Lexmark International, Inc.

International Business Machines Corporation

Joseph P Kolb

John K Brown, Iii

Lynn M Oliver

James Francis Webb

Gail Marie Songer

Edward William Yohon, Jr

James C Buchanan

Stephen R Troyer

Rickey Carter Brown

Lynn M Olivers

Mark A Robb

Kenneth R Woodruff

A printer communication system includes a printer (,) having a printer controller (,) with memory (,) and a processor (,). The printer (,) receives and transmits information through a port (,) to which a host computer (,) is coupled. The printer controller (,) may be programmed to be operable to receive configuration-related commands through the port (,), process the configuration-related commands received by the port immediately provided that a command is a safe command to process while the printer (,) is busy processing a print job. The printer (,) may respond to the host computer (,) by indicating that the change was successful or that the printer (,) must be taken offline before the change may be made. The printer controller (,) is programmed to be remotely taken offline and put back online. A symbol set list command may be used by printer (,) to send symbol sets to host computer (,). Font information may also be sent to a host computer (,) by a printer (,) so that a font table including associated symbol sets may be constructed in computer (,).

Printer communication system and method

A method for smoothing expanded bitmap data is provided for use in laser printers or computers that use two-state, two-dimensional image data created by word processors, computer-aided drafting systems, and the like. The method would typically be utilized within a laser printer at its common graphics engine, just after the input source data has been rasterized. The source bitmap data having low-resolution pels is first divided into higher resolution pels, and the appearance of its diagonal lines would otherwise have a jagged appearance if such data is not smoothed. Once the expansion factor is determined, the present method takes pel data in word-sized portions and performs (in an Outer Loop) various logical operations upon these words of data to smooth adjacent rows of the higher-resolution pels. Each pair of words of pels is evaluated through a series of logical operations in an Inner Loop, before indexing to the next group of pels in the same row and starting a new Outer Loop. Once the end of the line has been reached, the method automatically seeks data from two rows of pels at a Y-axis position that is one step lower with respect to the low-resolution pels from the source data file. The same logical operations are again performed on each pair of words of pels until the entire line has been smoothed. These operations continue until the entire bitmap has been smoothed, and the logical operations occur very quickly so as to not slow down the overall operation of the laser printer.

Method and apparatus for smoothing an expanded bitmap for two-state

Flash memory (12) is added to a printer and fonts and macros received at connector (14) are stored under operator control. All data received is first processed under by the printer data processor controller (8) using dynamic memory (10). Printers which respond to more than one language store the downloaded information before termination of a language mode erases the DRAM.

Printer with flash memory

A printer receives and stores coded text character data (22, 23) and also receives graphic image commands in the same datastream. The printer creates a raster image (24) of the graphic image commands and stores the resultant raster image. When rasterizing a page (21), the printer rasterizes the text character data utilizing stored raster fonts and rasterizes the graphic image data from the stored raster image.

Merging plotter graphics within a text environment on a page printer

A matrix printer (1) or other imaging device in a memory (7) stores fonts of character data (11, 11') in defining bit maps for each character of the fonts. The memory also stores shift values for each font which vary with the nature of the font for double strike, emphasize, and combined double strike and emphasize, from which character bit maps are modified before printing by being shifted and overlayed. Improved images for double strike and emphasize are achieved, and the combined double strike and emphasize need not be the overlay of double strike and emphasize.

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Lexington, KY, United States of America

Joseph P Kolb