AU2926302A - Digital network printing system - Google Patents

Description

S&FRef: 569511

AUSTRALIA

PATENTS ACT 1990 COMPLETE SPECIFICATION FOR A STANDARD PATENT

ORIGINAL

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9 *C 9 9 Name and Address of Applicant: Actual Inventor(s): Address for Service: Invention Title: Canon Information Systems Research Australia Pty Ltd 1 Thomas Holt Drive North Ryde New South Wales 2113 Australia Neil Witheridge, Timothy John Lindquist, Ian Scrivener Spruson Ferguson St Martins Tower,Level 31 Market Street Sydney NSW 2000 (CCN 3710000177) Digital Network Printing System ASSOCIATED PROVISIONAL APPLICATION DETAILS [33] Country [31] Applic. No(s) AU PR4064 [32] Application Date 28 Mar 2001 The following statement is a full description of this invention, including the best method of performing it known to me/us:- IP Austrlia Documentr' ecejved S8 MAR 2002 99 9 9 9 9 99 99 on: 5815c 9** 999 99 9 9 9 DIGITAL NETWORK PRINTING SYSTEM Technical Field of the Invention The present invention relates generally to the provision of an on-line service for design of products having graphic images or artistic layouts thereon, and in particular to the use of an Intemrnet based system to provide an on-line graphic design service for the production of printed materials, such as office stationary and greeting cards.

Background Art Traditionally, procurement of custom printed materials such as office stationary business cards, letterhead, envelopes, with-compliments slips and "t0. invoice sheets), and other custom printed materials corporate greeting cards, S. *S name tags, brochures and menus), has required that customers negotiate directly with ei S. designers, printers and couriers. For the convenience of customers, some printing service suppliers have also provided design services and have arranged delivery of the lots e finished printed materials to the customer.

This 'direct interaction' process between the printed materials customer and e"the design and print supplier(s) has been labour intensive and error prone due to the S. *g! complexity of transforming the customers design requirements and intentions into design data required as input to a printing process.

Such a 'direct interaction' process has typically been expensive. In the event that a graphic designer has been used to create the design, the process has been expensive due to the cost of artistic services. From the perspective of the print service supplier, due to the error-prone nature of the above process, the cost of the printing service has had to include an allowance for print production 're-work'. Re-work refers to the requirement to repeat the printing work due to the finished goods being 56951 .doc -2rejected by the customer, due to mistakes in translation of the customer's design requirements into the design data required by the printing process.

With the advent of the Internet and the availability of high-powered personal computers, on-line services for printed material design, print and delivery are becoming available. Such on-line services provide convenience and potential cost savings to customers, hereafter referred to as users, and suppliers. Printed material may be designed on-line, ordered on-line including specified delivery requirements and payment options, and stored in the form of an on-line user specific design 'catalogue' for future reference, re-ordering and design modification.

10 Due to the difficulty of designing printed materials that are aesthetically pleasing, such on-line services typically offer design templates, consisting of single or 0•:*00 multi-page documents, which include professionally designed artwork with 'fixed' S. °q.

S0" and 'user modifiable' text and image 'slots'. A user would typically select one of the offered design templates as the basis of an own design. The user then creates an own too.. 15 customised designs by modifying those user modifiable text and image slots, thereby ocreating a design unique to the user.

Provision of design templates that offer 'uniqueness' requires richness in terms of document formatting and design layout, image processing and manipulation, and content availability, which includes access to images and font sets for inclusion in the design. Such functionality is difficult to achieve from a technical perspective.

Advanced image processing features such as object based graphics and page description language, compositing operations, support for multiple colour standards, pixel level transparency, colour and transparency blending, are required to provide graphic and image processing richness. Furthermore, document formatting and 569511 .doc 569511.doc o: 0 1. t 0 0 design layout technologies providing advanced layout functions, such as typesetting and textflows, are required to provide design layout richness.

