB as it is RIPed and no provision is made for an interrupt for a copier job nor can a copy job be scanned in. This provides maximum efficiency for printer operation. In a second, less efficient, printer mode the JIB stores only a few and preferably one-print job at a time to leave room in the JIB for scanning in a copy job via an interrupt operation. A criterion for switching between the two printer modes is time of day, print job backlog or coding of a print job.

Copier/printer with improved productivity

A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality for efficient page level modifications to documents at the job preparation stage. This functionality allows such modifications to be easily made to selected pages and visually verified by displaying visual representations of the modifications on visual representations of the pages.

System and method for visual representation of pages in a production printing workflow

A method and system are provided for scanning a page having different image attributes on different zones of the page. The method and system use a scanner having a resident image buffer and scanning circuitry including a plurality of scanning algorithms having optimum rendering characteristics for imaging images with a plurality of different image attributes. The scanner scans the page and an image of the page is provided on a display. The operator uses an input device to designate a zone of said page on said display. The data from said scanned page is stored in a buffer resident on said scanner prior to rendering of said data. The operator also designates a selected one of said algorithms to be applied to the designated zone. The scanner applies the designated algorithm to the data stored in the resident image buffer for the designated zone. The scanner renders an image of the data stored in the resident image buffer.

Interactive hardcopy re-sampling without re-scanning

A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow.

System and method for representing and controlling a production printing workflow

A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job originations job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. Further the disclosed system facilitates efficient use of output resources by optimally utilizing resources with different output capabilities to produce output optimized for those capabilities. Further the disclosed system and method facilitates seamless integration and automation of dividing production among multiple output resources and re-assembling disparate production into the finished product.

Efficient use of print resources within a job stream

A copier and/or printer apparatus that supports plural interrupts. When a job is tagged as an interrupt job, the queueing of jobs switches from FIFO to LIFO in order to process the interrupt job as soon as prescribed. Another job may interrupt the first interrupt job still adhering to the LIFO operation making it the active job as soon as prescribed. When this second interrupt job is completed, the first interrupt job resumes. When the first interrupt job is completed, the job that was interrupted resumes. The original job that was interrupted may have been the first-out job of a FIFO job queue. Interrupting an interrupt is thus possible in an electronic copier and/or printer. The limiting factor is the maximum number of jobs that memory space has been allocated for on power-up of the machine. There thus may be supported interrupting a 'normal' job, interrupting a queue of 'normal' jobs, proofing a page, and proofing a page within an interrupt job (2 levels of interrupt). With the apparatus configured as a copier/printer, the machine thus supports interrupting a print job with a copy job, interrupting a copy job that interrupted a print job (2 levels of interrupt) and proofing a page within a job that interrupted a copy job that interrupted a print job (3 levels of interrupt).

Copier/printer operating with interrupts

Reproduction apparatus is disclosed having at least one image signal generator, a multiple page buffer memory for storing the image signals, and a writer for forming images from the page buffer memory. Upon the occurrence of a malfunction in the writer, operation of the image signal generator is continued only until the first to occur of (a) all of the original pages have been stored in the multiple page buffer memory or (b) the multiple page buffer memory is filled. Upon the occurrence of a malfunction in the signal generator, operation of the writer is continued until the next page to be written has not been stored in the buffer memory.

Growing community of inventors

Honeoye Falls, NY, United States of America

David R Hansen