This is gimpprint.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.0 from
gimpprint.texi.
INFO-DIR-SECTION Libraries
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* GIMP-Print: (gimpprint). print plugin for the GIMP, and printing library
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
This file documents the gimpprint library and associated programs
used for high quality printing.
Copyright (C) 2001 Michael Sweet (<mike@easysw.com>) and Robert
Krawitz (<rlk@alum.mit.edu>)
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
translation approved by the Foundation.
File: gimpprint.info, Node: Weaving introduction, Next: Weaving algorithms, Up: Weaving
Introduction
============
The Epson Stylus Color/Photo printers don't have memory to print
using all of the nozzles in the print head. For example, the Stylus
Photo 700/EX has 32 nozzles. At 720 dpi, with an 8" wide image, a
single line requires (8 * 720 * 6 / 8) bytes, or 4320 bytes (because the
Stylus Photo printers have 6 ink colors). To use 32 nozzles per color
would require 138240 bytes. It's actually worse than that, though,
because the nozzles are spaced 8 rows apart. Therefore, in order to
store enough data to permit sending the page as a simple raster, the
printer would require enough memory to store 256 rows, or 1105920 bytes.
Considering that the Photo EX can print 11" wide, we're looking at more
like 1.5 MB. In fact, these printers are capable of 1440 dpi horizontal
resolution. This would require 3 MB. The printers actually have
64K-256K.
With the newer (740/750 and later) printers it's even worse, since
these printers support multiple dot sizes; of course, the even newer
2880x720 printers don't help either.
Older Epson printers had a mode called "MicroWeave" (tm). In this
mode, the host fed the printer individual rows of dots, and the printer
bundled them up and sent them to the print head in the correct order to
achieve high quality. This MicroWeave mode still works in new printers,
but in some cases the implementation is very minimal: the printer uses
exactly one nozzle of each color (the first one). This makes printing
extremely slow (more than 30 minutes for one 8.5x11" page), although the
quality is extremely high with no visible banding whatsoever. It's not
good for the print head, though, since no ink is flowing through the
other nozzles. This leads to drying of ink and possible permanent
damage to the print head.
By the way, although the Epson manual says that microweave mode
should be used at 720 dpi, 360 dpi continues to work in much the same
way. At 360 dpi, data is fed to the printer one row at a time on all
Epson printers. The pattern that the printer uses to print is very
prone to banding. However, 360 dpi is inherently a low quality mode;
if you're using it, presumably you don't much care about quality. It
is possible to do microweave at 360 DPI, with significantly improved
quality.
Except for the Stylus Pro printers (5000, 5500, 7000, 7500, 9000,
9500, and when it's released the 10000), which can do microweave at any
resolution, printers from roughly the Stylus Color 600 and later do not
have the capability to do MicroWeave correctly in many cases (some
printers can do MicroWeave correctly at 720 DPI). Instead, the host
must arrange the output in the order that it will be sent to the print
head. This is a very complex process; the jets in the print head are
spaced more than one row (1/720") apart, so we can't simply send
consecutive rows of dots to the printer. Instead, we have to pass e.
g. the first, ninth, 17th, 25th... rows in order for them to print in
the correct position on the paper. This interleaving process is called
"soft" weaving.
This decision was probably made to save money on memory in the
printer. It certainly makes the driver code far more complicated than
it would be if the printer could arrange the output. Is that a bad
thing? Usually this takes far less CPU time than the dithering
process, and it does allow us more control over the printing process,
e.g. to reduce banding. Conceivably, we could even use this ability to
map out bad jets.
Interestingly, apparently the Windows (and presumably Macintosh)
drivers for most or all Epson printers still list a "microweave" mode.
Experiments have demonstrated that this does not in fact use the
"microweave" mode of the printer. Possibly it does nothing, or it uses
a different weave pattern from what the non-"microweave" mode does.
This is unnecessarily confusing, at least for people who write drivers
who try to explain them to people who don't.
What makes this interesting is that there are many different ways of
of accomplishing this goal. The naive way would be to divide the image
up into groups of 256 rows (for a printer with 32 jets and a separation
of 8 rows), and print all the mod8=0 rows in the first pass, mod8=1
rows in the second, and so forth. The problem with this approach is
that the individual ink jets are not perfectly uniform; some emit
slightly bigger or smaller drops than others. Since each group of 8
adjacent rows is printed with the same nozzle, that means that there
will be distinct streaks of lighter and darker bands within the image
(8 rows is 1/90", which is visible; 1/720" is not). Possibly worse is
that these patterns will repeat every 256 rows. This creates banding
patterns that are about 1/3" wide.
