Patent ID: 8849722

Claim:
A method for preparing mail pieces from printed postal items, the method comprising setting a control system of an apparatus for preparing mail pieces from the printed postal items during a setting stage and the control system subsequently controlling the apparatus during an operating stage during which the apparatus prepares the mail pieces from the printed postal items in accordance with settings established during the setting stage, the setting stage comprising: feeding one or more printed postal items to a scanner of the apparatus; the scanner of the apparatus scanning at least a portion of a printed postal item; the scanner generating image data representing an image of the scanned portion of the printed postal item; storing the image data representing an image of the scanned portion of the postal item in a memory of the control system; displaying the image represented by the image data on a display; selecting an area of the displayed image containing a selected mark; a data processor of the control system generating, from the image data representing an image of the selected area of the displayed image, a selected mark data set representing at least the selected mark; storing the selected mark data set in the memory; inputting instruction data representing at least one mail preparation instruction in the control system; and storing the inputted instruction data in the memory in association with the selected mark data set; and the operating stage comprising: feeding further printed postal items for inclusion in mail pieces to the scanner, at least one of the further printed postal items bearing a mark in agreement with the selected mark; the scanner scanning at least a portion of each of the further printed postal items; the scanner generating item image data representing an image of the scanned portion of each of said further printed postal items; storing the item image data representing an image of the scanned portion of each of said further printed postal items in the memory of the control system; for each of said further printed postal items, the data processor comparing the scanned stored item image data with the selected mark data set; recognizing by the data processor that a mark represented by at least a portion of the stored item image data is in agreement with the selected mark represented by the selected mark data set, the data processor selecting the instruction data stored in association to the selected mark data set; and the apparatus preparing the mail piece from the scanned printed postal items under control of the control system in accordance with the selected instruction data.