Spooling Strategies Using Structured Job Information

• US 20090168105A1
• Filed: 03/11/2009
• Published: 07/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Singh, Harvinder P., Foehr, Oliver H., Yue, Feng, Sedky, Khaled S., Trufinescu, Adina M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,639,723 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 358/1.150
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2206/1514 Sub-job
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1203 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. print management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1206 resulting in increased flexibility in input data format or job format or job type
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1244 Job translation or job parsing, e.g. page banding
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1246 by handling markup languages, e.g. XSL, XML, HTML
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1276 within a printer driver, e.g. driver resides either on a server or on a client
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure

Abstract

Spooling strategies are described for producing job information that conforms to a hierarchical structure, and then storing the job information in a spool storage. The job information is then retrieved from the spool storage and consumed. The structured job information includes a multi-level hierarchy of nodes, including a job level that represents the entire job, a document level that represents a document to be processed within the job; a rendition level that represents a rendition of the document to be processed; and a page level that represents a page associated with the rendition. In addition, filter logic processes job information based on capabilities of a target entity utilizing the job information.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving job data at a computing device from an application module, wherein the computing device is configured to render documents using spooling techniques; and

producing structured job information at the computing device based on job data received from an application module, wherein the structured job information includes a plurality of nodes organized into a hierarchical arrangement having a plurality of levels and a node of a first level utilizes information from a node of a second level.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the information from the node of the second level is utilized by a plurality of nodes of the first level.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the node of the second level is one of a plurality of nodes of the second level.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising consuming the job information in response to a request received at the computing device from a target device.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein consuming the job information comprises:

retrieving data from the node of the first level;

retrieving data from the node of the second level; and

retrieving data from a node of a third level.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the node of the second level is linked to the node of the first level via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

7. The method of claim 1, wherein a plurality of nodes of the first level utilize information from the node of the second level.

8. A system comprising:

a processing unit; and

memory accessible to the processing unit, the memory comprising;

a spooling module to consume a data structure that specifies job information from a spool storage, wherein the data structure defines a plurality of nodes organized into a hierarchical arrangement representing different aspects of the job information; and

a plurality of filters, wherein each of the plurality of filters is configured to process the job information based on whether a target entity requesting the job information can process structured job information.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the plurality of filters include one or more first filters configured to process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure and to generate a first output result that conforms to the data structure.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the plurality of filters include one or more second filters configured to process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure and to generate a second output result that at least partially conforms to the data structure.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the one or more second filters generate the second output result and the second output result does not conform to the data structure.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the plurality of filters includes one or more third filters configured to process the job information when the job information is arranged according to a non-structured format.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein an output result of a first filter is fed into a second filter and an output result of the second filter is sent to the target device.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein an output result of a first filter is fed into a second filter, an output result of the second filter is fed into a third filter, and an output result of the third filter is sent to the target device.

15. The system of claim 8, further comprising a filter configuration module configured to:

define one or more of the plurality of filters to be invoked to process the job information; and

determine a configuration including the one or more filters to produce an output result for the target device.

16. The system of claim 8, wherein a first filter adds a watermark to the job information and a second filter converts the job information into a page description language format.

17. One or more computer-readable storage media comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor, perform acts comprising:

consuming a data structure that specifies job information for a target device from a spool storage, wherein the data structure defines a plurality of nodes organized into a hierarchical arrangement representing different aspects of the job information; and

generating a plurality of print tickets that are associated with the plurality of nodes of the data structure, the plurality of print tickets defining operations to be performed by filter logic with respect to the nodes of the data structure, and wherein the plurality of print tickets includes a first print ticket associated with a root node of the data structure and a second print ticket associated with a child node of the data structure.

18. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 17, wherein processing operations associated with the first print ticket apply to each child node of the data structure.

19. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 17, wherein processing operations associated with the second print ticket apply to the child node.

20. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 18, wherein the second print ticket includes instructions that override instructions of the first print ticket.