For single-user systems that have modest printing needs, the native lp print spooler may be sufficient. Xi-Text is designed for production printing that may involve many networked hosts, large numbers of print jobs and users, and a variety of printer types. It provides security, manageability and configuration flexibility that is not available in the native printing support software.

Xi-Text is a completely independent printing management system. It provides numerous features and functions not available with lp. Xi-Text has its own commands and syntax, but it includes an emulation program that can accept lp command syntax and perform the equivalent printing requests to Xi-Text.