So we have to do something to break up this patterning.
Epson does not publish the weaving algorithms that they use in their
bundled drivers. Indeed, their developer web site
(http://www.ercipd.com/isv/edr_docs.htm) does not even describe how to
do this weaving at all; it says that the only way to achieve 720 dpi is
to use MicroWeave. It does note (correctly) that 1440 dpi horizontal
can only be achieved by the driver (i. e. in software). The manual
actually makes it fairly clear how to do this (it requires two passes
with horizontal head movement between passes), and it is presumably
possible to do this with MicroWeave.
The information about how to do this is apparently available under
non-disclosure agreement (NDA). It's actually easy enough to reverse
engineer what's inside a print file with a simple Perl script, which is
supplied with the Gimp-Print distribution as tests/parse-escp2. In any
event, we weren't particularly interested in the weaving patterns Epson
used. There are many factors that go into choosing a good weaving
pattern; we're learning them as we go along. Issues such as drying time
(giving the ink a few seconds more or less to dry can have highly
visible effects) affect the quality of the output.
The Uniprint GhostScript driver has been able to do weaving for a
long time. It uses patterns that must be specified for each choice of
resolution and printer. We preferred an algorithmic approach that
computes a weave pattern for any given choice of inputs. This
obviously requires extensive testing; we developed a test suite
specifically for this purpose.
File: gimpprint.info, Node: Weaving algorithms, Prev: Weaving introduction, Up: Weaving
Weaving algorithms
==================
I considered a few algorithms to perform the weave. The first one I
devised let me use only (jets-distance_between_jets+1) nozzles, or 25.
This is OK in principle, but it's slower than using all nozzles. By
playing around with it some more, I came up with an algorithm that lets
me use all of the nozzles, except near the top and bottom of the page.
This still produces some banding, though. Even better quality can be
achieved by using multiple nozzles on the same line. How do we do
this? In 1440x720 mode, we're printing two output lines at the same
vertical position. However, if we want four passes, we have to
effectively print each line twice. Actually doing this would increase
the density, so what we do is print half the dots on each pass. This
produces near-perfect output, and it's far faster than using (pseudo)
"MicroWeave".
Yet another complication is how to get near the top and bottom of the
page. This algorithm lets us print to within one head width of the top
of the page, and a bit more than one head width from the bottom. That
leaves a lot of blank space. Doing the weave properly outside of this
region is increasingly difficult as we get closer to the edge of the
paper; in the interior region, any nozzle can print any line, but near
the top and bottom edges, only some nozzles can print. We originally
handled this by using the naive way mentioned above near the borders,
and switching over to the high quality method in the interior.
Unfortunately, this meant that the quality is quite visibly degraded
near the top and bottom of the page. We have since devised better
algorithms that allow printing to the extreme top and bottom of the
region that can physically be printed, with only minimal loss of
quality.
Epson does not advertise that the printers can print at the very top
of the page, although in practice most of them can. The quality is
degraded to some degree, and we have observed that in some cases not
all of the dots get printed. Epson may have decided that the
degradation in quality is sufficient that printing in that region
should not be allowed. That is a valid decision, although we have
taken another approach.
* Menu:
* Simple weaving algorithms:: Starting to weave.
* Perfect weaving:: Improving the weave.
* Weaving collisions:: Bang!
* What is perfect weaving?:: What makes a ``perfect'' weave?
* Oversampling:: Increasing resolution, reducing banding
File: gimpprint.info, Node: Simple weaving algorithms, Next: Perfect weaving, Prev: Weaving algorithms, Up: Weaving algorithms
Simple weaving algorithms
-------------------------
The initial problem is to calculate the starting position of each
pass; the row number of the printer's top jet when printing that pass.
Since we assume the paper cannot be reverse-fed, the print head must,
for each pass, start either further down the page than the previous
pass or at the same position. Each pass's start point is therefore at
a non-negative offset from the previous pass's start point.
