11. A system for simultaneously commencing output of disparately encoded electronic documents comprising: a document processing device including a processor and associated data storage; an input operable for receiving, into, selection data representative of a plurality of different user-selected electronic documents, each of the plurality of documents being encoded in a unique one of a plurality of disparate formats; the processor operable for associating each of the plurality of disparate formats with at least one software module; the processor further operable for retrieving the plurality of user-selected electronic documents in accordance with received selection data; an output operable 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; the processor further operable for acquiring common document output characteristics associated with each of the plurality of user-selected electronic documents; an output operable for communicating configuration data corresponding to acquired document output characteristics to each of a plurality of unique software modules in a format compatible thereto; and the processor further operable for commencing a selected document processing operation on each of a series of the user-selected electronic documents by calling a sequence of the software modules, with each module corresponding to one of the series of user-selected electronic documents such that each module is operative in accordance with the common document output characteristics.
12. The system for simultaneously commencing output of disparately encoded electronic documents of claim 11 wherein the processor is further operable for prompting an associated user for input of common document output characteristics in accordance with common features associated with each software module.