1. A system for simultaneously commencing output of disparately encoded electronic documents comprising: means adapted for receiving selection data representative of a plurality of user-selected electronic documents encoded in a plurality of disparate formats; association means adapted for associating each of the plurality of disparate formats with at least one software module; means adapted for retrieving the plurality of user-selected electronic documents in accordance with received selection data; means adapted for communicating each of the plurality of user-selected electronic documents to one of a plurality of corresponding software modules in accordance with an output of the association means; and document processor means adapted for commencing a selected document processing operation on each of the user-selected electronic documents by a software module associated therewith.