Distributed rendering of print jobs

Abstract

A printer handles a print job by determining whether the entire print job can be processed locally by the printer. If possible, the printer processes the print job locally. If the entire print job cannot be processed locally, then the printer sends the print job (or a portion of the print job) to an external rendering device. The printer receives a rendered print job (or a rendered portion of a print job) from the external rendering device. Finally, the printer prints the rendered print job. If different portions of the print job require processing by different external rendering devices, then portions of a particular print job may be distributed to multiple external rendering devices. An external rendering device may be a server coupled to the printer via the Internet.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.