Ink drop printer with print engine controller

• US 7,092,112 B2
• Filed: 09/20/2004
• Issued: 08/15/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Memjet Technology Ltd. (Memjet Limited)
• Original Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Inventors: Silverbrook, Kia, Lapstun, Paul, Walmsley, Simon Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): GARCIA, GABRIEL I
• Application Number:
  US10/943,941
• Publication Number:
  US 20050225584A1
• Time in Patent Office: 694 Days
• Field of Search: 358/1.4, 358/1.8, 358/1.9, 358/2.1, 358/3.13, 358/3.28, 358/534, 358/535, 358/539, 347/15, 382/166, 382/233, 382/244
• US Class Current: 358/1.13
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/642 Adapting to different types of images, e.g. characters, graphs, black and white image portions

Abstract

An ink drop printer driven by a print engine controller comprising: an interface at which to receive compressed page data; a contone image decoder to decode any continuous tone image planes in the received compressed page data; a bi-level decoder to decode any bi-level image planes in the received compressed page data; a half-toner/compositor to dither any continuous tone image planes and composite bi-level image plane data with any dithered image plane; a print head driver to output the composite to a print head; and a print head, wherein the contone image decoder outputs separate color planes of the decoded continuous tone image planes to separate buffers in a front end to the halftoner/compositor.

Claims

1. An ink drop printer driven by a print engine controller comprising:

an interface at which to receive compressed page data;

a contone image decoder to decode any continuous tone image planes in the received compressed page data;

a bi-level decoder to decode any bi-level image planes in the received compressed page data;

a half-toner/compositor to dither any continuous tone image planes and composite bi-level image plane data with any dithered image plane;

a print head driver to output the composite to a print head; and

a print head,

wherein the contone image decoder outputs separate color planes of the decoded continuous tone image planes to separate buffers in a front end to the halftoner/compositor.

2. A printer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the page data in the bi-level image plane is scaled in the halftoner/compositor.

3. A printer as claimed in claim 1 wherein page data in each contone image plane is scaled in the halftoner/compositor.

4. A printer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the bi-level decoder is a Group 4 facsimile decoder.

5. A printer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the bi-level decoder outputs the decoded bi-level image planes to respective buffers in a front end to the halftoner/compositor.

6. A printer as claimed in claim 1 further including an infrared tag encoder to produce an infrared image plane to place infrared ink printed tags into a printed page.