[54] THERMAL TRANSFER PRINTER HAVING MEDIA PRE-COAT SELECTION APPARATUS AND METHODS
[75] Inventors: Randel L. Gibbons, Lake Oswego;
Lynd L. Wieman, Portland; Suresh C.
Paranjpe, Lake Oswego, all of Oreg.
[73] Assignee: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, Oreg.
[21] Appl. No.: 994,383
[22] Filed: Dec. 21,1992
[51] Int. CI.* B41J 2/325
[52] U.S. CI 346/76 PH
[58] Field of Search 346/76 PH; 400/120
[56] References Cited
U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
4,704,615 11/1987 Tanaka 346/76 PH
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
"PostScript @ Language Reference Manual," 2nd Edition, 1990, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., Reading, Mass., pp. 226-251.
Primary Examiner—Benjamin R. Fuller
USO05305O20A
[li] Patent Number: 5,305,020 [45] Date of Patent: Apr. 19,1994
Assistant Examiner—Huan Tran
Attorney, Agent, or Firm—John D. Winkelman; Richard
B. Preiss
[57] ABSTRACT
A thermal transfer printer (10) includes multiple media trays (16,120, 126) each encoded to communicate to a printer controller (46) via sensors (132,134,136) a print medium size and type contained in the tray, and a pair of thermal transfer ribbon (24) sensors (44,45) to communicate whether the ribbon includes a pre-coat material panel (34). A printer driver responsive to the media size and type sensors and the thermal transfer ribbon sensors to causes pre-coat material to be applied to coated or plain paper print media but not to transparency print media. Post-rendering color correction is provided for color images printed on various media type and precoat combinations. The printer driver prevents an image from printing when potentially wasteful conditions are detected in response to a print job request, forced tray selection, or automatic tray switching selection.
16 Claims, 4 Drawing Sheets
