Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Ricoh Corporation

Hitoshi Sekine

Yue Liu

Yao-Tian Wang

Senthil K Selvaraj

Zhenning Xiao

Tetsuro Motoyama

Alain Regnier

Soiba Mohammad

Lifen Tian

Yi Ding

Kurt Knodt

Ronald Marc Conescu

David A Williams

Loc T Le

Bin Li

Yaotian Wang

Junichi Ota

An approach is provided for printing electronic documents that provides support for all types of printer models and PDL. A printer driver is configured to interact with Web print services that provide model-specific device capabilities and render PDL on behalf of the printer driver. A printer driver receives application data from an application program. The printer driver causes the application data to be transmitted to one or more Web print services that render the application data and generate print data in a format supported by a specified printing device. The printer driver receives the print data from the one or more Web print services and causes the print data to be transmitted to the specified printing device, wherein processing of the print data at the specified printing device causes a printed version of the electronic document to be generated.

Web services printer driver

Methods, devices, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media are disclosed for allowing video conferencing participants to maintain eye contact with each other. A display is disposed between a first video capture device and a second video capture device. The video capture devices capture images of a subject video conferencing participant. Images from the first capture device are associated with images from the second video capture device for transmission over a network to a video conferencing agent of a peer video conferencing participant. Images of the peer video conferencing participant are received over the network and displayed on the display that is disposed between the video capture devices. The video capture devices may be disposed at a height that is approximately even with a focal point of the subject video conferencing participant such that the subject video conferencing participant appears, to the peer video conferencing participant, to be making eye contact with the peer video conferencing participant when he is looking at the images of the peer video conferencing participant on the display.

Three-dimensional video conferencing system with eye contact

A multi-layer workflow architecture for a print shop is disclosed. The workflow architecture includes a workflow front end, service bus, and service providers. The workflow front end provides an interface to print shop operators. The service providers are each associated with a device in the print shop. The service bus represents the layer between the workflow front end and the service providers. In operation, the service providers report device capabilities for devices to the service bus. The workflow front end receives the device capabilities from the service bus, and provides the device capabilities to a user to allow the user to define a job ticket based on the device capabilities. The service bus identifies the processes defined in the job ticket, and identifies the service providers operable to provide the processes. The service bus then routes process messages to the identified service providers to execute the processes on the devices.

Multi-layer print workflow architecture job ticket generation utilizing user selectable real-time device capabilities

Systems and methods are disclosed for enabling legacy devices to consistently and reliably operate within a distributed scan environment using proxy scan services. A proxy scan service is communicatively coupled between a scan management service and a scanner. Information transmitted between the scan management service and the scanner is intercepted at the proxy scan service, where the scan management service recognizes a first format message for the information and the scanner recognizes a second format message for the information. The information is converted at the proxy scan service between the first format message and the second format message. The transmission between the scan management service and the scanner is completed using the converted information.

Methods and systems to provide proxy scan services to legacy devices

Systems and methods are disclosed for enabling remote printing services to consistently obtain and utilize print capabilities of printing devices across a wide variety of connection topologies. A client device retrieves the print capabilities from one or more printing devices selected for printing a document. The document and the print capabilities are transmitted to a web print service for rending the document. The web print service generates a print job based on the document and the print capabilities of the printing device selected for printing the document. The web print service provides the print job to the selected printing device for subsequent printing.

Methods and systems for providing device specific print options to remote printing services

In an embodiment, a data processing system comprises device driver generation logic that is encoded in one or more computer-readable storage media for execution and which when executed is operable to perform receiving a first capability description from a computer peripheral device, wherein the first capability description describes one or more capabilities of the computer peripheral device; receiving a generic device driver file; receiving configuration data; automatically generating a device driver for the computer peripheral device and for a computer operating system based on the first capability description, the generic device driver file and the configuration data; device job processing logic that is configured to receive a request to use the computer peripheral device, to request and receive current first capability description from the computer peripheral device at the time of the request, to generate based on the current first capability description and send to the computer peripheral device job ticket data that describes a job for the computer peripheral device to perform, and to provide job data formatted in a page description language to the computer peripheral device.

Automatically generating capability-based computer peripheral device drivers

Systems and methods presented herein provide for printer discovery with a webpage such that a client device may print the webpage via a remote printing service. The client device retrieves a webpage with an internet browser. The webpage includes a printer detection module that detects printing devices of one data network and transfers their printing characteristics to a print server in another data network. The printer detection module is accessible through the webpage. The printer detection module allows for the selection of one or more of the printing devices. The client device transfers the webpage (or the URL of the webpage) to the print server to render the webpage for printing on the selected printing device. The print server renders the webpage according to the printing characteristics of the selected printing device and then transfers the rendered webpage to the selected printing device via the client device for printing.

