Remote user interface for prioritizing and selecting from a plurality of document production peripheral devices

Claim 1

Document production apparatus comprising: a plurality of peripheral devices, capable of producing documents, said peripheral devices respectively having a plurality of selectable peripheral device setup parameters and a plurality of selectable document production job setup parameters, means for configuring said plurality of peripheral devices by selection of certain peripheral device setup parameters from said plurality of peripheral device setup parameters, and means for setting up a document production job by selection of certain job setup parameters from said plurality of document production job setup parameters; a user interface remote from at least some of said plurality of peripheral devices, said user interface having means for receiving said selection of said job setup parameters for a document production job; a network interconnecting said plurality of peripheral devices and said user interface; means, connected to said user interface, for presenting to said user interface a directory of the respective selected configurations of said plurality of peripheral devices, prioritized according to the suitability of said peripheral devices for processing the document production job set up by said document production job set up means; means, connected to said user interface, for selecting of one of said plurality of peripheral devices of a desired configuration from said directory; and means, responsive to said last-mentioned selecting means, for sending said set up document production job to said selected peripheral device.