Patent ID: 8228540

Claim:
A method of operating a processing system to process a job for printing, the printing to generate multiple variable instances of one or more pages, at least one page including a plurality of elements of which some are fixed from instance to instance, and some may vary from instance to instance, the method comprising: for a page that has one or more variable elements and one or more elements that are fixed from instance to instance, dividing the page into a plurality of non-overlapping parts, of which at least one non-overlapping part includes variable content that has one or more variable elements or portions thereof in at least one instance, such that both the parts that have fixed elements or portions thereof from instance to instance, and the one or more parts that have variable elements or portions thereof are non-overlapping; rasterizing the page with no variable content present into a rasterized fixed page of non-overlapping parts that includes, for at least any non-overlapping part that has no variable content, a rasterized fixed image of the non-overlapping part with no variable content, such that the element or elements that are fixed from instance to instance are combinable into one rasterized fixed page; identifying one or more non-overlapping parts that include variable content; and rasterizing each instance of the page with the variable elements of the page instance into a rasterized set of non-overlapping instance parts that includes for each non-overlapping part that has variable content a rasterized variable image of the non-overlapping part that includes the variable content and any non-variable content of the instance of the part; such that, for each instance, the rasterized fixed images of non-overlapping parts and the rasterized variable images of non-overlapping parts of the instance are combinable to form a rasterized instance of the page.