Such service richness has been provided in stand-alone printed material creation systems, that is those running on a single PC with a local printer. Such systems rely on image processing technologies and advanced template management technology installed and run locally on the user PC to provide graphic and image processing and design layout richness.

Existing on-line service arrangements have been limited in meeting a requirement of providing a responsive graphical interface that shows the design as it is S 10 manipulated due to the bandwidth limitations imposed by the Internet. These bandwidth limitations are particularly restrictive for small office, home office and •personal users, which are typically limited to 56kbps modem links.

rr* Existing on-line design services predominantly rely on design layout, graphic and image processing, and rendering technologies available on the computer of the user that are purpose built for on-line interaction.

As existing on-line interactive technologies on the computer of the user typically do not provide advanced image processing and layout functions, the ability of the service to provide image processing and layout richness, such as advanced typesetting, has been limited.

Summary of the Invention It is an object of the present invention to substantially overcome, or at least ameliorate, one or more disadvantages of existing arrangements.

According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of providing a network design system, said method comprising the steps of: 56951 .doc :i •o -4providing script language descriptions corresponding to a design template to each of a client computer and server, said client computer and said server being interconnected by a network; rendering said script language description on at least said client computer; receiving user input corresponding to design changes; rendering an image on said client computer incorporating said design changes; transferring data corresponding to said design changes from said client computer to said server; and 10 rendering at least high-resolution image data on said server incorporating said design changes to said script language description.

Other aspects of the invention are also disclosed.

Brief Description of the Drawings One or more embodiments of the present invention will now be described

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15 with reference to the drawings, in which: Fig. 1 is a block diagram depicting a system architecture indicating system components and communication paths of an on-line design, print and delivery system; Fig. 2 shows the format of a typical design template metadata file; Fig. 3 depicts how a single design template metadata file is used to generate script language definitions for use by server and client layout and rendering systems respectively; Fig. 4 depicts how the design template metadata is used to dynamically generate the composite image enabling incremental update of the image during the design process; 569511.doc 56951doc 55 Fig. 5 shows an example design template metadata language construct used to generate a client script language description; Fig. 6 depicts an example form interface provided by a client layout and render system, also referred to as the 'design application'; Fig. 7 shows an example design template metadata language construct used to generate a server side script language description; Fig. 8 shows a composite structure of a server rendered image; Fig. 9 shows a typical system level interaction diagram during use of the system; and 10 Fig. 10 is a schematic block diagram of a general purpose computer that may 4 be used as a client computer.

S. Detailed Description including Best Mode Where reference is made in any one or more of the accompanying drawings to steps and/or features, which have the same reference numerals, those steps and/or features have for the purposes of this description the same function(s) or operation(s), 9 9 unless the contrary intention appears.

A requirement exists for an on-line system with features that include: advanced graphic and image processing and design layout features; provision of a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" (WYSIWYG) interface; and user interface responsiveness, providing low latency in image update during the design process, thereby promoting efficient and unimpeded use.

A WYSIWYG (pronounced "wiz-ee-wig") interface is one that allows the user, using his graphical user interface, to see what the end result will look like while the design is being created. A WYSIWYG interface can be contrasted with more traditional interfaces that require the user to enter descriptive codes (or markup), and 569511.doc 9 9 9 9 9 99. 9. 9, -6do not permit an immediate way to see the results of the markup. The WYSIWYG interface conceals the markup and allows the user to think entirely in terms of how the content should appear.

Fig. 1 is a block diagram depicting a system architecture of an on-line design, print and delivery system 100. The system 100 includes a server side and a client side, interconnected by a network, such as Internet 110. At the server side, a service web site 101 is provided, which includes one or more web pages and database access for accessing a design database 109. The service web site 101 may also provide interfaces to systems external to the design function, such as a print system 105, a 10 delivery system 107, and a business systems 108. The service web site 101 includes ~business logic for providing a user management, order management and user data •management.

