Integrated smart card printing and encoding

Abstract

A printer driver receives printing data (e.g., data to be printed on a surface of the smart card) and encoding data from an application. The application may expose a device-independent printing interface with one or more escape functions for sending device-specific data (e.g., smart card encoding data). The printer driver generates integrated data comprising the printing data and the encoding data. A command coordinator (e.g., a language monitor) extracts printing commands and encoding commands from integrated data, sends printing commands to a printer device, and sends encoding commands to an encoder. The encoder can be recognized as a device that is separate from the printer device, even where the encoder and the printer device are housed in the same physical device. Described aspects can be used in a network environment with multiple client devices that share printing and encoding devices.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.