| 摘要 |
Methods and apparatus implementing techniques useful in variable printing. A technique for rendering reusable objects and other objects includes rendering the reusable objects, storing the resulting raster data in a cache, and then rendering and compositing a print area by painting the reusable objects and the other objects in paint order into a frame buffer. The reusable objects are read and composited from the cache and the other objects are rendered directly into the frame buffer as needed. The raster data resulting from reusable objects can include data specifying which pixels are transparent. The reusable objects can include two objects overlapping each other on the print area. The technique can include providing multiple integrated rasterizer-compositors, assigning a rasterizer-compositor to render each of the reusable objects, and assigning a rasterizer-compositor to render the print area. Apparatus can include an integrated rasterizer-compositor module to render page description language reusable objects into raster data reusable objects and causing the raster data to be stored in a cache, and to composite page reusable objects and other objects into a frame buffer by rendering and compositing other objects into the frame buffer on the fly. Apparatus can also include a scheduler to receive from an input stream description identifying the objects required for a print area, the required objects being either reusable objects or not; to cause only the reusable objects to be rendered and stored in a cache before being used; and to cause the print area to be composited.
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