Patent ID: 8233185

Claim:
A method for estimating an amount of processing time for a print/copy jobs utilizing a page description language, the method comprising: receiving a page description language (PDL) of a page of a print job, said PDL describing objects embedded in said page and parsing said received input; identifying which of said objects comprise reusable document components, reusable document component being those objects in said PDL which are identified as having already been processed and are presently stored in memory; determining a total number of placements for said identified reusable document components; determining a total number of page parallel rips required to be performed on objects embedded in said page; estimating a total performance time for each of: a reusable document component placement time and a non-reusable page description language component processing time, said reusable document component placement time being an estimated amount of time needed to retrieve said reusable objects from memory and place each at their respective locations on said page, and said non-reusable page description language component processing time being an estimated amount of time needed to process said non-reusable objects and place each of these on said page; projecting a job processing time for each job processing path in said job, said projection being based on a combination of: 1) said total number of placements, 2) said total number of page parallel rips, and 3) said total performance time; and selecting one of said job processing paths for said job based on said projected job processing time.