A printer and associated programming for automatically requesting a PDL program from a storage site that is connected to the printer by a network for any document that requires a PDL program that is not already available to the printer. A computer for this purpose may be a user or host computer, or be built in to the printer. When the computer delivers a document to the printer, either the computer will request that the PDL program from storage to be sent to the printer, or the printer will determine which PDL program is needed by inspecting the received document, and request it when provided the location.