Printer drivers using filters that are operating system-independent and printer-independent
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsJohn P. Daly, James S. Boyce, Elliot Lee Klosterman
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A printer driver uses filters that are operating system-independent and printer-independent. Print requests and corresponding print data are received by the printer driver and converted into an internal representation that is both operating system-independent and printer-independent. The data to be printed is then passed through a print pipeline where one or more of a plurality of print filters are applied to the data. As a final stage in the print pipeline, the data is converted to a printer-dependent representation. In one embodiment, one or more of the plurality of filters used in the print pipeline are stored in a dynamic link library (DLL).
Claims8
A system comprising:
- an operating system interface to,
- receive a print request and corresponding data to be printed, and
- translate the print request and the corresponding data to an operating system independent and printer independent format;
- a plurality of print filters of a printer driver, each to modify a format of the data to be printed;
- a filter list identifying the plurality of print filters, wherein the filter list further identifies an order in which the plurality of print filters are to be applied to the data by a controller;
- and
- the controller, coupled to the plurality of print filters and the operating system interface, to apply selected ones of the plurality of print filters to the data to be printed while the data is in the operating system independent and printer independent format.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.