The service web site 101 provides various web pages associated with the service, such as user registration, user management, ordering interface and user data management.

oo A user accesses the service web site 101, and in particular web pages on the service web site 101, using a web browser 104 running on a client computer 111 at the client side. The primary communications method used between the service web site 101 and the client computer 111 is the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or the Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTPS).

Upon initiation of a design function on the web browser 104, scripts 113 are downloaded from the server side, through the Internet 110, to the client computer 111.

The scripts 113 are executed by a client side layout and render system 112 on the web browser 104 to provide a design application 103 and associated user interface.

56951 I.doc 0 -7- On the server side and interfaced with the service web site 101, a server side layout and render system 102 is also provided. The client and server side layout and render systems 112 and 102 each provide functionality for document layout, image processing and image rendering for generating image data based on a scripting language description of a design template or user created design.

The design database 109 contains design templates provided by the on-line design service, and user data including user created design data.

Due to the difficulty of designing printed materials that are aesthetically pleasing, the design template structure and layout is designed by professional artists 10 and include professionally designed artwork, typically created by a graphic artist *5S~% using a drawing package, such as Adobe® Illustrator®.

••"Design template design layout and artwork is translated into design template S"metadata by a manual or automatic process, having a format such as the example L!s shown in Fig. 2. The design template metadata describes the layout (structure) and 15 default content of a document, identifying 'slots' for text, pixel based images sourced S.oOO• Sefrom a specified image file, and graphic data or 'clip-art'. Preferably the design template is store in the design database 109 in the form of design template metadata, i.e. in the translated form.

Each design template is defined in the design template metadata by a certain page size 601, a number of pages 602, and an arbitrary number of non-editable and user editable text and image slots 602 and 606 on those pages. The position and size of any slot 602 and 606 is arbitrary, although typically restricted by the page size 600.

Text and Image slots 602 and 606 are characterised by the page number 604 that it forms part of, and position 605 with respect to a defined origin, for example the top left hand corner of the page, or the current coordinate origin point. The slots 602 56951 Ldoc 569511 .doc S **5 -8and 606 may overlap each other, and may be linked thereby sharing certain content and attributes, for example specified image or text, and associated attributed.

Text slots 602 may have a default value (otherwise empty) and standard text attributes, such as font, font size, colour and style. Text slots 602 also can inherit attributes from another text slot. Text slots 602 may also be linked, causing entered text to, upon filling the available slot size 603, continue in the next linked text slot.

Accordingly, text slots 602 also have a pointer 607 to a next text slot in the flow.

Image slots 606 may have a default value (otherwise empty) and standard image attributes and image operations rotation, cropping, scaling). Image slots 0* S 10 606 also may inherit attributes from another image slot. Image slots 606 may have *0: Ieeqt r =o.e associated with them a series of images, recommended by the template designer, from o; an on-line image library stored in the design database 109.

Sr. S:A user typically selects one of the offered design templates as the basis of an own design. Referring to Fig. 3, the chosen design template, in the form of a design template metadata file 202, is translated by client layout/rendering script conversion 0 0° program logic 203 to client script language description 209 that is usable by the client "side layout and render system 112. Similarly, the design template metadata file 202 is S. also translated by server layout and rendering script conversion program logic 206 to script language description 210 usable by the server layout and rendering system 102.

Referring to Fig. 4, the client and server script language descriptions 209 and 210 also include references to program logic in the form of client-side layout and render logic 709 and server-side layout and render logic 710 respectively, for performing user interaction, layout and rendering, as well as communications operations.

When the user invokes the design function on the web browser 104, the scripts 113, which are the client script language description 209 and referenced client- 56951 .doc 0 a o• side layout and render logic 709, are downloaded to the web browser 104 over the Internet 110. If the appropriate client side layout and render system 112 in the form of 'plug-in' technology is not already resident on the client computer 111, a means of downloading the plug-in technology is provided. The web browser 104 invokes the 'plug in' technology to execute the client side layout and render system scripts 209, including design application logic 709, to provide a client side design application 103.

