System and method for driverless printers

A digital document processing system for centrally managing digital document processing print applications, the system comprising:

• a registry of network-connected service providers cross-referenced to print applications;
• a format analyzer having an interface to accept a digital document in a raw file format, the format analyzer determining the file format and recognizing a print application corresponding to the determined file format;
• and
• a driver manager having an interface for sending the digital document in the raw file format to a service provider with the recognized print application, and to receive a print application-rendered digital document from the service provider.

A system for centrally managing digital document processing print applications in a network of devices, the system comprising:

• a network client having an interface for sending a digital document in a raw file format;
• a multifunctional peripheral (MFP) including:
• a registry of network-connected service providers cross-referenced to print applications;
• a format analyzer having an interface to accept the digital document in the raw file format, the format analyzer determining the file format and recognizing a print application corresponding to the determined file format;
• a driver manager having an interface for sending the digital document in the raw file format to a service provider with the recognized print application, and to receive a print application-rendered digital document;
• and
• a service provider including at least one embedded print application having an interface to accept the digital document in raw file format and to supply a print application-rendered digital document to the printer driver manager.