Multi-job pooled printer control

Question

We've got 4 printers with identical trays/paper configured in a pool. Multiple jobs can be submitted and it will kind of round-robin send the jobs to the printers per whichever one is idle. That works good, but.. We're working on a new application that is web-based and produces PDF output files. A "set" of data might involve 3 different print "jobs" coming out on 3 different trays but would preferably be available to pickup once complete off of only one of the printers. Any suggestions how to send 3 print "jobs" but have that "set" of jobs all be queued up to only one physical printer? Currently a 3rd party spooler is in place, it's old, it's kind of crappy, I'm looking to replace this with Windows printer pooling or some other 3rd party app if you can suggest one that would offer the needed control.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The best way to do this would be to combine the PDF files before sending them to the printer. This would allow the "set" of PDF files to be sent in a single print job, and would ensure that they are sent to a single printer. This would be compatible with Windows printer pooling, and would work without a 3rd party spooler app.

One way to combine the PDF files is to use the free PDFTK command line toolkit available at: http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

The cat command can be used to combine the PDF files into a single PDF for the print job "set":

pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output 123.pdf