Given that Web-based documents are frequently filled with colorful text and colorful graphics, the cost to print a single page from a Web-based document, even if printed in solitary black, can be much higher than printing a page from a simple text document that has been produced by a word processing program.
解答例
When these costs are considered over thousands of pages during a calendar year, significant savings could be realized by minimizing printing costs, yet current applications have not addressed the desire of some users to generate hardcopy versions of Web-based documents in a low cost manner.
[0019] Referring again to FIG. 1C, dialog box 30 contains checkbox 34 that represents a user-configurable print option, "EconoMode (Save Toner)", to reduce the consumption of printer toner.
While FIG. 1C provides one example of a printer driver that addresses the need to save printer toner, the method in that example, however, merely reduces printer toner across an entire hardcopy without regard to the content of the document that is being printed.
Although the reduction of toner across the hardcopy will be uniform, certain sections or objects on the hardcopy may be responsible for most of the consumption of toner or ink.
The user that requests the hardcopy may not be interested in printing out some of these sections or objects, yet the user has no control over the inclusion of these sections or objects without editing the softcopy version of the document.
While a user might be able to reduce printing costs by editing a document to simplify or reduce its content prior to printing the document, in the case of Web-based documents, browser applications are designed to provide viewing functionality with very limited editing functionality.
Moreover, it would be counterproductive to require the user to exert any effort to edit a document if the user's purpose in doing so is the desire to save time and money in printing costs, particularly over a large number of documents.
[0020] Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a methodology that, if requested by a user, automatically modifies a document prior to printing the document, e.g., by reducing content within the document, for the specific purpose of reducing the consumption of physical resources associated with the printing process, thereby reducing printing costs.
[0021] In the prior art, applications that request printouts of documents have had both limited abilities and limited purposes for changing the printed version of an electronic document.
Typically, the printer driver is given the task of producing a printed version of a document that differs in some ways from the displayed version of the document.
In limited circumstances, printer drivers have had the ability to produce a hardcopy in accordance with a print option that requests the conservation of printer toner.
Hence, it would seem logical to provide a printer driver with functionality to reduce the content of a document prior to generating a hardcopy of the document.
[0022] However, a logical division exists between the duties of a printer driver and an application for which the printer driver prints a document.
Printer drivers are concerned with accepting a document, preparing a print job for the document within the presentation space of the printing device, possibly rendering the document within that presentation space, and then transmitting the appropriate information to the printing device.
In contrast, applications are concerned with presenting and possibly modifying an electronic version of a document and then requesting the printing of a hardcopy version of the document.
It is widely assumed by users and application developers that any changes to the content of a document shall be performed only within the processes of an appropriate application and not within the processes of a printer driver.
[0023] Hence, it would not be appropriate to create and deploy a print driver with built-in, content-reduction, functionality.
Moreover, a user would probably not desire to automatically reduce the content of printed documents across multiple applications, as would occur with use of a printer driver, because some applications are specifically designed for generating documents in a WYSIWYG manner.
As noted above, however, there is a specific need by some users to generate hardcopy versions of Web-based documents in a low cost manner.
[0024] Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method or system for allowing a user to set printer options such that hardcopies of documents being viewed within a Web-browsing environment are generated in a low cost manner.
It would be particularly advantageous to provide pre-print processing of structured documents prior to generating a hardcopy of the document that has been requested by a user of a browser application.
[0025] The present invention is directed to a method, an apparatus, a system, or a computer program product that allows a user to choose one or more print options in order to conserve the consumption of physical resources, such as paper and printer ink, by modifying the content of a document.
Web-based documents are generally printed for specific, limited purposes, and hardcopy versions of Web-based documents can be relatively expensive.
By utilizing the extensible nature of browser applications and the standard formatting of structured documents on the World Wide Web, a methodology is provided for reducing the consumption of printing supplies in order to reduce printing costs of relatively expensive printouts of Web-based documents.
By parsing the document and changing the structure, tags, elements, element attribute values, text, graphics, etc., of the document, the present invention creates a modified document that consumes less physical resources during the physical printing process than would the physical printing process of the unmodified document.
Although the resulting hardcopy may be only a roughly approximate version of the original document, the user obtains representative hardcopies for particular purposes while minimizing the printing costs, thereby potentially saving significant amounts of paper and/or printer ink or printer toner.
A method for delivering electronic services in a personal area network (PAN) can include providing a kiosk in a publicly traversable area.
The kiosk can be configured to deliver electronic services over short-range radio communications links to wireless devices in a personal area network (PAN).
The kiosk also can be configured to communicate over an existing physical communications link medium.