Once we have a formula for the starting row of each pass, we then
turn that "inside out" to get a formula for the pass number containing
each row.
First, let's define how our printer works. We measure vertical
position on the paper in "rows"; the resolution with which the printer
can position the paper vertically. The print head contains J ink jets,
which are spaced S rows apart.
Consider a very simple case: we want to print a page as quickly as
possible, and we mostly don't care how sparse the printing is, so long
as it's fairly even.
It's pretty obvious how to do this. We make one pass with the print
head, printing J lines of data, each line S rows after the previous
one. We then advance the paper by S*J rows and print the next row.
For example, if J=7 and S=4, this method can be illustrated like this:
pass number
| row number------->
| | 111111111122222222223333333333444444444455555555556666666666
| 0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
0 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
1 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
2 \-----------------------/ *---*---*---*---*---*-
7 jets \---/
4 rows offset from one jet to the next
\---------------------------/
7*4=28 rows offset from one pass to the next
In these examples, the vertical axis can be thought of as the time
axis, with the pass number shown at the left margin, while the row
number runs horizontally. A `*' shows each row printed by a pass, and
a row of `-' is used to link together the rows printed by one pass of
the print head. The first pass is numbered `0' and starts at row 0.
Each subsequent pass p starts at row p*S*J. Each pass prints J lines,
each line being S rows after the previous one. (For ease of viewing
this file on a standard terminal, I'm clipping the examples at column
80.)
This method covers the whole page with lines printed evenly S rows
apart. However, we want to fill in all the other rows with printing to
get a full-density page (we're ignoring oversampling at this stage).
Where we have previously printed a single pass, we'll now print a "pass
block": we print extra passes to fill in the empty rows. A naive
implementation might look like this:
0 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
1 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
2 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
3 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
4 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
5 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
6 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
7 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
8 *---*---*---*---*---*-
9 *---*---*---*---*---*
10 *---*---*---*---*---
11 *---*---*---*---*--
(Now you can see why this process is called "weaving"!)
File: gimpprint.info, Node: Perfect weaving, Next: Weaving collisions, Prev: Simple weaving algorithms, Up: Weaving algorithms
Perfect weaving
---------------
This simple weave pattern prints every row, but will give conspicuous
banding patterns for the reasons discussed above.
Let's start improving this for our simple case. We can reduce
banding by making sure that any given jet never prints a row too close
to another row printed by the same jet. This means we want to space the
rows printed by a given jet evenly down the page. In turn, this
implies we want to advance the paper by as nearly an equal amount after
each pass as possible.
Each pass block prints S*J lines in S passes. The first line
printed in each pass block is S*J rows lower on the page than the first
line printed in the previous pass block. Therefore, if we advance the
paper by J rows between each pass, we can print the right number of
passes in each block and advance the paper perfectly evenly.
Here's what this "perfect" weave looks like:
start of full weave
|
0 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
1 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
2 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
3 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
4 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
5 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
6 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
7 *---*---*---*---*---*---*
8 *---*---*---*---*---*-
9 *---*---*---*--
10 *---*---
11 *
You'll notice that, for the first few rows, this weave is too sparse.
It is not until the row marked "start of full weave" that every
subsequent row is printed. We can calculate this start position as
follows:
start = (S-1) * (J-1)
For the moment, we will ignore this problem with the weave. We'll
consider later how to fill in the missing rows.
