Patent ID: 8830513

Claim:
A method for storing a destination variable document corresponding to a source variable document, the source variable document and destination variable document each comprising one or more variable document instances, each variable document instance comprising one or more pages with recurring content and variable content and comprising a plurality of objects arranged in a z-order stack, the method comprising: (a) for each page common to the one or more variable document instances, flattening recurring content of the source variable document page and storing the flattened recurring content in a first memory location; (b) for each page in the source variable document: (i) flattening the page using the variable content of that page and the stored flattened recurring content of step (a); (ii) extracting from the resulting data compiled in step (b)(i) any portions of the flattened page in which the variable content contributes to the resulting data, and storing said extracted portions in a second memory location; (iii) creating a page in the destination document comprising the stored flattened recurring content of step (a) and the stored extracted portions of step (b)(ii).