Dynamic plug and play interface for output device

Details Dynamic plug and play interface for output device Dynamic plug and play interface for output device

1997-11-07

2001-10-09

Mancuso, Joseph (Department: 2624)

Facsimile and static presentation processing

Static presentation processing

Communication

C358S001140

Reexamination Certificate

active

06301011

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a plug and play interface for use in computers and computer networks. More specifically, the invention is directed to a generic interface for use with a number of different output servers/devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
As shown in
FIG. 1
, the basic conventional printing system
10
uses a client/server architecture that includes a client
20
, a server
40
and an output device
50
. The client
20
conveys print and management requests to the server
40
and receives responses from the server
40
that arise from the submitted requests.
The server
40
receives these requests from the client
20
, performs the required actions for each request, and returns responses to the client
20
. One such request from a client is a print request, i.e., a request to print one or more copies of one or more documents, with the printed pages output using one or more features. The features can include simplex or duplex printing, stapling or binding, etc. Thus, a print request represents a collection of one or more documents to be printed as well as instructions for printing. The server
40
organizes the documents and instructions indicated in the print request submitted by the client into a print job. The server then sends the print job and any associated job control commands to the output device
50
.
The output device
50
is a physical device or hardware that is capable of rendering images or documents and producing hard copy output of the print jobs received from the server
40
. The output device
50
can then return responses to the server
40
regarding its current state or the status of the received print jobs. The output device
50
is commonly a printer.
These conventional systems, however, are designed assuming only one type of output device will be used. Thus, if a different output device is to be used, the entire document processing system must be revised. Such revisions require a great investment of time and money to accomplish.
Furthermore, the conventional systems do not allow a new output device to be added without extensive revision of the system and thus, interruption of the system operation.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This invention provides simple, generic interfaces with plug-and-play capabilities so that changes in the output device may be accomplished without drastically changing the document processing system.
This invention further provides simple, generic interfaces with plug-and-play capability to facilitate bringing into a running system new output devices connected by various networking protocols such as tcp/ip, serial, parallel, SNMP, DPA, etc., without interruption of the system operation.
The server system and method of this invention includes a print spooler server and a print supervisor server. The supervisor has a front end module, a back end module and a document processor. The spooler receives print requests from a client. The spooler generates print jobs from the print requests and sends the print jobs to the supervisor. The front end module of the supervisor receives the print jobs from the spooler and submits them to the document processor. The document processor processes the print jobs and forwards the print jobs to the back end module. The back end module directs the print jobs to the appropriate output devices.
The method and apparatus of this invention allow various types of output devices to be interchangeably used by simple alterations of the resident shared libraries of the back end module, so that the resident shared libraries reflect the required functions and channels for the particular types of output devices. In this way, a new output device or a new type of output device may be added to the system without having to extensively revise the entire system and without having to interrupt the operation of the system.
These and other features and advantages of this invention are described in or are apparent from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5604843 (1997-02-01), Shaw et al.
patent: 6043898 (2000-03-01), Jacobs
patent: 6151590 (2000-11-01), Cordery et al.
patent: 6240456 (2001-05-01), Teng et al.

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