Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Canon Information Systems, Inc.

Rakesh Mahajan

Marianne L Kodimer

Dan Danknick

Joohae Kim

George A Sanchez

Loren A Wood

Chiu Ming Man

Mark S Hildreth

A network peripheral device connected to a network via a router obtains remote servicing instructions over the network. Initially, a first packet sent from a remote service organization is received by a network peripheral device via the network, the first packet including a request for servicing information from the network peripheral device. Next a second packet is sent automatically upon receipt of the first packet from the network peripheral device to the remote service organization via the network, the second packet including the requested peripheral servicing information. Thereafter, a third packet sent from the remote service organization to the network peripheral device via the network is received by the network peripheral device, the third packet including an instruction to execute a peripheral servicing function. Finally, the peripheral servicing function is executed by the network peripheral device automatically in response to the third packet.

Remote maintenance and servicing of a network peripheral device over the world wide web

A method for exchanging information between two computer processes wherein the two computer processes deposit and retrieve information into a container rather than exchanging information directly with each other. The container stores the information based on the name of the information assigned by the depositing computer process, and maintains a dictionary of the names of the information contained in the container. Information is retrieved by the retrieving computer process by querying the container for the information by information name.

Container-based method for exchanging information between computer processes

A printer/facsimile system includes a printer/facsimile driver to automatically insert a facsimile cover sheet at the beginning of a facsimile document. The system includes the process steps of preparing a document to be faxed, invoking a facsimile dynamic link library which operates to create, by using facsimile dynamic link libraries, facsimile cover sheet data, and to call a printer driver to render a body of the facsimile document, rendering the facsimile document, spooling the rendered facsimile document from the printer driver to a memory and returning the number of rendered document pages to the facsimile application, recalling the printer driver to render the facsimile cover sheet and transmitting the created cover sheet data including the number of rendered document pages together with a fax flag indicator to the printer driver, rendering the facsimile cover sheet in accordance with transmitted cover sheet data, spooling the rendered facsimile cover sheet to the memory in accordance with the fax flag indicator, and retrieving the facsimile cover sheet and facsimile document from the memory and outputting both the facsimile cover sheet and facsimile document in proper order, respectively.

Printer/facsimile driver with page count generation

Status information concerning a condition of a network peripheral device connected to a network is automatically communicated to a remote service organization. First, a condition of the network peripheral device is detected. Then, in response to the detected condition, status information is automatically obtained, the status information corresponding to the detected condition. Finally, upon obtaining the status information, a packet is automatically transmitted to the remote service organization via the network, the packet containing the status information.

Automatic service requests over the world wide web

Process steps to provide communication between a web browser capable of initiating execution of a platform-independent segment of executable code and a peripheral having an HTTP server and an SNMP agent. A first packet is transferred to the HTTP server, and, in response, a file is transmitted to the web browser. The file contains a reference to a platform-independent segment of executable code. Upon processing the file, this code segment is requested from the HTTP server. After the web browser receives the executable code from the HTTP server, execution of the code segment is initiated in order to create an SNMP client. Execution of the code segment also causes a packet to be sent from the SNMP client to the SNMP agent in the peripheral. In response to this packet, information concerning the peripheral is transferred from the SNMP agent to the SNMP client.

Method and apparatus for communicating with a network peripheral

The method generates and displays an adaptive graphical user interface of a current configuration and current capabilities of a networked peripheral device connected to a local area network. The method includes the steps of requesting from a user's work station a current configuration and current capabilities of a networked peripheral device, transmitting, in response to the request, an interrogation command to the networked peripheral device over the local area network, and receiving, from the networked peripheral device, information corresponding to a current configuration and capabilities of the networked peripheral device. The method further includes retrieving peripheral device configuration and capabilities from libraries based on the received information and generating a graphical user interface using data within the retrieved libraries, and displaying a graphical user interface including a representative graphical image of the networked peripheral device in its current configuration and with its current capabilities.

Adaptive graphical user interface for a network peripheral

Printer/facsimile driver

A method and apparatus for updating data stored in a write once/read many memory which comprises creating a virtual image of data stored in the memory, updating data in the virtual image of the memory and designating updated data in the virtual image, and writing designated updated data from the virtual image to the memory. In the virtual image there is a main journal for organizing file information on the memory and file journals for each file stored on the memory. Each file journal contains self-describing information for its corresponding file.

System for updating directory information and data on write once media

A scripting system for scripting functionality in an application program. A script interpreter which is instantiated as an object separate from the application program is provided to interpret scripts. The script interpreter contains a list of scripts that may be invoked and a list of corresponding trigger events that cause the scripts to be invoked. The scripts, which are separate from both the application program and the script interpreter, contain script language commands which include commands to execute functions in the application program. The application program is responsible both for defining the functions that it will make available for execution from scripts, as well as for indicating to the script interpreter that a particular type of event has occurred. In response to an indication from the application program that a trigger event has occurred, the script interpreter will interpret the appropriate script to execute the scripting commands, and in particular to execute application program functions when they are encountered in the script.

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Laguna Hills, CA, United States of America

Rakesh Mahajan