DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The FIGURE is a systems diagram showing the essential elements of the present invention, within the context of a digital printing apparatus.
In the system shown, the basic input is original image data in a PDL format, although other formats, such as a facsimile format, could also be used, and the output is compressed bitmap data (i.
e.
, original PDL data which has been decomposed into bitmap data, but subsequently compressed, such as with JPEG compression).
In a typical context of a high-speed printing apparatus, the compressed bitmap data is subsequently temporarily stored until needed by printing hardware.
In the FIGURE, round blocks represent software utilities or tasks, that is, software routines which are carried out on hardware, while the rectangular blocks represent hardware, such as the processor 10, buffer 12, and a compressor/decompressor indicated as 14.
The processor 10 operates the decomposer, which is a software utility indicated as 20, to decompose original PDL or other format image data and output bitmap data into a predetermined location in buffer 12, as is known in the art.
Processor 10 could conceivably be a microprocessor, or a SPARC.
TM.
or UltraSPARC.
TM.
station, while buffer 12 is any of a variety of memory chips which are readily available.
It is known in the art to provide dedicated chips having the dual function of compressing uncompressed data submitted thereto, and also decompressing compressed data submitted thereto; what is important, for showing the advantage of the present invention, is that such a compressor/decompressor such as 14 is typically available as an off-the-shelf dedicated chip.
Typical kinds of commercially-available compressor/decompressor chips such as 14 include XACD (Xerox Adaptive compressor and decompressor), VCEP (which performs CCITT compression and decompression), and AHA.
In the claims herein, a dedicated function performed by hardware, such the decompression function in a compressor/decompressor chip, is referred to as a "hardware utility
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Image Analysis 
