| 摘要 |
A computer based printing system, comprised of one or more print drivers, a spooler, print processor, two or more printing devices and optionally one or more print servers. The system results in reducing uneven distribution of load across printers for document splitting in a cluster printing environment, by weighting each page for the approximate proportional load required for the respective printer(s) to PDL interpretation/RIP. The system has the advantage of not requiring additional hardware, firmware, or server side software, by having the load calculated, splitting and distribution in the client side print subsystem. The method of the invention includes a method of distributing a print job having plural pages to plural printers, wherein each printer has a printer description language interface, selecting a cluster printing option and the printers to be used during distributed printing; analyzing the print job to estimate print times for each page of the print job; assigning a print job weight to each page as a function of the page's proportional page description language/raster image process time; and balancing a page distribution to each selected printer as a function of a printer's rated speed to have the distributed print job substantially simultaneously complete on each selected printer.
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