Abstract:
A method for arranging print job pages for printing by a digital printer and finished in a prefect bound manner including preparing the print job pages ( 20 ) into a form ready for consumption by a digital printer. A first portion of the pages for volume printing ( 15 ) and a second portion of the pages for cover printing ( 17 ) are marked. The first portion is marked to form a first series of pages conforming to perfect bound imposition scheme ( 21 ). The second portion is prepared to form a second series of pages conforming to a second imposition scheme ( 33 ). The first series of pages to the digital printer equipped with finisher equipment, and the second series of pages are delivered to the digital printer.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    The present invention relates to methods for arranging a composed printing job in accordance with complex printing and print finishing capabilities and more specifically for achieving efficient perfect binding. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    Print jobs are currently prepared in desktop publishing (DTP) to support the requirements of printing machinery. In other words, the files prepared in the DTP are usually delivered to the digital front end (DFE) in a page description format (PDF). The delivered PDF is already designed to be printed correctly on the destination printing equipment, taking into consideration ahead of time aspects such as the printer&#39;s media handling and orientation factors. 
         [0003]    In cases where the prepared printing job (represented by the delivered PDF) is redirected due to a last minute decision, for example, printing on different printing equipment than the original destination equipment, then the job must be redone in the DTP to conform to the alternative printing equipment. 
         [0004]    Booklets are often prepared by casual users, typically using prominent DTP applications such as Microsoft Word. The casual users are often not aware of the characteristics of the printing equipment to be used for the requested booklet printing. Thus, it would be advantageous to decouple the printing equipment characteristics from the digital representation of the document to be printed, freeing up the job creator from the need to be aware of the printing equipment configuration. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0005]    Briefly, according to one aspect of the present invention a method for arranging print job pages for printing by a digital printer and finished in a perfect bound manner includes preparing the print job pages in a print ready form for consumption by a digital printer; marking a first portion of the pages for volume printing and a second portion of the pages for cover printing; preparing the first portion to form a first series of pages conforming to perfect bound imposition scheme; preparing the second portion to form a second series of pages conforming to a second imposition scheme; delivering the first series of pages to a digital printer equipped with finisher equipment; and delivering the second series of pages to the digital printer. 
         [0006]    These and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the drawings wherein there is shown and described an illustrative embodiment of the invention. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0007]      FIG. 1  is a schematic illustrating composed layout for a finisher; 
           [0008]      FIG. 2  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with pre-printed cover and left binding imposition; 
           [0009]      FIG. 3  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with content spine and left binding imposition; 
           [0010]      FIG. 4  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with duplex pre-composed cover and left binding imposition; 
           [0011]      FIG. 5  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with blank content spine and right binding imposition; 
           [0012]      FIG. 6  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with duplex pre-composed cover including a Z-fold insert and left binding imposition; 
           [0013]      FIG. 7  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with left binding imposition for personalized booklet printing; 
           [0014]      FIG. 8  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with content spine with 180 degree rotation and left binding imposition; 
           [0015]      FIG. 9  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with content spine, left binding imposition, and cover sheet remainder; 
           [0016]      FIG. 10  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with content spine with 180 degree rotation, left binding imposition, and cover sheet remainder; 
           [0017]      FIG. 11  is a schematic illustrating duplex book printing with composed duplex cover with content spine and left binding imposition with 180 degree rotation along the X-axis; and 
           [0018]      FIG. 12  is a schematic illustrating 1×1 and 3×1 schemes. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
       [0019]    The invention provides methods and apparatus for arranging components such as volume and cover pages, of a composed printing job, to be delivered to a digital printer coupled with a finishing device. The components will be delivered in optimal page order and orientation in order to produce complete, perfect bound books, or perfect bound personalized booklets. The correct orientation is achieved by rotating the pages to conform to the finishing device characteristics. 
         [0020]    The rotation is dependent upon the print rotation needed by the destination printer to comply with the leading edge, back, and front rotation needs. The raster data is created and rotated in 90 degrees in accordance with the destination printer&#39;s raster data orientation and components order needs. 
         [0021]      FIG. 1  shows the composed pages delivery order to conform to the capabilities of the finishing equipment. The cover is composed of the following components:
       a) Front cover content inside  10  and outside  11 .   b) Back cover content inside  12  and outside  13 .   c) Spine content  14 .
