Method and system for printing documents from a portable device to any printer based on information contained in optical code

An apparatus for printing a document from a portable device comprising:

• a document-transmitting mechanism configured to transmit the document to be printed from the portable device to a printing server coupled to a printer;
• an optical-code-obtaining mechanism configured to obtain a document optical code that identifies the transmitted document, wherein the document optical code includes a document fingerprint of the document, wherein the document fingerprint comprises one or more numerical values mapped to one or more subsets of document features;
• a display configured to display the document optical code on the portable device in such a way that facilitates scanning and recognizing the document optical code recognized by a scanner associated with the printer, and facilitates the printer to print the document by retrieving the document from the printing server based at least on the document fingerprint included in the document optical code.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method for printing a document from a portable device, the method comprising:

• transmitting, by the portable device, the document to be printed to a printing server coupled to a printer;
• obtaining, by the portable device, a document optical code that identifies the transmitted document, wherein the document optical code includes a document fingerprint of the document, wherein the document fingerprint comprises one or more numerical values mapped to one or more subsets of document features;
• displaying, by the portable device, the document optical code in such a way that facilitates scanning and recognizing the document optical code by a scanner associated with the printer, and facilitates the printer to print the document by retrieving the document based at least on the document fingerprint included in the document optical code.