Patent ID: 7123174

Claim:
A system comprising: an image source providing image data; a compressor that transforms the image data into at least one run length code word comprising at least one differential run length code word; an op-code within each of the at least one differential run length code word wherein the op-code is four bits long and has a value ranging from 10 to 15; a hint within each of the at least one differential run length code word wherein the hint is four bits long and used to direct print processing; one or two length bytes within each of the at least one differential run length code word wherein the number of length bytes is specified by the op-code; a color within each of the at least one differential run length code word wherein the color is one byte long; and a multitude of differential values wherein the number of differential values is specified by the one or two length bytes, the interpretation of the differential values is specified by the op-ode, and each of the multitude of four bit differential values is four bits long.