 
The content of the components a), b), and c) described above are pasted onto a special cover page  17 , often comprising a different material than the volume pages  15 . Cover page  17  and volume pages  15  are fetched from different page trays from the printing device.
         
         [0025]    Volume pages  15  are delivered to the finisher in the correct orientation for applying glue direction  16  in the correct facet of the volume pages  15 , so it is pasted on spine  14  matching glue direction  16 . Page cover  17  is delivered to the finisher in the correct orientation to consume volume pages  15  in conformance with glue direction  16 . 
         [0026]      FIG. 2  depicts a printing scheme for a duplex book using a pre-printed cover  22  in a left binding manner. Left binding is used for Latin languages (written from left to right), whereas right binding scheme suites languages such as Hebrew and Arabic (written from right to left) and some Far East languages which often are viewed from right to left. 
         [0027]    Pages are prepared by the originating application in pages application order  20 . The pages are handed over to the finisher in the following output sequence  25 , and in the correct orientation where the top of each page is indicated arrow  24 . The volume pages  15  are imposed as duplex perfect bound imposition  21 . The volume pages  15  are also rotated according to the glue direction  16  and user selected binding (left binding is used in  FIG. 1 ), followed by a pre-printed cover  22  in a simplex form. This example depicts printing of five volume pages in duplex, meaning two pages per sheet. One page will be used for the front sheet and a second page for the back sheet. In this example three sheets are used for five volume pages, thus the back side page  23  of sheet three will be left blank. 
         [0028]      FIG. 3  depicts printing of a duplex book. The printing contains a composed cover using left binding. The cover is printed in duplex cover with the spine content  30 . This example shows two different imposition schemes used in the same printing job, one for the volume pages  15  prepared for perfect binding imposition  21  and a saddle stitch imposition  33  scheme, which is applied for the cover content. 
         [0029]    In the first scheme  21 , the volume pages  15  are imposed in perfect bound 1×1 imposition (one content page imposed on one paper sheet).  FIG. 12  further describes 1×1 imposition performed on a paper sheet side of content  120 , where a single page content  121  is placed and centered on sheet side  120 . The volume pages  15  are also rotated according to the glue direction  16  and a user selected binding is applied, in this case it is left binding, usually is used for languages read from left to right. The cover sheet  33  is imposed as saddle stitch 3×1 imposition (three content pages are imposed on one paper sheet), including three components: content spine  30 , front cover pages  31  (front inside  10  and front outside  11 ) and back cover pages  32  (back inside  12  and back outside  13 ), to form a single ready to print cover sheet  33 . 
         [0030]      FIG. 12  further describes the 3×1 imposition. Given a sheet side for 3×1 imposition of content  122 , where the following three components are placed and centered on sheet side  122 : two cover pages (front  31  or back  32 ) and spine content  30 . The cover sheet  33  and the volume pages  15  also rotated according to the glue location and user selected binding (left binding in this case). All the pages, composed cover page  33  and volume pages  15  are centered according to the destination output sheets. 
         [0031]      FIG. 8  describes an embodiment similar to the one depicted in  FIG. 3 . This embodiment supports printers with media front to back rotation degree of 180 relative to the Y axis (indicated by rotation guide  81 ) of the raster data. The composed front cover  34  should be rotated along the front cover rotation guide  81 , before printing of the composed back cover  35  pages. The 180 degrees rotated composed front cover  34  is illustrated by the rotation guide position  82  as is shown on composed back cover  35  (after rotation is performed). All the pages, composed cover pages ( 34 ,  35 ) and volume pages  15  are centered according to the destination output sheet. 
         [0032]      FIG. 11  describes another embodiment. This embodiment supports digital printers that rotate the printing sheets 180 degree along the X-axis (indicated by rotation guide  111 ) in order to print on the back side of the sheet, such as the Kodak Nexpress digital printer. Numeral  112  indicates the position of the sheet after rotation along the X-axis. In this case the page content printed on the back side of the paper sheets should be rotated by 180 degrees before printing to comply with the direction of content printed of the front side of the paper sheets, as is indicated by top page direction (rotated by 180 degrees)  113 . 
         [0033]      FIG. 9  describes an embodiment similar to the one depicted in  FIG. 3 . In this embodiment the volume pages are centered according to the output sheet whereas the composed front and back cover ( 34  and  35 ) include alignment to the opposite axis&#39;s of the page trimmer in the printing equipment. 
