Computerized prepress authoring for document creation

• US 6,247,011 B1
• Filed: 12/02/1997
• Issued: 06/12/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 12/02/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Vistaprint Schweiz GmbH (Cimpress Plc)
• Original Assignee: Digital - Net Incorporated
• Inventors: Jecha, Steven, Mitchell, Winfield A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Hosain T.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Colbert, Ella
• Application Number:
  US08/982,438
• Time in Patent Office: 1,288 Days
• Field of Search: 707/501, 707/506, 707/530, 707/9, 707/517, 395/200.33, 395/114, 395/200.54, 364/479.03, 345/150, 345/335, 345/357
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1208 resulting in improved quality of the output result, e.g. print layout, colours, workflows, print preview
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1214 at the submitting node
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1222 Increasing security of the print job
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1238 Secure printing, e.g. user identification, user rights for device usage, unallowed content, blanking portions or fields of a page, releasing held jobs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1256 User feedback, e.g. print preview, test print, proofing, pre-flight checks
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1288 in client-server-printer device configuration
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99939 Privileged access

Abstract

Computerized prepress is disclosed. In one embodiment, a computerized prepress system includes three components: a server, a client and a printer. The server has stored thereon an authoring program to create a document, and a translation program to translate the document to a suitable prepress format. The client downloads the authoring program from the server to create the document, and then uploads the document to the server for translation to the suitable prepress format. The printer receives the document as translated to the suitable prepress format from the server.

Claims

1. A computerized prepress method comprising:

storing on a server computer a computerized prepress software system, wherein the prepress software system includes one or more document authoring tools and at least one prepress translation component, further wherein at least some of the authoring tools are downloadable to a client computer to be used to author an electronic document and the translation component is used to produce a prepress format file from an authored electronic document;

wherein at least one downloaded authoring tool is a program that executes in the web browser and has one or more functions that can be used to create an electronic document, display the electronic document in WYSIWYG form to the user, and allow a user to select and edit at least one element of the electronic document while at least a portion of the electronic document is simultaneously displayed;

the software system further configured to provide that the authoring tools create an electronic document using the client computer and that the client computer transfers the electronic document to the server computer in a form allowing the translation component executing on the server computer to create the prepress format file so that when the prepress format file is used to produce a document the document is consistent with the WYSIWYG form displayed to the user on the client computer, and so that the user need only be concerned with authoring the electronic document and not with the creating a prepress format file, and further so that the authored electronic document can be automatically processed by the server computer into a prepress format file;

wherein the client computer is one of a plurality of client computers each including a web browser capable of interacting with at least one Internet web site addressed by a uniform resource locator (URL) and the server computer is one of at least one server computers connected to the plurality of client computers over the Internet;

sending log-on information regarding a user from a client computer to the server computer over the Internet, wherein the user has profile data maintained by the server computer, and authenticating the user at the server computer;

downloading one or more of the authoring tools from the server computer to the client computer;

the user using at least one downloaded authoring tool at the client computer to create an electronic document;

sending the electronic document from the client computer to the server computer;

saving the electronic document in an internal format at the server computer;

and using the translation component, translating the electronic document from the internal format to a different suitable prepress format file usable to produce a corresponding document on a printing device.

2. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein authenticating the user at the server computer comprises associating the user with at least one of a particular directory on the server computer1, a set of defaults regarding fonts, colors, images and commands available to the user, and an authorization level selected from the group of authorization levels essentially comprising normal, administrator, and demonstration.

3. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein the authoring program downloaded from the server computer to the client computer is coded in a language selected from the group essentially comprising Perl, Java, C++, C, and ActiveX.

4. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein the electronic document is selected from the group essentially comprising a business card, a letterhead, an envelope, and a brochure.

5. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein the authoring program comprises a color palette area to select a color from a palette of colors.

6. The computerized prepress method of claim 5, wherein the palette of colors comprises the palette of colors available from one selected from the group essentially comprising Pantone, Toyo, Focaltone, and Tru-Match.

7. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein using the authoring program at the client computer to create an electronic document comprises sending desired text from the client computer to the server computer for translation into an image and sending the image from the server computer back to the client computer.

8. The computerized prepress method of claim 7, wherein the image is in a format selected from the group essentially comprising GIF, TIFF, and JPEG.

9. The computerized prepress method of claim 7, wherein the image has a maximum resolution of 4:

1.

10. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein the document includes one or more images, at least one of the images being in a format selected from the group essentially comprising encapsulated PostScript, TIFF, GIF, and JPEG.

11. The computerized prepress method of claim 10, wherein at least one of the images has a maximum resolution of 1:

1.

12. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, wherein the different format file is selected from a group essentially comprising PostScript, HTML, PDF, and PostScript Extreme.

13. The computerized prepress method of claim 1, further including distributing the prepress format file to a location remote from the server computer for printing at the remote location.