Let's look at a few more examples of perfect weaves:
S=2, J=7, start=(2-1)*(7-1)=6:
starting row of full weave
|
0 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
1 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
2 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
4 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
5 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
6 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
7 *-*-*-*-*-*-*
S=7, J=2, start=6:
start
|
0 *------*
1 *------*
2 *------*
3 *------*
4 *------*
5 *------*
6 *------*
7 *------*
8 *------*
9 *------*
S=4, J=13, start=36:
start
|
0 *---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*
1 *---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*
2 *---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*
3 *---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*--
4 *---*---*---*---*---*---*-
5 *---*---*---*
S=13, J=4, start=36:
start
|
0 *------------*------------*------------*
1 *------------*------------*------------*
2 *------------*------------*------------*
3 *------------*------------*------------*
4 *------------*------------*------------*
5 *------------*------------*------------*
6 *------------*------------*------------*
7 *------------*------------*------------*
8 *------------*------------*------------*
9 *------------*------------*------------*
10 *------------*------------*-----------
11 *------------*------------*-------
12 *------------*------------*---
13 *------------*------------
14 *------------*--------
15 *------------*----
16 *------------*
17 *---------
18 *-----
19 *-
S=8, J=5, start=28:
start
|
0 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
1 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
2 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
3 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
4 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
5 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
6 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
7 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
8 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
9 *-------*-------*-------*-------*
10 *-------*-------*-------*---
11 *-------*-------*------
12 *-------*-------*-
13 *-------*----
14 *-------
15 *--
S=9, J=5, start=32:
start
|
0 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
1 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
2 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
3 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
4 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
5 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
6 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
7 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
8 *--------*--------*--------*--------*
9 *--------*--------*--------*-----
10 *--------*--------*--------*
11 *--------*--------*----
12 *--------*--------
13 *--------*---
14 *-------
15 *--
S=6, J=7, start=30:
start
|
0 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
1 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
2 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
3 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
4 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
5 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
6 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----
7 *-----*-----*-----*-----*----
8 *-----*-----*-----*---
9 *-----*-----*--
10 *-----*-
11 *
File: gimpprint.info, Node: Weaving collisions, Next: What is perfect weaving?, Prev: Perfect weaving, Up: Weaving algorithms
Weaving collisions
------------------
This perfect weave is not possible in all cases. Let's look at
another example:
S=6, J=4:
0 *-----*-----*-----*
1 *-----*-----*-----*
2 *-----*-----*-----*
3 *-----*-----*-----*
4 ^ *-^---*-----*-----*
5 | ^ | *-^---*-----*-----*
OUCH! ^ | ^
| |
Here we have a collision. Some lines printed in later passes overprint
lines printed by earlier passes. We can see why by considering which
row number is printed by a given jet number j (numbered from 0) of a
given pass, p:
row(p, j) = p*J + j*S
Because J=4 and S=6 have a common factor of 2, jet 2 of pass 0
prints the same row as jet 0 of pass 3:
row(0, 2) = 0*4 + 2*6 = 12
row(3, 0) = 3*4 + 0*6 = 12
In fact, with this particular weave pattern, jets 0 and 1 of pass
p+3 always overprint jets 2 and 3 of pass p. We'll represent
overprinting rows by a `^' in our diagrams, and correct rows by `*':
S=6 J=4:
0 *-----*-----*-----*
1 *-----*-----*-----*
2 *-----*-----*-----*
3 ^-----^-----*-----*
4 ^-----^-----*-----*
5 ^-----^-----*-----*
File: gimpprint.info, Node: What is perfect weaving?, Next: Oversampling, Prev: Weaving collisions, Up: Weaving algorithms
What makes a "perfect" weave?
-----------------------------
So what causes the perfect weave cases to be perfect, and the other
cases not to be? In all the perfect cases above, S and J are
relatively prime (i.e. their greatest common divisor (GCD) is 1). As
we mentioned above, S=6 and J=4 have a common factor, which causes the
overprinting. Where S and J have a GCD of 1, they have no common
factor other than 1 and, as a result, no overprinting occurs. If S and
J are not relatively prime, their common factor will cause overprinting.
We can work out the greatest common divisor of a pair of natural
numbers using Euler's algorithm:
* Start with the two numbers: (e.g.) 9, 24
* Swap them if necessary so that the larger one comes first: 24, 9
* Subtract the second number from the first: 15, 9
* Repeat until the first number becomes smaller: 6, 9
* Swap the numbers again, so the larger one comes first: 9, 6
* Subtract again: 3, 6
* Swap: 6, 3
* Subtract: 3, 3
* And again: 0, 3
* When one of the numbers becomes 0, the other number is the GCD of
the two numbers you started with.
These repeated subtractions can be done with C's `%' operator, so we
can write this in C as follows:
unsigned int
gcd(unsigned int x, unsigned int y)
{
if (y == 0)
return x;
while (x != 0) {
if (y > x)
swap (&x, &y);
x %= y;
}
return y;
}
`gcd(S,J)' will feature quite prominently in our weaving algorithm.
If 0 <= j < J, there should only be a single pair (p, j) for any
given row number. If S and J are not relatively prime, this assumption
breaks down. (For conciseness, let G=GCD(S,J).)
