Printing image slices in parallel by print engines

摘要

A page-wide array inkjet printer allocates the processing tasks for individual printheads within the array to separate halftoning processors. Each halftoning processor processes the information relating to a strip of the image, with the boundaries between strips running parallel to the print medium advance direction. In a preferred embodiment, the pixels within each strip are processed using a forward error diffusion algorithm operating along columns of pixels parallel to the strip boundaries. The resulting halftone data is supplied from each halftoning processor to one or more uniquely associated printing component controllers, and these controllers generate print instructions for printing components (e.g. inkjet printheads) connected to the printing component controllers via a dedicated communications channel.

主权项

1. A method of processing input data representative of an image for printing by a printing system, the method comprising:
selecting a first set of data items relating to a first slice of the image to be printed; selecting a second set of data items relating to a second slice of the image to be printed; with a first print engine, processing said first set of data items and printing said first slice of the image; and with a second print engine, processing said second set of data items and printing said second slice of the image; wherein said first and second print engines operate in parallel to simultaneously print said first and second slices of the image on a print medium which passes the print engines in a print medium advance direction and said slices share a boundary lying parallel to a print medium advance direction and wherein each engine processes data items sequentially within each slice along columns lying parallel to the print medium advance direction, wherein processing of at least one data item of the first set of data items depends on one or more data items of the second set of data items, and processing of at least one data item of the second set of data items depends on one or more data items of the first set of data items, such that the first data set of data items is mutually exclusive with the second data set of data items in that no data item of the first data set is part of the second data set and in that no data item of the second data set is part of the first data set.