Driverless, selectable multi-option tiff printing

The method of 2, wherein said changing enables selective, uncollated, multi-copy, per-page printing of pages from such as file.

Full-function direct TIFF printing operative for a selected collection of plural print options comprising

• selecting from that collection a print option having a defined operating path with regard to a multi-page print job,
• establishing a TIFF file relative to that job, and
• within the architecture of that TIFF file, specially and freely constructing the respective page Image File Directories, and the operative pointers associated therein and therewith, to create a directly readable print-performance implementation from a printer which will cause printing in a manner following the defined operating path.

A TIFF data structure for use by a printer to print a plural-page print job relating to serially-paginated pages who page numbers lie in a range from 1-to-N, inclusive, where N is the number of the last page in the job, said structure comprising

• plural, page-specific image data units, one for each page in the job, and
• for each said image data unit, an associated path pointer which, during printing, defines the relative order of specific image page-data-unit printing, said path pointers collectively being internally data-constructed to direct a printing operation in a manner whereby not all successively page-numbered page-image-data units are printed successively in regular serial order.

The data structure of claim, 22 wherein the paths associated with said pointers are constructed to enable face-down printing of the page-specific image data units present in the data structure.

A system for performing driverless and selectively multi-print-option printing of pages from a plural-page TIFF file, where such multi-print-option printing involves page printing in a manner that differs from the normal TIFF page-printing hierarchy, which normal hierarchy involves the printing of pages in unbroken, regular serial, page-number order, said system comprising

• structure for creating a multi-page TIFF file including Image File Directory (IFD) data which is effective to guide the implementation of printing from the file, and
• IFD data-manipulation structure operatively connected to said file-creating structure, and operable selectively to modify the architecture of IFD data in the file so as to promote the driverless printing implementation of a selected printing option.