iPrint Appliance strives to provide a client independent and driverless printing environment to mobile users. The iPrint Appliance print server performs the task of converting documents into print-ready formats, and printing the documents using an internal document renderer. iPrint Appliance also ships with a remote document renderer. For desktop-quality printing, the remote renderer is recommended.
The server renderer on iPrint Appliance 1.1 is bundled with an in-built document renderer. The renderer supports Open Office and image formats, has a multithreading feature, and provides better support for Microsoft Office formats. The server renderer converts documents to the PDF format, then converts them to the print ready format using CUPS. The server render also contains the following features:
Automatic Printer Driver Update: The automatic printer driver update feature checks the printer driver association every time a print job is completed. This ensures that the printer always uses the latest printer drivers.
Default Driver: If a printer does not have a driver associated to it, the default printer driver PostScript 3 is automatically used to print documents.
NOTE:The server renderer supports a broad range of formats, beyond the officially tested formats Writer (odt), Calc (ods), Impress (odp), and all image formats. These formats include Static HTML pages, Adobe PDF, and Microsoft Office. However, printing quality varies, depending on the document complexity. We strongly recommend that you use the remote renderer if you intend to print Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF formats.
The
page on the Management Console displays the server rendering formats, and the default driver used.iPrint Appliance ships with a remote document renderer. For desktop-quality printing, it is highly recommended that you install the remote renderer. You can download the remote renderer from the iPrint Appliance Management Console.
The remote renderer provides high quality rendering for Microsoft Office and PDF document formats. The renderer uses Microsoft Office and an in-built PDF renderer to render documents. If you do not want to use the in-built PDF renderer, you can also install Adobe Acrobat Pro for PDF rendering.
The remote renderer on iPrint Appliance 1.1 contains the following features:
Multi-driver support
Certificate based communication for increased security
In-built PDF renderer
Automatic printer driver updates
Management through the Management Console
The remote renderer runs on a standalone Windows 64-bit machine, and communicates with the iPrint Appliance print server for document conversion. Although it is not a mandatory requirement for iPrint Appliance, the remote renderer is strongly recommended for desktop quality printing.
The remote renderer supports document formats such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, and PDF.