Method and apparatus for selecting printing devices according to resource availability

• US 8,164,785 B2
• Filed: 06/15/2004
• Issued: 04/24/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America Incorporated (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Ferlitsch, Andrew Rodney
• Primary Examiner(s): Thompson, James A
• Assistant Examiner(s): GETANEH, MESFIN S
• Application Number:
  US10/869,793
• Publication Number:
  US 20050275852A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,870 Days
• Field of Search: 358/1.11, 358/1.15, 358/1.16, 358/1.17, 710/15, 710/16
• US Class Current: 358/1.6
• 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 one or more printing devices from a printing pool including at least a first printing device and a second printing device, the method comprising:

identifying resources required in addition to print data for executing a print job, wherein the print job includes resource data commands and the print data;

prior to a printer selection process, parsing and separating the print job to generate a resource reference index that identifies the resources to be used in the print job, wherein the separating preserves embedded resource data for performing the print job;

identifying which of the resources in the resource reference index comprise resident and non-resident resources on each of the printing devices of the printing pool;

determining a first time required for downloading a first set of the resource data commands by the first printing device;

determining a second time required for downloading a second set of the resource data commands by the second printing device;

assigning a composite rank to each of the printing devices according to respective download times and at least one of the following;

device availability, device load, device performance, device capabilities, device locality, consumable status or cost;

selecting one or more of the printing devices for printing the print job according to the ranking;

after the selecting the one or more of the printing devices, removing at least one subset of the embedded resource data identified as resident on the selected one or more printing devices from the print job; and

printing the print job with the one or more printing devices.

2. The method according to claim 1 wherein the first time and the second time are determined based on a time required for downloading only the non-resident resources on the selected one or more printing devices.

3. The method according to claim 2 including:

identifying a byte-size for the non-resident resources on each of the printing devices, wherein the printing devices are further ranked according to their identified byte size.

4. The method according to claim 2 including downloading the non-resident resources from a client device, server device, storage device, or from another printing device.

5. The method according to claim 1 including:

receiving the print job without the resources;

and

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

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein the selecting and the sending are done by a single device.

7. The method according to claim 5, wherein the non-resident resources are sent from a server to the selected one or more printing devices.

8. A device, comprising:

means for identifying resources required for a print job used in printing data, according to resource data commands and print data included in the print job;

means for determining resource download requirements for each of a plurality of printing systems;

means for separating the resource data commands from the print data in the print job;

means for determining an amount of data associated with the resource download requirements for each of the plurality of printing systems;

means for assessing an availability of resident resources on each of the plurality of printing systems;

means for assessing the plurality of printing systems according to download time required for downloading one or more non-resident resources for printing the print job;

means for splitting the print job into separate portions; and

means for ranking the plurality of printing systems with respect to each print job portion at least according to resource availability and download time, and wherein each of the separate portions are printed by different printing systems according to the printing system ranking.

9. The device according to claim 8 further comprising:

means for sending the print job to the different printing systems, wherein the different printing systems only download non-resident resources that do not already reside on the different printing systems.

10. The device according to claim 8 further comprising means for parsing and separating the print job to generate a resource reference index that ascertains the resources to be used in the print job, wherein the separating removes embedded resource data from the print job.

11. The device according to claim 10 further comprising means for sending the resource reference index to a second device, wherein the non-resident resources are downloaded from the second device to the different printing systems.

12. The device according to claim 8 further comprising:

means for querying the plurality of printing systems to determine the resident resources;

means for comparing the resident resources of each of the plurality of printing systems with the resources required for the print job; and

means for generating an associated list of required download resources for each of the plurality of printing systems, wherein the required download resources include those resources which are not resident resources.

13. The device according to claim 8 further comprising:

means for identifying which of the plurality of printing systems requires a smallest amount of data to download for each of the print job portions;

means for calculating an amount of time each of the plurality of printing systems would need to access the required download resources for each of the print job portions; and

means for serially ranking each of the plurality of printing systems for each of the print job portions first according to at least one of the following;

device availability, device load, device performance, device capabilities, device locality, consumable status or cost, and then according to the amount of time needed to access the required download resources, wherein a selected printing system is associated with a first highest ranking corresponding to at least one of the following;

the device availability, the device load, the device performance, the device capabilities, the device locality, the consumable status or the cost, and second according to a smallest amount of time to access the required download resources.

14. The device according to claim 13, wherein the resident resources are stored on different types of tangible memory in the plurality of printing systems.

15. The device according to claim 8, wherein the resources include fonts, forms, overlays, watermarks, logos, half-tone patterns, color profiles, color calibration, biometric information, or digital signatures.

16. The device according to claim 8

wherein a security level associated with the print job is used as at least one criteria for selecting a printing system.

17. A printing system, comprising:

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

multiple printers for printing the print job according to a rank assigned by a server; and

the server configured to;

receive a reference index identifying the software resources used for printing the print job, wherein the reference index identifies resources to be used in the print job extracted from the print job;

separate the software resources from the print data;

determine which resident resources on the multiple printers correspond with the software resources for printing the print job;

determine which of the software resources are non-resident resources on one or more of the multiple printers;

identify a byte-size corresponding to the non-resident resources on each of the one or more printers;

assign a composite rank to each of the multiple printers according to respective download times for downloading the software resources that are not resident, the byte size corresponding to the non-resident resources on each of the one or more printers, and at least one of the following;

device availability, device load, device performance, device capabilities, device locality, consumable status or cost;

select one of the multiple printers for printing the print job according to the composite rank; and

download the non-resident resources to the selected printer, wherein the non-resident resources comprise fewer resources than those identified in the reference index.

18. An image operations device comprising:

means for parsing and separating a print job to generate a resource reference index that identifies resources to be used in the print job;

means for determining which resources identified in the index to be used for printing the print job are non-resident resources on each available printing device in a printer pool;

means for estimating a non-resident resource byte-size for each available printing device in the printer pool;

means for determining a first times required for downloading the non-resident resources by each printing device in the printer pool wherein the download times are based on the byte size of the corresponding non-resident resources;

means for assigning the each printing device in the printer pool a first composite rank according to at least one of the following;

device availability, device load, device performance, device capabilities, device locality, consumable status or cost;

means for assigning each printing device in the printer pool a second composite rank according to their respective download times and an additional printer resource metric;

means for selecting one of the printing devices in the printer pool, to optimize for either the first or second ranking, for printing the print job; and

means for removing embedded resource data from the print job wherein the embedded data includes resource data commands for resources that are resident on the printer selected for printing the print job.