         [0034]    The cover sheet  33  is imposed as saddle stitch 3×1 imposition, including three components: spine content  30 , front cover pages  31 , and back cover pages  32 , to form a single ready to print cover sheet  33 . In this embodiment the cover sheet  33  is larger than the described components ( 30 ,  31 ,  32 ) that are printed on cover sheet  33 , thus leaving an unused portion of front and back cover sheet remainder ( 91 ,  92 ) to be further trimmed by the printing equipment trimmer. 
         [0035]      FIG. 10  describes an embodiment similar to the description pertaining to  FIG. 9 . This embodiment supports printers with media front to back rotation degree of 180 degrees relative to the Y axis of the raster data. 
         [0036]      FIG. 4  depicts printing of a duplex book comprising a pre-composed cover using left binding. The volume pages  15  are rotated according to the glue location and the user elected binding, and imposed as perfect bound 1×1 imposition. The duplex cover  42  is imposed in “step and continue” 1×1 imposition manner. The pre-composed outside cover pages with spine content  40  and inside cover  41  cover are also rotated according to the glue direction  16  and user selected binding needs. 
         [0037]      FIG. 5  depicts printing of a duplex book comprising a duplex cover with blank spine using right binding, suitable for Hebrew, Arabic, and Far East languages. The volume pages  15  are imposed as perfect bound 1×1 imposition. The volume pages are also rotated according to the glue direction  16  and right binding. The cover is imposed as saddle stitch 3×1 imposition including content spine  14 . The cover sheet and pages also rotated according to the glue direction  16  and also made for right binding imposition. 
         [0038]      FIG. 6  depicts printing of a duplex book comprising a duplex cover including a z-fold element inserted between volume pages  15 . This scheme will also include a blank spine, and will use left binding imposition. The z-fold element  60  is page  4  in the input sequence  20  in this example and the volume pages  15  are imposed as perfect bound 1×1 imposition. The volume pages also rotated according to the glue direction  16 . The cover is imposed as saddle stitch 3×1 imposition including content spine  14 . The cover sheet and pages also rotated according to the glue direction  16  using left binding imposition. All the pages, composed cover page  17 , Z-fold  61 , and volume pages  15  are centered according to the output sheet. 
         [0039]      FIG. 7  shows a personalized booklet printing. The original page sequence  20  includes series of content for the personalized booklet. This example shows printing of plurality of booklets  70 ,  74 , and  71 , each including four pages and a spine  14 . Some pages might and possibly the spine might differ from booklet to booklet, for example booklet  70  is different than booklet  71  both in the spine content and page  3 . The pages are delivered arranged to conform to the digital printing and finishing devices in output form to produce a plurality of booklets  72 ,  75 , and  73 . 
         [0040]    The invention has been described in detail with particular reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof, but it will be understood that variations and modifications can be effected within the scope of the invention. 
       PARTS LIST 
       [0000]    
       
           10  front cover inside 
           11  front cover outside 
           12  back cover inside 
           13  back cover outside 
           14  spine 
           15  volume pages 
           16  glue direction 
           17  cover page 
           20  original pages sequence (per application) 
           21  duplex pages in order for perfect binding 
           22  pre-printed cover in simplex 
           23  page left blank 
           24  top of page direction 
           25  output sequence 
           30  spine content (application order) 
           31  front cover pages (application order) 
           32  back cover pages (application order) 
           33  cover sheet saddle stitch imposition 
           34  composed front cover 
           35  composed back cover 
           40  pre-composed outside cover pages with spine content 
           41  pre-composed inside cover pages with spine content 
           42  duplex cover in order for finisher 
           60  z-fold at the input sequence 
           61  z-fold duplex at the output sequence 
           70  input booklet- 1   
           71  input booklet-n 
           72  output booklet- 1   
           73  output booklet-n 
           74  input booklet- 2  . . . booklet (n−1) 
           75  output booklet- 2  . . . booklet (n−1) 
           81  front cover rotation guide (Y-axis) 
           82  rotation guide position after front cover rotation (Y-axis) 
           91  front cover sheet remainder 
           92  back cover sheet remainder 
           111  front cover rotation guide (X-axis) 
           112  rotation guide position after front cover rotation (X-axis) 
           113  top page direction (rotated by 180 degrees) 
           120  sheet side for 1×1 imposition of content 
           121  single page content for 1×1 imposition 
           122  sheet side for 3×1 imposition of content