Mobility support for printing

A mobile print support mechanism for printing to a currently inaccessible remote print device, comprising:

• a network connection for selectively connecting a client data processing system to a network containing a remote print queue for the remote print device;
• a mobile print manager executing within the client data processing system, the mobile print manager:
• determining whether the remote print queue is currently accessible;
• determining whether a transient print queue associated with the remote print queue exists within the client data processing system in response to detecting a print job submitted to the remote print queue while the remote print queue is inaccessible;
• creating the transient print queue within the client data processing system if the transient print queue does not exist;
• spooling the print job to the transient print queue;
• and
• a user interface within the client data processing system to the transient print queue permitting a user to indefinitely to suspend replay of the print job from the transient print queue to the remote print queue after the print job has been spooled to the transient print queue.

A method of supporting mobile printing to a currently inaccessible print queue, comprising:

• determining whether at least one transient print queue associated with a remote print queue for a remote print device exists within a mobile device;
• responsive to determining that at least one transient print queue exists, periodically checking an accessibility status for the remote print queue corresponding to the at least one transient print queue;
• and
• responsive to determining that the remote print queue has become accessible, replaying print jobs within the at least one transient print queue to the remote print queue by determining whether the at least one transient print queue contains at least one print job not in a held state.

A data processing system, comprising:

• a network connection for selectively connecting the data processing system to a network containing a remote print queue;
• and
• a mobile print manager executing within the data processing system, the mobile print manager:
• determining whether the remote print queue is currently accessible to the data processing system;
• determining whether a transient print queue associated with the remote print queue exists within the data processing system in response to detecting a print job submitted to the remote print queue while the remote print queue is inaccessible;
• creating the transient print queue if the transient print queue does not exist;
• spooling the print job to the transient print queue;
• and
• providing a user interface to the transient print queue permitting a user to indefinitely suspend replay of the print job from the transient print queue to the remote print queue.

A computer program product in a computer usable medium, comprising:

• instructions within the computer usable medium, responsive to detecting a print request within a mobile client system for a remote print queue, for determining whether the remote print queue is currently accessible to the mobile client system;
• instructions within the computer usable medium, responsive to determining that the remote print queue is not currently accessible to the mobile client system, for determining whether a transient print queue exists within the mobile client system for the remote print queue;
• instructions within the computer usable medium, responsive to determining that a transient queue does not exist within the mobile client system for the remote print queue, for creating a transient print queue within the mobile client system for the remote print queue;
• instructions within the computer usable medium for spooling a print job corresponding to the print request to the transient print queue;
• instructions within the computer usable medium, responsive to detecting the existence of the transient print queue for the remote print queue, for periodically determining whether the remote print queue is currently accessible to the mobile client system;
• and
• instructions within the computer usable medium, responsive to determining that the remote print queue is currently accessible to the mobile client system while the transient queue for the remote print queue exists within the mobile client system, for automatically replaying print jobs within the transient print queue to the remote print queue or to a different remote print queue selected by a user.