The architecture of instant-preview virtual printing server for the preview affixation signature under the mobile environment

The printing equipments of Information Technology (IT) have grown rapidly and diversely coping with heterogeneous requirements today, especially for those printers, but dot-matrix printers (line printers) break those rules. Although laser-printers and inkjet printers have become very popular and useful for printing issues, the dot-printers are still not faded out from IT-users, especially for those commercial enterprises. The central characteristics are the carbon-papers that are used for some formal and financial information to be printed on them to offer the customers, suppliers, users, official staffs to sign their signatures via the handwriting. Those carbon-papers printing with signature written one time can be divided over two copies with the same handwriting repeated automatically. Today, the laser-printers or inkjet-printers with high-technology can make printing colorful, high-quality, high-speed and multi-functions, but they are almost impossible to do the carbon-papers printing like the dot-matrix printers. The previous researches proposed in Template Printing Script Language (TPSL) and Virtual Printing Server (VPS) have solved the template printing (TP) problems in heterogeneous environment including heterogeneous OS versions, hardware, different brand printers or different printers models. But there are some problems for the mobile environment waiting to be solved with the template-printing problems. More and more users like to use mobile devices like mobile-phone or tablets PC equipped iOS or Android-OS everywhere. Mobile applications working on the platforms of iOS or Android-OS still face the template printing requirements. If mobile-users sign their signatures on the template-printing papers like PC-users, the touch screen with writable characteristic of mobile devices have become useless and unnecessary. The convenience, simplicity and mobility for mobile devices must enrich new functions based on the issues mentioned above. The study proposes an architecture to extend the visual printer server (VPS) to facilitate the mobile-users to preview the results of the template-printing on mobile environment and confirms the correct information to write their signatures with theirs mobile devices. Finally the instant-preview virtual printing server (IPVPS) merges the mobile-users' signatures into the formal printing results and sends them back to the mobile-users.