S=8, J=6, G=2:
0 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
1 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
2 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
3 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
4 ^-------^-------^-------*-------*-------*
5 ^-------^-------^-------*-------*-------*
In this case, jets 0, 1 and 2 of pass p+4 collide with jets 3, 4 and
5 of pass p.
How can we calculate these numbers? Suppose we were to print using
fewer jets, say J/G jets. The greatest common divisor of J/G and S is
1, enabling a perfect weave. But to get a perfect weave, we also have
to advance the paper by a factor of G less:
0 *-------*-------* - - -
1 *-------*-------* - - -
2 *-------*-------* - - -
3 *-------*-------* - - -
4 *-------*-------* - - -
5 *-------*-------* - - -
If we left the paper advance alone, we'd get a sparse weave; only one
row can be printed every G rows:
0 *-------*-------* - - -
1 *-------*-------* - - -
2 *-------*-------* - - -
3 *-------*-------* - - -
4 *-------*-------* - - -
5 *-------*-------* - - -
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
These rows need filling in.
The rows that would have been printed by the jets we've now omitted
(shown as `-') are printed by other jets on later passes.
Let's analyse this. Consider how a pass p could collide with pass
0. Pass p starts at offset p*J. Pass 0 prints at rows which are
multiples of S. If p*J is exactly divisible by S, a collision has
occurred, unless p*J >= J*S (which will happen when we finish a pass
block).
So, we want to find p and q such that p*J=q*S and p is minimised.
Then p is the number of rows before a collision, and q is the number of
jets in pass 0 which are not involved in the collision. To do this, we
find the lowest common multiple of J and S, which is L=J*S/G. L/J is
the number of rows before a collision, and L/S is the number of jets in
the first pass not involved in the collision.
Thus, we see that the first J/G rows printed by a given pass are not
overprinted by any later pass. However, the rest of the rows printed
by pass p are overprinted by the first J-(J/G) jets of pass p+(S/G).
We will use C to refer to S/G, the number of rows after which a
collision occurs.
Another example:
S=6, J=9, G=3, C=S/G=2:
0 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
1 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
2 ^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----*-----*-----*
3 ^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----*-----*-----*
4 ^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----*-----
5 ^-----^-----^-----^-----^-----^--
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
These rows need filling in.
In this case, the first J-(J/G) = 9-9/3 = 6 jets of pass p+(6/3)=p+2
collide with the last 6 jets of pass p. Only one row in every G=2 rows
is printed by this weave.
S=9, J=6, G=3, C=3:
0 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
1 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
2 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
3 ^--------^--------^--------^--------*--------*
4 ^--------^--------^--------^--------*--------*
5 ^--------^--------^--------^--------*--------*
Here, the first J-(J/G) = 6-6/3 = 4 jets of pass p+(9/3)=p+3 collide
with the last 4 jets of pass p.
Note that, in these overprinting cases, only rows divisible by G are
ever printed. The other rows, those not divisible by G, are not
touched by this weave.
We can modify our weave pattern to avoid overprinting any rows and
simultaneously fill in the missing rows. Instead of using J alone to
determine the start of each pass from the previous pass, we adjust the
starting position of some passes. As mentioned before, we will divide
the page into pass blocks, with S passes in each block. This ensures
that the first jet of the first pass in a block prints the row which
the Jth jet of the first pass of the previous block would have printed,
if the print head had one extra jet.
Looking back at an example of a perfect weave, we can divide it into
pass blocks:
S=7, J=2, G=1:
imaginary extra jet
|
0 *------* * <--start of pass block 0
1 *------* |
2 *------* |
3 *------*|
4 *-----|*
5 *---|--*
6 *-|----*
|
7 *------* <--start of pass block 1
8 *------*
9 *------*
We can now calculate the start of a given pass by reference to its
pass block. The first pass of pass block b always starts at row
(b*S*J). The start row of each of the other passes in the block are
calculated using offsets from this row.
For the example above, there are 7 passes in each pass block, and
their offsets are 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12. The next pass block is
offset S*J=14 rows from the start of the current pass block.
The simplest way to modify the "perfect" weave pattern to give a
correct weave in cases where G!=1 is to simply change any offsets which
would result in a collision, until the collision disappears. Every
printed row in the weave, as we have shown it up to now, is separated
from each of its neighbouring printed rows by G blank rows. We will
add an extra offset to each colliding pass in such a way that we push
the pass onto these otherwise blank rows.
