Patent ID: 7814430

Claim:
In a printing system having a user interface with a graphical display screen, and having a finishing subsystem for applying user-specified finishing options to an output document, a method of programming the finishing options, the method comprising: displaying a finishing window on the user interface display screen; displaying a document mimic in the finishing window in the WYSIWYG format where the document mimic comprises only one page of the document at a time where the one page occupies at least one quarter of the entire screen area; displaying a user-controlled pointer on the user interface display screen; accepting a user selection of a finishing tool; displaying at least one finishing location identifier overlaid on at least one page of the document, each displayed location identifier associated with the currently activated finishing tool, each finishing location identifier corresponding to a location of the output document for which the user can select activation of the selected finishing tool or for which the user can undo a previously selected activation of the selected finishing tool, each finishing location identifier displayed overlaid on only one page of the document mimic, and each displayed location identifier identifying a corresponding region of the output document by its location on the document mimic; displaying at least one finishing tool selection region in the finishing window for enabling the user to activate the finishing tool selected from at least one available finishing tool; highlighting a displayed finishing location identifier when the pointer overlaps the respective the displayed finishing location identifiers; changing the appearance of the pointer to a graphical likeness tool which performs a function of the activated finishing tool when the pointer overlaps an available finishing location; accepting a user selection of a finishing location by selection of one of the displayed finishing location identifiers; performing a graphical representation of an operation of the activated finishing tool in the portion of the document mimic identified by the selected finishing location; storing the user selection of the finishing tool and the finishing location; and producing the output document, the producing including: performing a finishing tool function associated with the selected finishing tool on the output document at the selected finishing location.