In the preferred implementation the plug-in technology is Macromedia® FlashTM.

Fig. 5 shows an example of design template metadata language constructs used to generate client script language description 209. The design template metadata 10 language constructs contains an identifier 501 uniquely identifying the design template, various design template attributes, and specification of the user editable text and image slots on each page of the design template. The specification of the user .1 editable text and image slots contain information required to generate a simple forms interface which may be presented by the design application 103, such as: 15 an appropriate data entry prompt string 503; and a location of appearance of this item on the forms interface.

For example, text slot 504 for receiving a name specifies the data entry S" prompt 503 as string "Enter your name:". An order of display 506 is also provided, specifying the order of displaying the associated data entry prompt on the form interface. An example forms interface which is displayed on the client design application 103 and corresponding with the client script language description 209 is shown in Fig. 6. The data entry prompt 503 is displayed on the forms interface as prompt 507, and in a first order, as specified by the order of display specification.

The user may now create a customised designs by modifying the user modifiable text and image slots, thereby creating a design unique to the user.

569511.doc *0 o 5 A text box 510 for entering a text string in the case of a text slot, and a text box and browser button 511 for locating an appropriate image file in the case of an image slot is provided for receiving user input for user editable slots.

At least one WYSIWIG or substantially WYSIWIG image is also displayed by the client side layout and render system 112 as rendered images 513 and 514. A substantial WYSIWIG image is typically provided when there are differences in the capabilities of the client-side layout and rendering system 112 and that of the serverside layout and rendering system 102. Accordingly, there is no need to transfer the actual design, as developed by the layout and rendering system 102 back to the web 10 browser 104 to provide the user with a WYSIWIG interface.

Entered text 510 and referred image 511 are rendered on the client-side rendered images as fields 509 and 508 respectively when an appropriate user interface action is taken, such as selecting to update the image by activating tab 512. With the L' client-side layout and rendering system 112 generating image data directly in the form of rendered images 513 and 514 on the web browser 104 reflecting changes to the design template and not receiving the image data from the service web site 101, a low-latency design tool for design creation is provided.

Referring again to Fig. 4, in addition to performing design changes on the client side layout and rendering system 112, design change data is also sent to the service web site 101, where the design change data is stored persistently in the design database 109. The communications method for passing the design change data to the service web site 101 may be HTTP or a proprietary protocol over Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) with connection via TCP/IP sockets. The design change data is stored with a reference to the design template to which the changes have been applied.

569511.doc 9. 9 :9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9:• 0 99• 999• 0 9 9.

-11- The server-side layout and render system script language description 210 and the server-side layout and render program logic 710, is used by the server-side layout and render system 102 to generate a server rendered image of the pages corresponding to the design template. In order to generate the server rendered image that corresponds to the customer design, the design change data is extracted from the design database 109 and merged with the script language description 210. The merged script is then used by the server-side layout and render system 102 to generate the image data corresponding to the customer design.

In an alternate implementation, the design template metadata may be recreated and stored as a user created design metadata. The server-side layout and =rc.i render script 210 may be regenerated from the user created design metadata.

o e• 7 shows an example of design template metadata language construct 0* used to generate the server side script language description or merged script. The design template metadata language construct of the merged script contains an 15 identifier 402 uniquely identifying the design template that it is derived from, various design template attributes, and definitions of the user editable text and image slots on each page of the design template. The specification of a user editable slot, for o oexample a Text Slot 403, specifies the position 404 of the slot on the page with respect to the design template 'origin', and its outer dimensions in terms of a rectangle width and height 405. The position and dimension data associated with each user editable slot on the page is used to construct a composite image comprised of rectangular elements.

A composite image of a server rendered image that corresponds to the merged script is shown in Fig. 8. All positions of the slots are measured from a defined origin, for example the top left corner of the page 406. The Image slots such 569511 .doc .4 444 4. 4. 4 44.

