US Patent 7359083 Excluding unwanted pages in a printing system job

A method operative to automatically exclude unwanted or wasteful portions of a printing system job includes steps for, describing an unwanted portion of the job, and locating instances of the described portion within the job. For example, blank pages are located within a copy job and removed from an output stream, thereby conserving material, time, and reducing equipment wear. A printing system, such as, for example, an electronic document processor, fax machine or copier, operative to perform the method, includes a pattern detector and a portion deleter. The pattern detector searches input data for portions matching an unwanted portion description. When appropriate, the portion deleter removes unwanted portions from the input data.