Bitmap compare mechanism

1. A computer generated method comprising:

a processor performing an exact comparison between a first bitmap and a second bitmap;

the processor calculating a number of miscompared pixels that occurred during the comparison; and

the processor calculating a quantity value representing a characteristic of the miscompared pixels, wherein the quantity value=Σnr 2 , where n is the number of miscompared pixels in each bin and r is a radius measured as a distance from a center of the miscompared pixels.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein r is a radius measured as a distance from the center of the image.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising normalizing the quantity value that would be calculated if all bad pixels were uniformly distributed over an entire page.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein a quantity value having a large magnitude represents the characteristic of the miscompared pixels as being diffuse.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein a quantity value having a small magnitude represents the characteristic of the miscompared pixels as being compact.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising dividing the first bitmap and the second bitmap into rectangular bins.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the rectangular bins are 100×100.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein calculating the number of miscompared pixels comprises calculating a number of miscompared pixels in each bin.

9. A computer system comprising:

a memory to store bitmap compare software;

a processor, coupled to the memory, to execute the bitmap compare software by performing an exact comparison between a first bitmap and a second bitmap, calculating a number of miscompared pixels that occurred during the comparison and calculating a quantity value representing a characteristic of the miscompared pixels, wherein the quantity value=Σnr 2 , where n is the number of miscompared pixels in each bin and r is a radius measured as a distance from a center of the miscompared pixels.

10. The computer system of claim 9 further comprising normalizing the quantity value that would be calculated if all bad pixels were uniformly distributed over an entire page.

11. The computer system of claim 10 wherein a large quantity value represents the characteristic of the miscompared pixels as being diffuse.

12. The computer system of claim 10 wherein a small quantity value represents the characteristic of the miscompared pixels as being compact.

13. The computer system of claim 9 further comprising dividing the first bitmap and the second bitmap into rectangular bins.

14. The computer system of claim 13 wherein calculating the number of miscompared pixels comprises calculating a number of miscompared pixels in each bin.

15. An article of manufacture comprising a non-transitory machine-readable medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

performing an exact comparison between a first bitmap and a second bitmap;

calculating a number of miscompared pixels that occurred during the comparison;

calculating a quantity value representing a characteristic of the miscompared pixels, wherein the quantity value=Σnr 2 , where n is the number of miscompared pixels in each bin and r is a radius measured as a distance from a center of the miscompared pixels; and

normalizing the quantity value that would be calculated if all bad pixels were uniformly distributed over an entire page.

16. The article of manufacture of claim 15 comprising a machine-readable medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising dividing the first bitmap and the second bitmap into rectangular bins.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein calculating the number of miscompared pixels comprises calculating a number of miscompared pixels in each bin.