44444 4 4 4: 4 4 -12as image slot 409, are treated in a similar manner to text slots 407. Areas of the image that do not include editable slots, that is, containing only fixed content, are defined and are divided into an optimal arrangement of rectangular image segments 408.

The server rendered image data generated by the server-side layout and render system 102 typically consists of a low-resolution proxy image 719, a mediumresolution composite image 720 and high-resolution image data 721. These images 719, 720 and 721 are persistently stored during the design session, for example in the design database 109 or computer file system (not illustrated).

The low-resolution proxy image 719 is used as design thumbnails for display 10 on web-pages on the client or by the design application 103 and is persistently stored in the design database 109 or computer file system. Such thumbnails provide a convenient search mechanism for design templates or user created designs.

S"It is also necessary that the server rendered image be displayed to the user on '•1the web browser 104 for the purpose of design proofing and acceptance. This provides an image of the 'real' or 'actual' design to be delivered to the printer, rather than the near-WYSIWYG representation provided by the client side layout and render system 112. In order to reduce the latency associated with downloading the server generated image data, the medium-resolution composite image 720 is pre-loaded, with only changed image elements being downloaded to the web browser 104 in order to display as image 718 for use by the user for on-screen proofing.

Once the design is approved by the user for printing, the high-resolution image data 721 may be incorporated with a file having a file format that is capable of capturing an image, such as PDF, and delivered to the printer system 105.

Fig. 9 shows a typical system level interaction diagram during use of the system 100. In a first user sequence 925 the user selection of a design template and 56951 I.doc .1 -13invocation of the client-side layout and render system 112 is shown. Following selection of a design template or customer design for modification, the user performs an action 901, such as a mouse click on a link on the web-page of the service in order to invoke the design function on the web browser 104. The web browser 104 requests 902 via HTTP the web server 101 to deliver the client-side layout and render system script 209 corresponding to the design template or design. The web server 101 delivers 903 the script 209 corresponding to the design template or customer design to the web browser 104. Since the client-side layout and render system script 209 contains links to the client-side layout and render logic 709, the logic 709 is also S 10 downlowded.

~The web-browser 104 invokes 904 the appropriate client side layout and render system 112, typically a web-browser plug-in technology, to 'execute' the =to oq script, thereby creating the 'design application' 103. This provides 905 a user S. S e r• interface with the selected design template or customer design displayed and a means 15 of entering data corresponding to editable text and image slots. The design C. eo application then waits for further input.

Following delivery of the design template or customer design scripts 209, and the client-side layout and render system logic 709, the service web site 101 informs 906 the server-side layout and render system 102 of the user request. The user request includes a reference to the design template, and in particular the server side layout and render system script 210 and the server side layout and render logic 710.

The server-side layout and render system 102 then 'pre-renders' 907 image data in anticipation of the request by the client for server-rendered image content.

569511.doc 1 C~ o g C •C C C -14- The pre-rendered image data preferably consists of a low-resolution proxy image, a medium-resolution composite image, and high-resolution image data.

Following completion of pre-rendering 907 of the image data, the server-side layout and render system 102 informs 908 the service web site 101 that the rendering is complete. The service web site 101 then informs the web browser 104, and in particular a client-side component such as a JavaScript component, of the availability of pre-rendered image data, and the client-side component then requests the prerendered image data in order to cache or 'pre-load' such data.

The service web site 101 delivers 909 the pre-rendered image data to the :0 10 requesting client-side component where it is cached 910.

4,.

S. os In a second user sequence 926 the user modification of a design is shown.

o o" When the user changes 911 a design element, such as enters text data corresponding o o• to a text slot, and performs an action causing the design to be updated, such as So selecting the 'update' button 512 (Fig. or moving the cursor to a different input 15 field, the client-side layout and render system 112 performs a local update 912 of the 09 SO 6Z S image displayed in the design application.

