Quote Originally Posted by ;145719
This is some cool code...

I'm in need of something similar, have a look at my problem and let me please know what you think of it?

Problem: In a school, students are printing, and now have to pay an amount of money for each color/black&white print.
They pay this when they pick up the paper from the printer, where now somebody is sitting al day. (Price is $0.10 for BW and $0.25 for color but that's not what this is about). What I'd like to do is capture the printjob before it goes to the printer. Then, on a "billing" computer students must use their school-passes to enter a valid code and or password, and when this code is valid it is send to the server as a "go on, print it". If not, the print-job will be dropped after some time (say 5 mins). The "bills" will be printed monthly or so...

In short: Student prints, goes to computer to enter his/her code and the print comes out. If code is invalid or a "time-out" occurs, the printjob is cancelled.

The part of the billing-computer, communication with the server and so on I can do. But for catching the printjobs and "holding them" is where I depend on you guys! I'm hoping you'd take a thought about my problem and tell me if you'd like to help me solve it... (I'd like to help solving too ... )

Any ideas or suggestions this far?
My suggestion is to use a web server. The client passes the document, and the print command, the server accepts the document, prints it. Returns the print success. The way the type cloud prints.