The Architecture of Instant-Preview Virtual Printing Server for the Preview Affixation Signature under the Mobile Environment

Abstract

The printing equipments of Information Technology (IT) have grown rapidly and diversely coping with heterogeneous requirements today, especially for those printers. but dot-matrix printers break those rules. Although laser-printers or inkjet printers ,etc. have become very popular and useful for printing issues. But the dot-printers are still not faded out from IT-users, especially for those commercial enterprises. The central characteristics are the carbon-papers that used for some formal and financial information printed on them to offer the customers, suppliers, users, official staffs to sign their signatures by their handwriting. Those carbon-papers printing with signature written one time can be divided over two copies with the same handwriting repeated automatically. Today, the laser-printers or inkjet-printers with high-technology can make printing colorful, high-quality, high-speed and multi-functions, but they are impossible to do the carbon-papers printing like the dot-matrix printers. The previous researches proposed in "Template Printing Script Language (TPSL)" and " Virtual Printing Server (VPS)" have solved the Template Printing (TP) problems in heterogeneous environments including heterogeneous OS version, hardware, different brand printers or different model printers. But there are some problems for mobile environment unsolved with template-printing problems. More and more users like to use mobile devices like mobile-phone or tablets PC equipped i-OS or Android-OS installed everywhere. Mobile applications working on the platform of i-OS or Android still meet the template printing requirements. If mobile-users sign their signatures on the template-printing papers like PC-users, the touch screen and writable characteristic of mobile devices become useless and unnecessary. The convenience, simplicity and mobility for mobile devices must enrich new functions based on the mentioned issues above. The study proposes an architecture to extend the Visual Printer Server (VPS) to facilitate the mobile-users to preview the results of the template-printing on mobile environment to confirm the correct information and to write signatures by using theirs mobile devices. Finally the Instant-Preview Virtual Printing Server (IPVPS) merges the mobile-users' signatures into the formal printing results and sends them back to the mobile-users.