US Patent No. 8484557 - Prepared by Attorney David Tran for Adobe and filed by Schwegman (SLWK)

Brief description:  FIG. 6 is a block diagram that illustrates functional modules that may be used to define the preflight rules, in accordance with some example embodiments. Preflight rule definition module 600 may include preflight rule parameter handlers 605, parameter relationship table 610, and attribute table 615. The preflight rule parameter handlers 605 may be responsible for managing the preflight rule user interface and the interactions between a user and the preflight rule user interface. For example, the preflight rule parameter handlers 605 may cause the preflight rule user interface to be displayed when a request to define a new preflight rule is received. Depending on how a user wants to define a parameter, the preflight rule parameter handlers 605 may implement various control interfaces (e.g., check boxes, input boxes, dropdown list, range, etc.). There may be multiple preflight rule parameter handlers 605, and there may be a different preflight rule parameter handler for each data type.  The user may also enter parameter relationship information. The preflight rule parameter handlers 605 may store the parameter relationship information in the parameter relationship table 610. The parameter relationship information may be used by the preflight rule parameter handlers 605 to check for consistency. When the user completes defining the parameters for a preflight rule, information about the parameters may be stored in the attribute table 615. For some example embodiments, default values may be assigned to some of the parameters.  FIG. 7 is a block diagram that illustrates the attribute tables, in accordance with some example embodiments. Diagram    700 includes blocks 705-715 that represent Rule “A” to Rule “C”, respectively. For some example embodiments, each preflight rule may be associated with a unique attribute table. For example, a first attribute table 706 may include a summary of a first set parameters associated with the preflight rule “A” 705; a second attribute table 711 may include a summary of a second set of parameters associated with the second preflight rule “B” 710; a third attribute table 716 may include a summary of a third set of parameters associated with the third preflight rule “C” 715. When the user subsequently wants to modify or view a preflight rule (e.g., adding new parameter value, modifying existing parameter value, reviewing existing parameter value), content of the related attribute table may be retrieved.