,'The client-side layout and render system 112 then informs 913 the service %S up5 S. web site 101, perhaps via a web browser 104 component, of the design change.

The service web site 101 records 914 the design change data in the design database 109. The mechanism of 'trickling' design change data to the server side provides a level of protection against loss of design change data should the client connection be broken or the client computer 111 suffer a failure. The service web site 101 notifies 915 the server-side layout and render system 102 of the design change.

The server-side layout and render system 102 may, depending on configuration data, repeat pre-rendering 916 of image data such as low-resolution 56951 .doc o0 0 0 o ooo o• o proxy images, medium-resolution image components, and high-resolution image components.

Such re-pre-rendered image components, which correspond to the design changes performed by the user, are stored 918 persistently in the design database 109 in readiness for a request from the client for a server-rendered image data update.

A third user sequence for viewing of server-rendered image is also shown.

When the user selects 919 to view the medium-resolution or high-resolution serverrendered image, such as during the design process for checking the server-rendered output or for on-screen proofing, the web browser 104 requests 920 the service web site 101 to deliver the server-rendered corresponding composite image data from the S' web server 101.

*t* The user invokes this action by performing a particular operation, such as a o** mouse click on a user-interface button labelled "View Server-Rendered Image"(not illustrated) on the design application or the service web pages displayed by the web 15 browser 104.

As the components of the composite image have been 'pre-loaded', the service web site 101 only delivers 921 to the web browser 104 those components that .t have changed since the last image component delivery. The web browser 104 displays 922 the cached image components if not already displayed and the newly downloaded image components to form the complete server-rendered image.

The functionality of the client-side and server-side layout and render systems 112 and 102 will now be described in more detail. As noted above, the client and server side layout and render systems 112 and 102 each provide functionality for Document formatting and Design Layout, Image Processing and Image Rendering for 569511.doc -16generating image data based on the scripting language descriptions 209 and 210 of the design template or user created design.

The document formatting and design layout component of the respective layout and render systems 112 and 102 typically perform object-based document formatting typesetting) and design layout, converting the high-level script language description 209 and 210 of the design template into a data format amenable to the image processing and image rendering operations of the respective layout and render systems 112 and 102. Document formatting typically refers to rule based manipulation of two-dimensional objects on one or multiple pages of a 'document'.

Common rule-based operations include typesetting operations, such as justification, implementation of linked text flows, text and image scaling and truncation.

i. Image processing involves object based image processing, performing operations such as blends and compositing operations. Image processing technologies typically provide a page description language (PDL) as a means of high-level *e t* 15 description of page layouts. Such PDL's are typically in the form of a general purpose programming language with conventional syntax and constructs. Objectbased image processing engines typically enable the creation of page description language representations of images composed of text, graphics and pixel-based images. As a multi-page document format, they are designed to facilitate device independence and page independence. Image processing engines typically provide features such as colour, geometric transformations and access to fonts, transparency and compositing, texture tiling and colour blends.

Rendering involves the transformation of a high-level, object-based page description to the pixel image data for display or printing. In the context of this 569511 .doc -17description, the term 'rendering' also refers to the generation of PDF files to be delivered to the print system 105.

An example of an image rendering engine and associated object based 'page description languages' is the Adobe® PostScript® Raster Image Processor (RIP) technology commonly found on printers, and the postscript PDL.

Accordingly, the layout and render systems may provide the following software environment for manipulating multi-page documents and images: a variety of standard fonts, and a facility to incorporate new fonts which may use the standard Unicode encodings. Characters from any font may be scaled to any size or transformed in other ways; the graphics context, which contains attributes of graphical elements; coordinate system transformations; transparency and compositing; spline-based graphics; «s, 15 clipping to boundaries of arbitrary spline-based shapes and font characters; tiles which can be pre-rendered and then used to fill spline-based graphics and text; a variety of image formats, including TIFF, JFIF, PhotoCD and FlashPix image format input, and TIFF, JFIF, EPS and PDF image format outputs; means of incorporating pixel-based images into a page in layout, whether via the input stream or by direct access to the user's ;local file system; rendering in device-independent colour with arbitrary input and output colour mappings; means of generating output, whether on a printer or by direct access to the user's local file system; 569511.doc 0.

