Enhanced Locked Print Application For Ricoh MFP

Nowadays everything is electronic including the documents in the digital world. Multi-Function peripheral (MFP) is a device which has the functions of copier, printer, fax and scanner. It plays a significant role in the management of digital documents. In 1990s, Ricoh brought the new OA device concept MFP, and realized the collaboration between different hardware or software components via the use of digital technology. Although the conventional hardware & software architecture can conduct the function such as copier or printer, it doesn't support the MFP to extend the new functions flexibly. Therefore, Ricoh optimizes the software & hardware structure and the new one is called GW-Architecture.In this article, GW-Architecture is highlighted with the flexibility and the reuse of hardware & software resources. Based on it, Ricoh provides an embedded software development platform (VAS) and tool (RiMAP SDK). The article analyzes the mechanism of VAS and RiMAP-SDK.In printer module of MFP, there is a function called Locked Print (LP) which prints the document in a safe way. The current LP application has some limitation on the throughout, operation process and print job management. To extend the function of LP, a new embedded software solution Enhanced Locked Print (ELP) is developed on the basis of MFP embedded software development platform. Enhanced Locked Print Application can deal with larger amount of locked print jobs at the same time. It improves the operation process and adds the new function of Remote Print and Follow Me Print. It also provides the remote management of locked print jobs via internet interface.To realize the Enhanced Locked Print, the whole embedded application is made up of one common function library and three operation modules. The Lib-Job function library includes all of the functions to encrypt, create, print or delete the locked print jobs; The PDL-Filter operation module analyzes the PDL language in print data and filters the locked print data to store them in hard disk; The LP-UI module invoke the Operation Panel Control Service and build the customer UI on MFP operation panel. The Web-UI module makes use of Network Control Service to realize the remote management of ELP application and locked print jobs. In this article, the process of the ELP application development is introduced from the angles of functional-design (Chapter 4), detail design (Chapter 5) and coding (Chapter 6).