Printer discovery within a web page

Job schedulers and associated methods of scheduling jobs are disclosed. A job scheduler in one embodiment includes a job queue and a schedule processor. The job queue receives and stores a plurality of jobs to be executed on the devices, such as in a print shop. Each of the jobs defines one or more process to be performed for the job. Each of the processes in a job defines one or more operating parameters for the devices. To schedule the jobs that are stored in the job queue, the schedule processor identifies the processes from the jobs that define one or more common (i.e., the same or equivalent) operating parameters for a device. The schedule processor then schedules the jobs for execution based on the processes that define common operating parameters.

Job scheduling in a workflow architecture related to printing

Methods and structure for improved client/server program communication by transmitting dynamically maintained service capabilities information from the server program to the client program. The client program generates a service request based on the received service capabilities information. Since the service capabilities information is retrieved from the server program and is dynamically maintained by the server program, the client program need not be updated when available services from the server program are modified. In one exemplary embodiment, the client program may be a print application client program and the server program may be a print server program. The print client program retrieves the current printer device capabilities (service capabilities information) and generates a print job ticket (service request) based on the retrieved, dynamically maintained printer device capability information. The job ticket is then transmitted to the server program to cause the printing of the document specified by the job ticket.

Methods and structure for utilizing dynamic capabilities in client/server software interaction

Methods and structures for processing JDF elements for a printing system by translating JDF elements into corresponding command language strings for output to a printer. The command language strings are associated with a priority value. The generated command language strings are output in an order based on the associated priority values so that the intended semantic and scope of the JDF elements may be maintained in the generated command language strings. The translation may use one or more translation tables to match a JDF element path name for a received JDF element with one or more entries in one or more translation tables. The matching table entries may specify a corresponding command language string and a priority value to be output to a printer. The generated command language strings and associated priority values may be stored in a memory structure to permit output in the desired order.

Methods and structures for converting JDF information into commands for a printer

Using techniques described herein, separate 'job ticket' data and printable data may be generated automatically from a PDL-compliant print stream. According to one technique, an automated mechanism receives a PDL-compliant print stream as input. The PDL-compliant print stream describes both printable content and control data, as described above. The automated mechanism separates the printable content data from the control data. The automated mechanism may translate the printable content data from a printer definition language into a format that is designed to be understood by human beings. The automated mechanism generates two separate 'packages' of data; one &#x201c;package&#x201d; describes the printable content, and the other &#x201c;package,&#x201d; the &#x201c;job ticket,&#x201d; describes the control data. Thus, in one embodiment of the invention, the automated mechanism separates the PDL-compliant print stream into a &#x201c;job ticket&#x201d; and printable content data. The &#x201c;job ticket&#x201d; may be stored separately from the printable content data.

Translating PDL-based print stream to job ticket-based print stream

In an embodiment, a computer-implemented method comprises sending, to a computer peripheral device, a request to obtain capabilities of the computer peripheral device; receiving a first capability description from the computer peripheral device, wherein the first capability description describes one or more capabilities, features or functions of the device at the time of the request; creating one or more graphical user interface (GUI) elements based upon the first capability description and causing displaying the GUI elements; receiving user input representing one or more selections of the GUI elements; creating job ticket data that describes a job for the computer peripheral device to perform, based on the GUI elements that were selected as represented in the user input; sending the job ticket data to the peripheral device; wherein the job ticket data describes one or more device settings that the computer peripheral device can transform to device commands.

Capability-based control device driver of a computer peripheral device

A method and apparatus is provided for automatically storing and managing digital data. Digital data is periodically received from a variety of sources. Example digital data include, without limitation, facsimile data, scanned document data, copier data, printer data and email data. The received digital data is automatically stored on a WORM storage device. The data stored on the WORM storage device may be automatically indexed and search queries processed against the index to locate digital data stored on the WORM storage device. Other embodiments include the use of meta data and an automatic watchdog process may be employed to periodically process search queries against the data stored on the WORM storage device.

Method and apparatus for storing and managing data

A method, system and program product for implementing communication to download a driver to a target device or business office appliance using an electronic network message or e-mail. A newest driver for the device/appliance may be downloaded from, for example, a service center connected to the device/appliance through a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the Internet. The device driver of a client computer using the device/appliance may be updated from the target device/appliance if it is determined that a user of the client computer desires to update the driver of the client computer.

Method and system for updating the device driver of a business office appliance

A method, system and program product for implementing communication to transfer a message for display to a user to a target application unit using an electronic network message or e-mail. A message for display to a user of the application unit may be transferred from, for example, a message center connected to the application unit through a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the Internet. The message may be displayed on a display window of the application unit when it is determined that a requested task of the application unit will require more than a predetermined amount of time, or the message may be displayed while the application unit is in an idle state.

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Hitoshi Sekine