Using Windows Printer Drivers for Solaris Applications - An Application of Multiagent System

摘要

This paper proposes using multiagent system technology to solve the problem of printing across heterogeneous operating systems without re-implementing printer drivers. The printing problem comes from a real world application, where we have to print from Solaris operating system applications to printers which only have Windows operating system drivers. Multiple intelligent agents are distributed on both Windows and Solaris platforms to integrate services running on these platforms. They are responsible for printing task interception, operating system spooling, printing format conversion, load balancing, and intelligent data routing. This approach avoids re-implementing Windows printer drivers on Solaris, yet provides seamlessly printing for Solaris applications to those printers.