S. 0 0o -18halftoning; a wide range of built-in image processing functions.

The client computer 111 is preferably a general-purpose computer system 800, such as that shown in Fig. 10 wherein the on-line design process may be implemented as software. The software may be stored in a computer readable medium, including the storage devices described below, for example. The software is loaded into the computer from the computer readable medium or downloaded from a network, and then executed by the computer. A computer readable medium having such software or computer program recorded on it is a computer program product..

The computer system 800 comprises a computer module 801, input devices *0%.0 such as a keyboard 802 and mouse 803, output devices including a printer 815 and a 0* *0 S* display device 814. A Modulator-Demodulator (Modem) transceiver device 816 is used by the computer module 801 for communicating to and from a communications network 820, such as the Internet 110, for example connectable via a telephone 15 line 821 or other functional medium.

The computer module 801 typically includes at least one processor unit 805, a memory unit 806, for example formed from semiconductor random access memory (RAM) and read only memory (ROM), input/output interfaces including a video interface 807, and an I/O interface 813 for the keyboard 802 and mouse 803, and an interface 808 for the modem 816. A storage device 809 is provided and typically includes a hard disk drive 810 and a floppy disk drive 811. A CD-ROM drive 812 is typically provided as a non-volatile source of data. The components 805 to 813 of the computer module 801, typically communicate via an interconnected bus 804 and in a manner which results in a conventional mode of operation of the computer system 800 known to those in the relevant art.

569511 .doc 0* 0 *o 0000 0 0 0 0 0 o• -19u Typically, application programs are resident on the hard disk drive 810 and read and controlled in its execution by the processor 805. Intermediate storage of the program and any data fetched from the network 820 may be accomplished using the semiconductor memory 806, possibly in concert with the hard disk drive 810. In some instances, the application program may be supplied to the user encoded on a CD-ROM or floppy disk and read via the corresponding drive 812 or 811, or alternatively may be read by the user from the network 820 via the modem device 816.

The foregoing describes only some embodiments of the present invention, and modifications and/or changes can be made thereto without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention, the embodiments being illustrative and not restrictive.

4 In the context of this specification, the word "comprising" means "including principally but not necessarily solely" or "having" or "including" and not "consisting 15 only of'. Variations of the word comprising, such as "comprise" and "comprises" have corresponding meanings.

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Claims (7)

1. A method of providing a network design system, said method comprising the steps of: providing script language descriptions corresponding to a design template to each of a client computer and server, said client computer and said server being interconnected by a network; rendering said script language description on at least said client computer; receiving user input corresponding to design changes; rendering an image on said client computer incorporating said design changes; transferring data corresponding to said design changes from said client computer to said server; and rendering at least high-resolution image data on said server incorporating 15 said design changes to said script language description.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said template is converted to l% provide said script language descriptions.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 or 2 wherein at least logic of an application for rendering said script language description on said client computer is transferred to said client computer from said server. 569511 .doc C C C C CCC Co C -21

4. A method as claimed in claim 3 wherein said application provides a forms interface for customising said template, said forms interface being dynamically generated based on said script language description.

5. of: A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 4 comprising the further steps transferring a composite image from said server to said client computer, said composite image being of an image rendered at said server; and displaying said composite image on said client computer. *h It ~q

6. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 5 comprising the further step of transferring said high-resolution image data to a printer for producing a hard-copy image.

7. A method of providing a network design system, said method being substantially as described herein with reference to the drawings. DATED this Twenty-Sixth Day of MARCH 2002 CANON INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH AUSTRALIA PTY LTD Patent Attorneys for the Applicant SPRUSON&FERGUSON

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