Logical Printer Architecture

Logical Printer Architecture

The NIC implements a logical printer architecture which gives the system administrator the possibility to configure the print server to handle and act upon the print data in several ways. When a print job comes through the print server, there is a certain logical print path that it follows before it gets to the printer. Each logical print path consists of a sequence of logical steps where extra processing may be performed on the print data before it is sent to the printer. This ability to preprocess the print data before it is sent to the printer allows elimination of certain printing problems, or implementation of printer enhancements that may be difficult and time consuming to solve or introduce at the system, spool or queue level. The preprocess ability is also simplistic to perform at the print server level.

The logical print path for a print job going through NIC consists of three different phases:

•Phase 1 - the host sends the job to a destination or queue on NIC (e.g. d1prn).

•Phase 2 - the print job passes through the associated “model” (e.g. model “m1”) on NIC for any extra processing associated with the model.

•Phase 3 - the processed print job is directed to the printer for output.

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