Patent ID: 7221472

Claim:
A machine-based method comprising receiving compressed sets of pixel data defining parts of rasterized swaths of scan lines of an image of a page, at least one of the parts of one of the rasterized swaths of scan lines of the image of the page overlapping another part of that swath of the image of the page, and the pixel data that defines the overlapping part including mask data that identifies pixels of the overlapping part that are to be included in the image, decompressing the sets of pixel data, the decompressed data being used to generate a series of the rasterized swaths of scan lines of the image of the page including the pixels identified by the mask data, and while each of the rasterized portions of the image is being used by an output device, generating another of the series of rasterized swaths of scan lines of the image of the page, each of the swaths being generated by processing objects that form the image, each of the generated swaths containing at least portions of the objects that fall within the swath in accordance with a top-to-bottom order of objects by swath, the portions of each of the objects that are contained within each of the generated swaths being in accordance with an order of overlap of the objects from back to front.