JP2003296051A - Printing system and printer controller - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a printing system for easily controlling the print data and controlling a printer when two-side printing or the like is performed by using at least two one-side printers. <P>SOLUTION: In this printing system comprising one controller and at least two printers, the controller has a printer controller to receive and convert the print data, and transmit it to the printer, and the printer controller sorts the print data, and transmits different data to at least two printers. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printing system and a printing method for printing with a printer engine having a printer controller.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In order to realize double-sided printing,
For example, one printing device capable of double-sided printing is used, or two single-sided printing devices are used for printing on the front and back of one sheet of paper. A single-sided printing apparatus that can perform double-sided printing is easy to perform double-sided printing, but most jobs are single-sided printing and rarely perform double-sided printing, which is not efficient. On the other hand, when performing double-sided printing using two single-sided printing devices, it is possible to use two single-sided printing devices as usual and perform double-sided printing as needed. It has merits compared to the double-sided printing device. However, in this case, since printing is performed using two independent printing devices, there is a problem in control of each printing device printing device and management of print data.

[0003]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides a printing system for facilitating the management of print data and the control of a printing device when performing double-sided printing using two or more single-sided printing devices. The purpose is to

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention is a printing system having a controller and two or more printing devices, the controller receiving print data, converting the print data, and transmitting the print data to the printing device. Equipped with a printer controller,
The printer controller is a printing system having a function of distributing print data and transmitting different data to two or more printing apparatuses.

The present invention is also a printer controller having a function of receiving print data and converting it into data to be transmitted to a printing device, and a function of transmitting the converted data to the printing device. The printer controller has a function of transmitting different data to each of the above printing apparatuses.

[0006]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The configuration of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an example of the basic configuration of the printing system of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, this system comprises a printer engine 1 and a controller 2 connected to the printer engine 1. Further, the controller 2 is connected to the network 3. The network 3 is an electronic communication network such as the Internet or a local area network (LAN). Then, the present system prints the drawing data, which is activated by printing from the application 41 on the personal computer 4 of the client connected to the network 3, on the paper by using the controller 2 and the printer engine 1.

Client personal computer 4
Has a printer driver 43. The printer driver 43 is software having a function of converting drawing data created by the application 41 into control language data for the printer. On the other hand, the controller 2 is the spooler 2
1 and a printer controller 24. Spooler 21
Is a dynamic library (DL) that receives and saves control language data output from the printer driver 43.
L), usually a personal computer 4
It is realized as a function of the operating system. The printer controller 24 is software having a function of receiving control language data from the spooler 21, converting it into video data and control data for the printer engine, and transmitting the video data and control data to the printer engine 1. The video data means image data to be printed by the printer engine, and for example, a bitmap image can be used as the video data. Further, the control data means an operation command to the printer engine, and operations such as printing start and stop are performed according to the control data. The printer engine, which has received control data and started printing, prints on paper based on the video data transmitted from the printer controller. The printer engine 1 is a printing device having a function of printing on paper based on the data transmitted from the controller 24. An electrophotographic printer is preferably used as the printer engine 1.

FIG. 2 shows a conventional printing system. Conventionally, in order to realize double-sided printing by arranging two single-sided printing devices, it is necessary to prepare front-side printing data in a controller for front-side printing and prepare back-side printing data in a controller for another back-side printing. was there. For this purpose, it is necessary to prepare print data for the front side and print data for the back side in advance on the client PC and separately activate printing from the application. The fact that the print data on the front surface and the print data on the back surface are different indicates that the print data on the front surface and the back surface cannot be simultaneously printed from the application. Therefore, it is not possible to print from the printer engine at the same time as the application starts printing, and it is necessary to spool the control data output from the printer driver of the client PC to each controller in advance.

FIG. 3 shows a case where the printing system of the present invention is used.
FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a printing flow when printing is performed on both sides of a common paper using a printing device of a table. As shown in FIG. 3, the client personal computer 4
When the data created by the application 41 is started to be printed, the drawing data is once stored in the operating system (OS) 42. The operating system 42 sends the drawing data to the required device driver. Here, the printer driver 43 corresponds to the device driver.

