Method and apparatus for printing XML directly using a formatting template

摘要

A printing system and method for printing XML files directly using a formatting template is disclosed. An embodiment of the printing system includes a spooler for receiving printable information from the print channel, a print services facility for parsing an XML file, formatting the XML file according to a formatting template, the print services facility organizing a data stream representing the formatted XML file and generating a print steam having been formatted using the formatting template and a printer for printing the print steam according to the formatting defined by the formatting template, wherein the formatting template defines a data map format containing XML descriptors defining the formatting for an element of the XML file. The formatting template, such as a data map in a page definition, is used to format each XML element. The formatting template contains descriptors that specify presentation parameters such as position, rotation, font, color, etc. The descriptors are indexed using a concatenation of the XML tags that must be traversed to get to a particular XML element.