Patent ID: 8237951

Claim:
An imaging system comprising: an imaging device comprising a plurality of firmware components and configured to use the firmware components to process an imaging job into rendered output using a plurality of sequential firmware components, each firmware component being configured to execute a portion of processing of said imaging job; a host device comprising an additional firmware component; and controller means configured to modify rendering capabilities of the imaging device by downloading the additional firmware component to the imaging device and creating a custom sequence of firmware components at the imaging device by reordering execution of said plurality of sequential firmware components of said imaging device while including said additional firmware component of said host device in said custom sequence, the custom sequence to be used in rendering said imaging job into said rendered output by: providing imaging data from the imaging job as input to a first component of the custom sequence of firmware components; receiving processed output from the first component of the custom sequence of firmware components; and repeating, until all components of the custom sequence of firmware components have been executed, the following steps: determining whether all components of the custom sequence of firmware components have been executed; when not all components of the custom sequence of firmware components have been executed, setting a next component in the custom sequence of firmware components as the current component; providing imaging data received as processed output from the most recently-executed component as input to the current component; and receiving processed output from the current component.