Xerox Corp’s dream of turning its copiers into computer peripherals is to take a step forward next week when the company is expected to announce the software it has been developing to enable its copiers to receive and print text from a remote computer over the telephone network. Called DocuSP, it will initially be aimed at the market for college textbooks and at banks, insurance companies and other business customers that are major users of forms, but some see it evolving into a books-on-demand system similar to the Compact Disks-on-demand concept dreamed up by IBM Corp and Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. The DocuSP software runs on a server and creates an architecture that enables local networks, scanners, storage devices and retrieval systems to work together as one seamless system, with the output being produced on Xerox’s DocuTech high-volume 135 page-per-minute printer-copier. According to the Wall Street Journal, Xerox is also working on an attachment for DocuTech that will bind books.