We have seen that, unless G=1, the plain weave pattern results in
each pass colliding with the pass S/G passes before. We will now
subdivide our pass block into subblocks, each consisting of B=S/G
passes. There are therefore G subblocks in a pass block.
For each subblock, the passes in that subblock have a constant offset
added to them. The offset is different for each subblock in a block.
There are many ways we can choose the offsets, but the simplest is to
make the offset equal to the subblock number (starting from 0).
Thus, the passes in the first subblock in each pass block remain at
the offsets we've already calculated from J. The passes in the second
subblock each have 1 added to their offset, the passes in the third
subblock have 2 added, and so on. Thus, the offset of pass p (numbered
relative to the start of its pass block) is p*J + floor(p/B).
This gives us a weave pattern looking like this:
S=6, J=9, G=3, B=2:
0 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
1 ^ *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
2 | +-> *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
3 | | *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
4 | | +-> *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*---
5 | | | *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
6 | | | +-> *-----*-----*-----*-----
7 | | | | *-----*-----*--
| | | start of pass block 1
| | | (offset returns to 0)
| | start of subblock 2 (offset 2 rows)
| start of subblock 1 (following passes offset by 1 row)
start of passblock 0, subblock 0 (pass start calculated as p*J)
S=9, J=6, G=3, B=3:
0 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
1 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
2 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
3 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
4 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
5 *--------*--------*--------*--------*--------*
6 *--------*--------*--------*--------*---
7 *--------*--------*--------*------
8 *--------*--------*--------*
9 *--------*--------*-----
10 \---/ *--------*--------
11 small offset *--------*--
12 *----
This method of choosing offsets for subblocks can result in an
occasional small offset (as shown above) between one pass and the next,
particularly when G is large compared to J. For example:
S=8, J=4, G=4, B=2:
0 *-------*-------*-------*
1 *-------*-------*-------*
2 *-------*-------*-------*
3 *-------*-------*-------*
4 *-------*-------*-------*
5 *-------*-------*-------*
6 *-------*-------*-------*
7 *-------*-------*-------*
8 *-------*-------*-------*
9 \/ *-------*-------*-------*
very small offset!
We can plot the offset against the subblock number as follows:
subblock number
| offset
| |
| 0123
0 *
1 *
2 *
3 *
0 *
1 *
2 *
3 *
The discontinuity in this plot results in the small offset between
passes.
As we said at the beginning, we want the offsets from each pass to
the next to be as similar as possible. We can fix this by calculating
the offset for a given subblock b as follows:
offset(b) = 2*b , if b < ceiling(G/2)
= 2*(G-b)-1 , otherwise
We can visualise this as follows, for G=10:
0123456789
0 *
1 *
2 *
3 *
4 *
5 *
6 *
7 *
8 *
9 *
0 *
1 *
2 *
3 *
4 *
5 *
6 *
7 *
8 *
9 *
and for G=11:
1
01234567890
0 *
1 *
2 *
3 *
4 *
5 *
6 *
7 *
8 *
9 *
10 *
0 *
1 *
2 *
3 *
4 *
5 *
6 *
7 *
8 *
9 *
10 *
This gives a weave looking like this:
S=12, J=6, G=6, B=2:
0 *-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*
1 *-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*
2 *-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*
3 *-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*---------
4 *-----------*-----------*-----------*-----------*-
5 *-----------*-----------*-----------*-------
6 *-----------*-----------*-----------*
7 *-----------*-----------*------
8 *-----------*-----------*--
9 *-----------*--------
10 *-----------*----
11 *----------
12 *-----
This method ensures that the offset between passes is always in the
range [J-2,J+2].
(This might seem odd, but it occurs to me that a good weave pattern
might also make a good score for bell ringers. When church bells are
rung, a list of "changes" are used. For example, if 8 bells are being
used, they will, at first, be rung in order: 12345678. If the first
change is for bells 5 and 6, the bells will then be rung in the order
12346578. If the second change is 1 and 2, the next notes are 21346578.
After a long list of changes, the order the bells are rung in can become
quite complex.
