6. A method for simultaneously commencing output of disparately encoded electronic documents comprising the steps of: receiving 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; associating each of the plurality of disparate formats with at least one software module; retrieving the plurality of user-selected electronic documents in accordance with received selection data; 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 associating each of the plurality of formats with at least one software module; acquiring common document output characteristics associated with each of the plurality of selected electronic documents; and communicating configuration data corresponding to acquired document output characteristics to each of the software modules in a format compatible thereto; and commencing a selected document processing operation on each of a series of the user-selected electronic documents by calling the software modules, with each module corresponding to one of the series of user-selected electronic documents in accordance with the common document output characteristics.
9. The method for simultaneously commencing output of disparately encoded electronic documents of claim 6 wherein the step of commencing a selected document processing operation on each of the documents includes commencing each document processing operation in a selected order.