14. A computerized prepress system comprising:

a server having stored thereon a computerized prepress software system, wherein the prepress software system includes one or more document authoring tools and at least one prepress translation component, further wherein at least some of the authoring tools are adapted to download to a client computer to be used to author an electronic document and the translation component is adapted to produce a prepress format file from an authored electronic document;

wherein at least one downloaded authoring tool is a program that is adapted to execute in a web browser and has one or more functions adapted to create an electronic document, display the electronic document in WYSIWYG form to the user, and allow a user to select and edit at least one element of the electronic document while at least a portion of the electronic document is simultaneously displayed;

the software system further adapted to provide that the authoring tools create an electronic document using the client computer and that the client computer transfers to the server computer the electronic document in a form allowing the translation component executing on the server computer to create the prepress format file so that when the prepress format file is used to produce a document the document is consistent with the WYSIWYG form displayed to the user on the client computer, and so that the user need only be concerned with authoring the electronic document and not with the creating a prepress format file, and further so that the authored electronic document can be automatically processed by the server computer into a prepress format file; and

wherein the client computer is one of a plurality of client computers each including a web browser capable of interacting with at least one Internet web site addressed by a uniform resource locator (URL) and the server computer is one of at least one server computers connected to the plurality of client computers over the Internet.

15. The computerized prepress system of claim 14, wherein the server comprises an Internet world-wide-web server.

16. The computerized prepress system of claim 14, wherein the browser program is selected from the group essentially comprising Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

17. The computerized prepress system of claim 14, wherein the authoring program is coded in a language selected from the group essentially comprising Perl, Java, C++, C, and ActiveX.

18. The computerized prepress system of claim 14, wherein the electronic document is selected from the group essentially comprising a business card, a letterhead, an envelope, and a brochure.

19. The computerized prepress system of claim 14, wherein the authoring program comprises a color palette area to select a color from a palette of colors.

20. The computerized prepress system of claim 14, wherein the suitable prepress format file is selected from a group essentially comprising PostScript, HTML, PDF, and PostScript Extreme.

21. A client computer comprising:

a processor;

a computer-readable medium;

a communications device;

an operating environment program comprising a web browser executed by the processor from the medium; and

, an authoring program downloaded from a server through the communications device and executed by the processor from the medium within the operating environment program, wherein the authoring program includes at least one downloaded authoring tool which has one or more functions adapted to create an electronic document, display the electronic document in WYSIWYG form to the user, and allow a user to select and edit at least one element of the electronic document while at least a portion of the electronic document is simultaneously displayed;

further wherein the authoring program is adapted to provide that the authoring tools create an electronic document and that the client computer transfers to the server computer the electronic document in a form allowing a translation program executing on the server computer to create the prepress format file so that when the prepress format file is used to produce a document the document is consistent with a WYSIWYG image displayed to the user on the client computer by the authoring program, and so that the user need only be concerned with authoring the electronic document and not with the creating a prepress format file, and further so that the authored electronic document can be automatically processed by the server computer into a prepress format file.

22. The client computer of claim 21, wherein the computer-readable medium is selected from the group essentially comprising memory and a nonvolatile storage medium.

23. The client computer of claim 21, wherein the communications device is selected from the group essentially comprising a modem and a network card.

24. The client computer of claim 21, wherein the operating environment program comprises an Internet world-wide-web browser program.

25. The client computer of claim 21, wherein the operating environment program comprises an intranet world-wide-web browser program.

26. The client computer of claim 21, wherein the operating environment program comprises an extranet world-wide-web browser program.

27. A server computer comprising:

a processor;

a computer-readable medium;

a communications device;

an authoring program stored on the computer-readable medium for downloading through the communications device and use by a client computer to create an electronic document, wherein the authoring program includes one or more document authoring tools and further wherein at least some of the authoring tools are adapted to author an electronic document;

wherein at least one downloaded authoring tool is a program is adapted to execute in a web browser and has one or more functions adapted to create an electronic document, display the electronic document in WYSIWYG form to the user, and allow a user to select and edit at least one element of the electronic document while at least a portion of the electronic document is simultaneously displayed;

the authoring program further adapted to provide that the authoring tools create an electronic document using the client computer and that the client computer transfers the electronic document to the server computer in a form allowing a translation program executing on the server computer to create a prepress format file so that when the prepress format file is used to produce a document the document is consistent with the WYSIWYG form displayed to the user on the client computer, and so that the user need only be concerned with authoring the electronic document and not with the creating a prepress format file, and further so that the authored electronic document can be automatically processed by the server computer into a prepress format file; and

,

the translation program executed by the processor from the computer-readable medium.

28. The server computer of claim 27, wherein the computer-readable medium is selected from the group essentially comprising memory and a nonvolatile storage medium.

29. The server computer of claim 27, wherein the communications device is selected from the group essentially comprising a modem and a network card.