PRINTER DRIVER FOR INTERACTIVE PRINTER

• US 20090080015A1
• Filed: 07/24/2008
• Published: 03/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Original Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Inventors: Silverbrook, Kia, Lapstun, Paul, Hollins, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,284,428 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 358/1.150
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1206 resulting in increased flexibility in input data format or job format or job type
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1265 Printing by reference, e.g. retrieving document/image data for a job from a source mentioned in the job
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1284 Local printer device
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/06037 multi-dimensional coding

Abstract

A printer driver for printing a document at a printer. The printer driver is configured to: (i) receive a visual description for the document from a first memory, the visual description describing a graphic impression for printing; (ii) send print data corresponding to the graphic impression to the printer; and (iii) archive the visual description for a page of the document in a second memory.

Claims

1. A printer driver for printing a document at a printer, wherein said printer driver is configured to:

receive a visual description for said document from a first memory, said visual description describing a graphic impression for printing;

send print data corresponding to said graphic impression to said printer; and

archive the visual description for at least one page of the document in a second memory, wherein said first and second memories are different from each other.

2. The printer driver of claim 1, wherein said visual description is archived on a server.

3. The printer driver of claim 2, which is configured to receive an impression identity from the server.

4. The printer driver of claim 3, which is configured to receive a block of impression identities and allocate one of said impression identities to said at least one page or said document.

5. The printer driver of claim 1, which is configured to print a tag pattern on the at least one page, wherein the tag pattern identifies an impression identity, and wherein the visual description is indexed by the impression identity.

6. The printer driver of claim 5, wherein the tag pattern is a position-coding pattern identifying the impression identity and a plurality of locations on said page.

7. The printer driver of claim 1, wherein said printer driver is configured to archive an input description for said page together with said visual description, said input description describing at least one interactive element on said page.

8. The printer driver of claim 7, which is configured to allow an application to specify the interactive element in the input description, wherein said interactive element is specified by at least one of:

a spatial extent and URI of a hyperlink on the page; and

a spatial extent and type of an input field on the page.

9. The printer driver of claim 1, which is configured to allow an application to specify the input element via any one of:

a pass-through channel;

a PDL;

a PDF annotation; and

a Postscript pdfmark operator.

10. The printer driver of claim 9, wherein said pass-through channel is provided by a GDI escape mechanism.

11. The printer driver of claim 1, which is configured to allow an application to specify at least some metadata selected from the group comprising:

a path of a source document for the printed document;

a creator of the document;

a creation date and time of the document; and

a modification date and time of the document.

12. The printer driver of claim 1, which is configured to archive said metadata with said visual description.

13. The printer driver of claim 7, which is configured to identify a URI text string in the visual description and generate a corresponding interactive element in the input description.

14. The printer driver of claim 7, which is configured to alter the visual description of the URI text string when it is identified as a URI.

15. The printer driver of claim 2, wherein the server is configured to identify a URI text string in the visual description and generate a corresponding interactive element in an input description for said page, said input description being archived with said visual description.

16. The printer driver of claim 15, wherein the server identifies the URI text string when processing a user interaction with a corresponding printed impression.