Method and apparatus for selecting printing devices according to resource availability

• US 20050275852A1
• Filed: 06/15/2004
• Published: 12/15/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Ferlitsch, Andrew Rodney
• Granted Patent: US 8,164,785 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 358/1.600
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1211 Improving printing performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/126 Job scheduling, e.g. queuing, determine appropriate device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1285 Remote printer device, e.g. being remote from client or server
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00954 Scheduling operations or managing resources H04N1/0096 takes precedence; program initiating or switching G06F9/48; allocation of computer resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/32502 in systems having a plurality of input or output devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/32529 of different type, e.g. internal and external devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/32545 Distributing a job or task among a plurality of input devices or a plurality of output devices

Abstract

Printing devices are selected from a printing pool at least partially based on what non-resident resources need to be downloaded to the printing devices for printing the print job. The printing device selection can also include other types of printer selection criteria.

Claims

1. A method for selecting printing devices from a printing pool, comprising:

identifying resources required for a print job; and

selecting one or more of the printing devices for printing the print job according to the non-resident resources that need to be downloaded to the printing devices for printing the print job.

2. The method according to claim 1 including separating the resources from the print job and downloading only the resources that are non-resident on the selected one or more printing devices.

3. The method according to claim 2 including:

generating a resource reference index that identifies the resources used in the print job;

identifying which of the resources in the reference index are non-resident in the different printing devices; and

identifying a byte-size for the non-resident resources for each of the different printing devices.

4. The method according to claim 3 including conducting a printer resource ranking for the printers according to their identified byte sizes.

5. The method according to claim 4 including conducting one or more other rankings according to other printer criteria associated with the print job and combining the printer resource ranking with the other rankings and selecting the one or more printing devices according to the combined rankings.

6. The method according to claim 1 including downloading the resources from a client device, server device, storage device, or from another printing device.

7. The method according to claim 1 including:

receiving the print job without the resources;

identifying the non-resident resources that have to be downloaded to the selected one or more printing devices; and

sending the identified non-resident resources and the print job without resources to the selected one or more printing devices.

8. The method according to claim 7 including using the same device to select the one or more printing devices and to download the print job and non-resident resources to the selected one or more printing devices.

9. The method according to claim 7 including selecting the one or more printing devices on a client device and downloading the non-resident resources from a server device or from the selected one or more printing devices.

10. A device, comprising:

a processor configured to identify resources in a print job used for printing data and identifying what resources are required to be downloaded to printing devices and using the identified resource download requirements as at least one criteria for selecting one or more printing systems for printing the data.

11. The device according to claim 10 wherein the processor is configured to separate the resources from the print job and only download the resources that are not resident on the one or more selected printing systems.

12. The device according to claim 10 wherein the processor receives the print job without resources and generates a resource reference index that identifies the types of resources used in the print job.

13. The device according to claim 12 wherein the processor sends the printing system selections and the resource reference index to a second device that then downloads the resources identified in the resource reference index to the selected one or more printers.

14. The device according to claim 10 wherein the processor queries the printing systems to determine resident resources and compares the resident resources with the resources required for the print job to generate a list of required download resources for each of the printing systems.

15. The device according to claim 14 wherein the processor ranks the printing systems according an amount of the required downloaded resources for printing systems.

16. The device according to claim 10 wherein the processor considers availability of the resident resources on the printing systems when selecting one or more of the printing systems.

17. The device according to claim 16 wherein the processor ranks availability of the resident resources according to a type of memory in the printing systems storing the resident resources.

18. The device according to claim 10 wherein the resources include fonts, forms, overlays, watermarks logos, half-tone patterns, color profiles, color calibration, biometric information, or digital signatures.

19. The device according to claim 10 wherein the processor uses the resource download requirements along with other printing system capabilities to select the one or more printing systems.

20. A printing system, comprising:

a client configured to generate a print job having associated software resources used for printing the print job; and

multiple printing devices individually selected by the client for printing the print job according to which resident resources on the printing devices correspond with the software resources used for printing the print job.

21. The printing system according to claim 20 including a server configured to receive the print job and a reference index identifying the resources that need to be downloaded to the selected printing devices, the server further configured to download the identified resources and the print job to the selected printing devices.

22. The printing system according to claim 20 wherein the selected one or more printing devices are configured to download the resources identified in a reference index.