Patent ID: 7742185

Claim:
A method for scheduling print jobs for a plurality of printers, the method comprising: for each of a plurality of print jobs, performing a conversion scan including: with a print driver of a computer or a network print server: determining a number of pages of a first print modality for a print job; determining a number of pages of a second print modality for the print job; determining a file header based on the number of pages of the first print modality and the number of pages of the second print modality in the print job; and associating the file header with the print job; transmitting the print job along with the file header to a print job scheduler implemented as software executed on a computer and placing the transmitted print job with other print jobs in a print job queue; and with the print job scheduler, scheduling a sequence of printing the plurality of print jobs in the print job queue, without respecting print queue order, by the plurality of printers based on at least one of: minimizing, for at least one of the plurality of printers, a number of periods of time during the sequence of printing where the at least one of the plurality of printers is in a non-operational mode; and maximizing continuous run time during the sequence of printing for the at least one of the plurality of printers.