For a group of bell-ringers to change the order of the notes, they
must each either delay their bell's next ring, hasten it, or keep it
the same as the time it takes to ring all the bells once. The length
of time between each ring of a given bell can only be changed a little
each time, though; with an ink-jet weave pattern, we want the same to
apply to the distance between passes.)
Finally, knowing the number of jets J and their separation S, we can
calculate the starting row of any given pass p as follows:
passesperblock = S
passblock = floor(p / passesperblock)
offsetinpassblock = p - passblock * passesperblock
subblocksperblock = gcd(S, J)
passespersubblock = S / subblocksperblock
subpassblock = floor(offsetinpassblock / passespersubblock)
if subpassblock < ceiling(subblocksperblock/2)
subblockoffset = 2*subpassblock
else
subblockoffset = 2*(subblocksperblock-subpassblock)-1
startingrow = passblock * S * J + offsetinpassblock * J + subblockoffset
We can simplify this down to the following:
subblocksperblock = gcd(S, J)
subpassblock = floor((p % S) * subblocksperblock / S)
if subpassblock * 2 < subblocksperblock
subblockoffset = 2*subpassblock
else
subblockoffset = 2*(subblocksperblock-subpassblock)-1
startingrow = p * J + subblockoffset
So the row number of jet j of pass p is
subblocksperblock = gcd(S, J)
subblockoffset(p)
= 2*subpassblock , if subpassblock * 2 < subblocksperblock
= 2*(subblocksperblock-subpassblock)-1 , otherwise
where
subpassblock = floor((p % S) * subblocksperblock / S)
row(j, p) = p * J + subblockoffset(p) + j * S
Together with the inequality 0 <= j < J, we can use this definition
in reverse to calculate the pass number containing a given row, r.
Working out the inverse definition involves a little guesswork, but one
possible result is as follows. Given a row, r, which is known to be
the first row of a pass, we can calculate the pass number as follows:
subblocksperblock = gcd(S, J)
subblockoffset = r % subblocksperblock
pass = (r - subblockoffset) / J
If G==1, we can determine the pass number with this algorithm:
offset = r % J
pass = (r - offset) / J
while (offset % S != 0)
{
pass--
offset += J
}
jet = offset / S
Generalising, we come up with this algorithm. Given r, S and J:
G = gcd(S, J)
passespersubblock = S/G
subblockoffset = r % G
subpassblock = subblockoffset / 2 , if subblockoffset % 2 == 0
= G - (subblockoffset+1)/2 , otherwise
baserow = r - subblockoffset - (subpassblock * passespersubblock * J)
offset = baserow % J
pass = (baserow - offset) / J
while (offset % S != 0)
{
offset += J
pass -= 1
}
subblockretreat = floor(pass / passespersubblock) % G
pass -= subblockretreat * passespersubblock
pass += subpassblock * passespersubblock
jet = (r - subblockoffset - pass * J) / S
Let's look at some examples of imperfect but correct weave patterns:
S=6, J=4, GCD=2,
passesperblock=S=6,
passespersubblock=S/G=6/2=3:
0 *-----*-----*-----*
1 *-----*-----*-----*
2 *-----*-----*-----*
3 *-----*-----*-----*
4 *-----*-----*-----*
5 *-----*-----*-----*
6 *-----*-----*-----*
7 *-----*-----*-----*
8 *-----*-----*-----*
9 *-----*-----*-----*
10 *-----*-----*-----*
11 *-----*-----*-----*
12 *-----*-----*-----*
13 *-----*-----*-----*
14 *-----*-----*-----*
15 *-----*-----*----
16 *-----*-----*
17 *-----*--
18 *-----
19 *-
S=8, J=6, G=2,
passesperblock=S=8,
passespersubblock=S/G=8/2=4:
0 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
1 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
2 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
3 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
4 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
5 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
6 *-------*-------*-------*-------*-------*
7 *-------*-------*-------*-------*--
8 *-------*-------*-------*-----
9 *-------*-------*-------
10 *-------*-------*-
11 *-------*---
12 *----
S=6, J=12, G=6,
passesperblock=S=6,
passespersubblock=S/G=6/6=1:
0 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
1 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*---
2 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-
3 *-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
4 *-----*-----*-----*-----*--
5 *-----*-----*----
6 *-----
We have now solved the basic weaving problem. There are two further
refinements we need to consider: oversampling, and filling in the
missing rows at the start of the weave.