Patent ID: 7443529

Claim:
A method for controlling the output handling of imaging jobs so as to improve imaging output handling in a system having plural, available imaging output devices which may have different operational capabilities, and any one or more of which may, at a given moment in time, be busy with an associated, but yet unfinished, active current job, said method comprising, for each such output device being considered for selection to handle a selected, but not yet distributed, new imaging job, examining the respective processing statuses of any currently active job by performing a first job-decomposition of the job into states including (a) processing, (b) pending, and (c) spooling, and, with respect to any such current job which is in a processing state, performing a second, processing-state-decomposition into conditions including (a) already output, (b) processed, and (c) unprocessed, by said examining, determining the remainder amount of current job work still to be performed by a device handling that job, and thereby establishing the busyness status of that device, comparing the established busyness statuses of the considered output devices, and utilizing results from said comparing, choosing the most appropriate output handling for a selected new job.