Patent ID: 7218411

Claim:
A method of nesting finishing operations comprising: receiving printer control data for controlling printing and finishing operations according to the printing and finishing architecture; matching the printer control data with a predetermined set of rules that define an order in which the printing and finishing operations are performed, wherein the predetermined set of rules specifies performing the finishing operations according to a structured hierarchy determined by a scope of the finishing operations, and wherein the structured hierarchy comprises: an innermost level comprising medium-map-level finishing on a collection of media, a second level comprising document-level finishing on a selected document in the print file, a third level comprising document-level finishing on each document in the print file; and an outermost level comprising print-file level finishing operations; nesting commands, that correspond to the printing and finishing operations, according to the defined order in which the printing and finishing operations are performed, wherein the nesting of at least the commands corresponding to the finishing operations is performed at least at a page description language level; and providing control signals for controlling printing and finishing equipment according to the ordered commands.