Abstract: A data processing system for managing a plurality of objects within said data processing system, the distributed data processing system having an object oriented environment. A container object is created for holding objects and a plurality of objects is detected within the data processing system. A filter object is associated with the container object, wherein the filter object receives the plurality of objects within the data processing system and the filter object passes selected ones of the plurality of objects to the container object. The data processing system is periodically monitored to detect changes in the plurality of objects. The container object is automatically updated using the filter object to pass selected ones of the plurality of objects to the container object in response to monitoring the data processing system, wherein the container object is automatically updated.

Abstract: A method for optimizing the printer operation in a word processing system when the data rate varies from character to character. A circular buffering scheme accepts blocks of data from an application task of a word processor as it is keyed. Data is stored in the circular buffer pool, and a background print task asynchronously removes data from the pool and reblocks it before sending the data to the printer. Data from one or more application blocks is reblocked in FIFO order until the optimum number of commands is reached or all application data is processed. All parameters are table-driven, so that the method of optimizing the printer operation is expandable as new types of printers are added to the word processing system.