Hewlett-packard Company

Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

Marcus A Smith

Jeffrey L Trask

Christopher T Creel

Brian E Hoffmann

John F Mauzey

DeVerl N Stokes

David S Ezekiel

Jason Main

A computer system includes workstations and a peripheral having a processor. The workstations and the peripheral communicate via email over a network. Email messages include commands and requests that control access to status and reconfiguration of the peripheral, establish subscriptions to status of the peripheral, and invoke reconfiguration of the peripheral. Email messages also include publications of the status of the peripheral according to reporting criteria. Reporting criteria identify a report of process or state variables, define publication criteria for directing the monitoring of state variables, and define delivery criteria to avoid network undesirable network traffic and irritating addressees of subscriptions.

System and method for monitoring a computer system process or peripheral

A system for reducing memory resources required to process a print job having common page print data. Reduction of memory resources is accomplished by first analyzing pages from an application for common page aspects and unique page aspects. The common page aspects are then converted to common page print data and the unique page aspects are converted to unique page print data. The common page print data is identified in a manner allowing for an optimized form of the common page print data to be created. An optimized form of the common page print data is then created and stored. The common page print data is merged with the unique page print data in an appropriate manner. Each page is then printed. The invention has particular benefits for presentation applications using the same background for each page in a set. Other applications can also benefit.

Method and apparatus for reducing printer memory

A method and apparatus enables derivation of a bitmap representation of an image, where the image includes a region filled with a pattern. The method includes the steps of: accessing an original pattern bitmap segment from within the image; translating a copy of the original pattern bitmap segment to the origin of the bitmap representation of the image as a reference pattern bitmap and arranging it as a reference pattern bitmap with a pattern that evidences a consistent phase regularity with the original pattern bitmap segment; filling the region to be filled with the pattern by determining a correspondence of an anchor pixel of the region to a pixel in the reference pattern bitmap; ascribing an attribute of the corresponding pixel in the reference pattern bitmap to the anchor pixel of the region; and repetitively determining correspondence of each further pixel in the region to a further pixel in the reference pattern bitmap and ascribing an attribute of each further pixel of the reference pattern bitmap to each further pixel in the region, until all pixels in the region have been processed.

Printer with procedure for pattern tiling and scaling

A computer system includes a computer and a peripheral the peripheral having an object oriented run-time environment (e.g., JAVA) and object resource brokering facilities (e.g., CORBA). Public methods of the peripheral are exposed to objects of the computer system and vice versa for more efficient peripheral operation and shared program code.

Computer system with evolving printer

A print data processing pipeline for use in a color electrophotographic printer optimizes print quality and minimizes memory usage by separately processing lossy and lossless print data. Lossy print data may include print data for images and lossless print data may include print data for text, line art, and graphics. Partitioning print data into lossy and lossless elements allows application of the print data compression operations optimized for each type of print data. High compression ratios can be achieved on lossy print data by applying visually lossless compression operations designed for the lossy print data. In addition, high compression ratios can be achieved on the lossless print data by applying lossless compression operations designed for the lossless print data. A merge unit combines the lossy and lossless print data streams after decompression to reconstruct the original image using merge data. The merge data is generated in an image processing operation which accounts for the different transparency modes of the page description language print data so that the correct foreground and background placement of objects is maintained. Placement of the color space conversion operation and the halftone operation relative to the merge operation, further optimizes the print quality while minimizing memory usage. The print data processing pipeline includes a direct memory access controller which has the capability to allow print data to be selectively directed to the lossy or lossless compressor/decompressor, the color space converter, or the merge unit.

Merge plane generation for a data processing pipeline

The method of the invention performs logical operation on a pixel image, wherein pixels of the image comprise multi-bit color pixel values. The method performs the steps of: identifying a received image as an image type other than a raster image; and if such identified image type consists of fully saturated multi-bit color pixel values, performing logical combination operations on the multi-bit color pixel values through use of binary logical operators. If the received image is identified as including other than fully saturated multi-bit color pixel values, performing logical combination operations on the multi-bit color pixel values using arithmetic logical operators.

Method and apparatus for switching between binary and arithmetic

A software/firmware based method for determining gray level values to be assigned to a binary pixel image initially creates a linked list of templates, each template associated with a gray level value to be assigned to an image pixel value. Each template may include a central pixel value and plural neighbor pixel values or just plural neighbor values. However, each template is a listing of entries of template pixel values that are generally arranged in increasing concentric circles about the central pixel value. Each template entry includes a field for a template pixel value, a field for a template pixel address and a link field for a next template entry, in the event of a non-match determination between the associated template pixel value and an image pixel value. The method selects an image pixel window from the binary image and compares a central image pixel in the window with a logically, correspondingly located template pixel value. If a match is found, a next image pixel is compared against a next template entry to determine if a match occurs. This procedure continues, assuming matches are found, until all entries in the template have been tested and found to match, in which case, the central pixel of the image pixel window is changed in accordance with the gray level value associated with the matching template. If, at any time, a non-match occurs, the procedure moves to a linked template entry and the comparison procedure continues in another template. The invention enables a binary search to be executed which identifies a matching template (if any) after considering, on the average, between 5 to 10 entries.

Software-based procedure and apparatus for enhancement of a gray level

A binary pixel bitmap image is converted to a multi-bit gray level pixel image at a level of resolution that is reproducible by a laser printer. An edge smoothing procedure is employed by the laser printer and comprises the steps of: deriving from font contours of the image, a binary pixel bitmap of the image at a higher level of resolution than is output by the laser printer; logically stepping an m.times.n pixel window across pixel groups of the higher resolution binary pixel bitmap and, at each step, determining a count of pixels of one binary kind that are present within the pixel window; converting each count of pixels to a corresponding modulation signal; and controlling a laser in the laser printer in accordance with each modulation signal so that an edge smoothed gray level image is produced at the printer's level of output resolution.

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Boise, ID, United States of America

Marcus A Smith