Disclosed is a system for routing print jobs to one of a plurality of printers or print queues, such as a logical print queue. After providing a print job, a set of printers capable of printing the print job is determined. The set of printers is queried to determine status information thereon. A criterion is then applied to the status information for the set of printers to determine a subset of printers. The determined subset is dependent upon the determined status information. A printer is selected from the subset and the print job is routed to the selected printer.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is related to the following co-pending and commonly-assigned patent applications, all of which are filed on the same date herewith, and all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety:
"Load Balancing For Processing A Queue Of Print Jobs," Scott D. Mastie Hongliang Tong, Min Xie, Christopher B. Hirsch, having U.S. application Ser. No. 09/140,480;
"Selecting Printing Attribute Values in a Network Printing System," by Scott D. Mastie and Arthur R. Roberts, having U.S. application Ser. No. 09/143,281; and
"Multiple Insertion Point Queue to Order and Select Tasks to be Processed," by Scott D. Mastie and Ming Xie, having U.S. Pat. No. 5,145,001.
The present invention provides a print distribution system in which plural printing apparatuses are connected over a network, and printed data created by a data processing apparatus of a sender is distributed to plural distribution destinations. The print distribution system includes an association information holding unit that holds in advance information indicating correspondences between plural distribution destinations and plural printing apparatuses used in the plural distribution destinations, and a print setting management unit that collectively manages settings of print conditions of the plural printing apparatuses. When a request to print out the printed data is outputted from the sender, the print setting management unit, on the basis of information held in the association information holding unit, locates plural printing apparatuses used in specified plural distribution destinations, sets the print conditions for the plural located printing apparatuses, and activates the printout of the printed data.
A method, apparatus and program for distributed printing of digital print files in a network system including a print service and a plurality of printers adapted for interactive printing are provided. An interactive printing involves printing a print file only upon selection thereof and entering a print command through the local user interface of the printer. In a first step of the method, the print service receives a print file, stores it and distributes information on the stored print file to a plurality of the printers. In a second step, a print process for the print file is started, locally or remotely, in one of the printers and, while this print process is active, a print process for the same print file is started locally in one or more of the other printers. During the printing, the print service controls the printers to print together the required number of copies.
Control is effected to produce a plurality of child print jobs for a plurality of printers from data to be printed, on the basis of inputted instruction for distributed print, and information regarding a parent print job is produced on the basis of information regarding the plurality of child print jobs produced under control of the distributed print, and the parent job is displayed in a distinguishable manner from the child print job.
A system and method of selecting a printer from a plurality of printers to fulfill a print job of a user includes receiving a print request for the print job from the user at one of the printers, distributing the print request for the print job to at least another of the printers associated with the one of the printers, determining if the at least another of the printers has a printing capability to fulfill the print job, including comparing the print request for the print job with the printing capability of the at least another of the printers, and submitting a print offer to the user from the at least another of the printers if the at least another of the printers has the printing capability to fulfill the print job.
A system and a method are provided for printing on a network. In one embodiment, broadly stated the method comprises the steps of: receiving a print job ticket from a client; and placing the print job ticket in a printing queue, the printing queue determined by information contained in the print job ticket.
