International Business Machines Corporation

Frankie Sherwood Shook

David Earl Stone

Reinhard Heinrich Hohensee

James Warden Marlin

Ted A Rehage

Weilin Chen

David E Finlay

Ronald Dean Parrish

Harry Reese Lewis, Jr

Kent S Norgren

Jagdish Mooljee Nagda

Kenneth A Bushaw

David Joseph Shields

Roger K Debry

George A Bigelow

William I Branson

A Thin Layer Protocol.TM. adds three new data stream commands--the WOCC, WOC and END commands--to the Intelligent Printer Data Stream.TM. ('IPDS.TM.') structured page description language. The WOCC command creates a container for encapsulating a foreign print object, such as a PostScript.TM. or PCL.TM. command stream The container includes information identifying the type of object it contains. The WOC command provides the foreign print object data for the container and includes information defining the length of the object. The END command unambiguously locates the end of the container to prevent confusion of encapsulated binary data with escape sequences. Long objects are partitioned using separate WOC commands, each providing the length of its partition. The object type information enables the printer to easily invoke an appropriate language interpreter. Alternatively, the printer may use the object type and object length information to skip over an object which it does not recognize.

Thin layer protocol.TM. for printer management

A computer-controlled printing system includes a host computer, an intelligent printer and an intelligent post printer processor. The print job is controlled by defining print data, printer control data and printer post processor control data in a print data stream from the host computer. The print data and printer control data are read at the intelligent printer. The intelligent printer executes the print control data to print the print data on a print medium. The printer also determines if there is post processor control data in the print data stream and, if so, sends the post processor control data from the printer to the intelligent post processor. The post processor reads the post processor control data, and executes the post processor control data to perform selected modification of the print medium. Selectable modifications of the print medium at the post processor include predetermined fixed printing of images, symbols or text, perforation of the print medium, cutting of the print medium, or user defined modifications of the print medium.

Selectable modification of medium in a printer system

A printing system wherein pre-printing commands, print data, and post-printing commands are nested in a data stream, the commands bounding a group of print data pages in the data stream, the group of pages containing one or more page data blocks, and the commands defining one or more operations to be performed relative to the group of pages. Groups of pages are handled in accordance with the commands in the data stream, and the commands are buffered while a print processor processes the group of pages to form printed sheets therefrom.

System for selectively processing nested print commands and buffered

A common memory interfacing circuit and method for coupling a memory to either a synchronous bus or an asynchronous bus. Synchronizing means are provided for synchronizing memory request signals with a local clock when the interfacing circuit is coupled to an asynchronous bus. The interface circuit responds to signals from the memory when internal memory operation has been completed and generates an acknowledge signal to send to the requesting bus. To simplify the common interface circuit, a synchronous protocol for information exchange between system components is made similar to an asynchronous protocol.

Memory controller with synchronous or asynchronous interface

A document distribution terminal is organized with two supervisory processing units, one to control the data entry and data printing and the other to control the terminal. Each of these processing units only performs control functions. All of the data processing is performed by various specialized devices preparing the document data for transmission or for printing. Further, the terminal is organized with two interfaces and an adapter coupling the two interfaces. The terminal-controlling processing unit supervises one interface that interconnects all of the specialized devices. The other processing unit, that controls the data entry and data printing devices, supervises the second interface. Once the supervisory processing units have set up a job in the terminal, the data transfer across the two interfaces is substantially under the control of logic in the adapter.

Modular, processor-controlled document distribution terminal

A buffer storage apparatus has two buffers alternating between receiving and supplying data signals. The buffer functions are alternated between the buffers when one of the buffers is empty and another one of the buffers has received a predetermined number of signals even though that data-receiving buffer is not yet full. With data transferred in blocks of data bytes, switching between buffers occurs on the predetermined address boundaries of the data blocks. Alternation of functions between the buffers can occur at any one of a plurality of address boundaries within the data-receiving one of the buffers. By using a plurality of such buffer storage apparatus to connect individual data burst units to a plural-port high-speed common unit, each data burst unit has a high speed buffered access to the high speed common unit.

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Longmont, CO, United States of America

Frankie Sherwood Shook