Abstract: A baby carrier for hands-free carrying of babies on the adult's hip. The carrier features a wide padded waist belt, shaped baby seat, fleece shoulder panel, and adjustable shoulder straps. It comfortably distributes a baby's weight for long carries, allows wearer to carry baby hands-free, and easily accommodates baby getting up and down.

Abstract: In a controller for an ink-jet printer that employs both a colored-ink cartridge and a black-ink cartridge, an error-diffusion-type half-toning operation (62) determines a binary value (K.sub.B) for the black component independently of the half-toning performed to determine binary values (C.sub.B, M.sub.B, Y.sub.B) for the color components. Furthermore, the commands that specify the pixel locations at which black ink is to be deposited are determined in accordance with the binary black value K.sub.B independently of the commands for colored ink. Together with an undercolor-removal process (59) in which a high-resolution black-component input to the half-toning process is significantly less than the minimum of the values of the color components throughout most of their range, this arrangement minimizes the salt-and-pepper noise that can otherwise afflict printers in which the black and colored inks are applied from different ink cartridges.

Abstract: A printer driver for a color printer employs an error-diffusion-type half-toning process in which different quantization thresholds are employed for different ones of the color components. The color component whose value is highest after augmentation by accumulated error is compared with a relatively low threshold to determine the binary output value for that component. The lowest error-augmented component value is compared with a relatively high quantization threshold, and the component whose value is between those of the other two is compared with an intermediate-valued quantization threshold. Varying the thresholds in this manner tends to discourage coincidences of different-colored imaging agents at the same pixels and thus tends to result in light colors' having a smoother appearance.