Spooling strategies using structured job information

• US 8,639,723 B2
• Filed: 03/11/2009
• Issued: 01/28/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Sedky, Khaled S., Singh, Harvinder Pal, Yue, Feng, Trufinescu, Adina M., Foehr, Oliver H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Jami, Hares
• Application Number:
  US12/402,319
• Publication Number:
  US 20090168105A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,784 Days
• Field of Search: 707/791, 707/797, 707/802, 707/803, 707/953, 707/956, 358/1, 358/1.131, 358/1.1
• US Class Current: 707/791
• 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 system comprising:

a processing unit; and

memory accessible to the processing unit, the memory comprising;

a spooling module that consumes 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, the plurality of nodes including at least two nodes that share at least one of a font resource or an image resource; and

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 plurality of nodes of the data structure,

wherein the spooling module merges the plurality of print tickets based on the plurality of nodes.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure to generate an output result that conforms to the data structure.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure to generate an output result that at least partially conforms to the data structure.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information to generate an output result that does not conform to the data structure.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information is arranged according to a non-structured format.

6. The system of claim 1, 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 a target device.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein an output result of a first filter included in the filter logic is fed into a second filter, an output result of the second filter included in the filter logic is fed into a third filter, and an output result of the third filter included in the filter logic is sent to a target device.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a filter configuration module to:

define one or more filters to be invoked to process the job information based on one or more print tickets; and

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

9. The system of claim 1, wherein a first filter of the filter logic adds a watermark to the job information and a second filter of the filter logic converts the job information into a page description language format.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more print tickets are to apply:

a first arrangement of one or more filters when the job information is for a structure-aware target device that recognizes the data structure of the job information;

a second arrangement of one or more filters when the job information is for a structure-unaware target device that is unaware of the data structure of the job information; and

a third arrangement of one or more filters when the job information is for a partially structure-aware target device that recognizes a portion of the data structure of the job information.

11. One or more computer-readable storage devices 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, the plurality of nodes including at least two nodes that share at least one of a font resource or an image resource;

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; and

merging the plurality of print tickets by moving up the hierarchical arrangement using a parent property of each node to the root node along an access path and then moving down the hierarchical arrangement to merge the plurality of print tickets.

12. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 11, wherein operations associated with the first print ticket apply to each child node of the data structure.

13. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 11, wherein operations associated with the second print ticket apply to the child node.

14. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 12, wherein the second print ticket includes instructions that override instructions of the first print ticket.

15. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 11, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure to generate an output result that conforms to the data structure.

16. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 11, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure to generate an output result that at least partially conforms to the data structure.

17. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 11, wherein the filter logic include one or more filters that processes the job information to generate an output result that does not conform to the data structure.

18. One or more computer-readable storage devices 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, the plurality of nodes including at least two nodes that share at least one of a font resource or an image resource;

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

merging the plurality of print tickets by moving up the hierarchical arrangement using a parent property of each node to a root node along an access path and then moving down the hierarchical arrangement to merge the plurality of print tickets,

wherein a first print ticket associated with a first node applies operations to the first node and child nodes of the first node, and wherein a second print ticket associated with a second node that is a child node of the first node applies operations only to the second node.

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

20. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 18, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure to generate an output result that conforms to the data structure.

21. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 18, wherein the filter logic includes one or more filters that process the job information when the job information conforms to the data structure to generate an output result that at least partially conforms to the data structure.

22. The one or more computer-readable storage devices of claim 18, wherein the filter logic include one or more filters that processes the job information to generate an output result that does not conform to the data structure.