The printer driver 43 receives the drawing data from the operating system 42, converts it into control language data (job file) for the printer, and transfers the data to an arbitrary port. For example, Postscript is also one of the control language data. The printer driver 43 can transfer the control language data to any port. For example, a printer port is generally used as the port, but a printer server on the network may be used, or transfer to any device such as a hard disk on the network is possible.
Here, a case where the data is transferred to the spooler 21 of the controller 2 on the network 3 will be described. Spooler 21
Can receive the control language data created by the printer driver 43 and temporarily store (spool) it. Further, scheduling and distribution to any device are possible.

The printer controller 24 reads the control language data of the spooler 21 as needed. The printer controller 24 analyzes the control language data of the spooler 21 and converts it into video data for the printer engine. In addition to the video data, control data for the printer engine is created as needed, and these are sent to the printer engine 1.

As a communication interface from the controller to the printer engine, a dedicated PCI board is installed on a PCI bus in the controller, and a dedicated video cable is connected from there. The dedicated PCI board incorporated in the PCI bus of the controller is controlled by dedicated software called a dynamic library (DLL). This software has created one that supports multiple PCI boards. By incorporating multiple PCI boards into the controller, it is possible to control two printing devices. Further, the number of printer engines is not limited to two, and a plurality of printer engines corresponding to the slots of the PCI board can be controlled by one controller.

In the present invention, the control language data of the job file output from the printer driver is analyzed by the printer controller and sorted for the front side and the back side,
Double-sided printing is possible by sending each video data and control data to each printer engine. Further, even when the print data for the front surface and the back surface is created in advance on the client PC, the print data is transmitted to the printer controller so that the printer controller sorts the print data for the front surface and the back surface, and Double-sided printing is possible by sending each data to the printer engine.

According to the present invention, it is not necessary to create print data for the front surface and the print data for the back surface in advance on the client PC, and management and operation of the print data are facilitated. Further, in order to realize double-sided printing from a single job file, conventionally, there is a case where the front-side print data and the back-side print data are erroneously printed to be different double-sided prints due to an operator error. This solves the problem of printing different print data on the front surface and the back surface.

In order to realize double-sided printing by one controller using two single-sided printing devices, a single job file is analyzed as described above, and the front side and the back side are separated page by page. It is necessary to send video data and control data to the printer engine.

To this end, it is necessary to analyze the file first and divide the file into pages at high speed, and it is preferable that the control language data from the printer driver be compressed in a compression format. Since the data is compressed, the disk access can be speeded up and the file can be divided at high speed.

In the present invention, printing of a plurality of printer engines can be realized by using one controller. In addition to the double-sided system described above, various system operation modes are possible.

For example, there is a spot color printing system shown in FIG. The spot color printing system refers to a system capable of monochromatic printing in addition to monochrome, such as printing a black character on a common sheet by a first printer engine and printing a red character by a second printer engine.
According to the present invention, the control language data of the job file output from the printer driver is analyzed by the printer controller and divided into monochrome data and red character data, and the respective video data and control data are transmitted to the respective printer engines. This allows spot color printing. Even if the print data for monochrome and the data for red characters are created in advance on the client PC, the printer controller sends the print data to the printer controller to sort the data for monochrome and the data for red character. Then, spot color printing is possible by transmitting the respective data to the respective printer engines. The spot color printing system is often used in advertisements, DMs and the like.

In this system, in order to realize spot color printing by using two separate printer engines,
Normally, it is possible to print different print jobs on the respective printers, and if necessary, it is possible to easily connect the two printers to a spot color printing system that continuously prints on the same paper. As with the double-sided system, since control is performed by a single controller, not only management of print data but also operability of the system is simplified.

[0021]

As described above, according to the present invention, 2
When performing double-sided printing or spot color printing using one or more single-sided printing devices, one controller can
By performing print data creation and print device control for more than one printing device, it is possible to easily perform print data management and printing device control. In particular, it can be preferably used when performing double-sided printing or spot color printing on continuous paper using two or more single-sided printing devices.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a basic configuration of a printing system of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a conventional printing system.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an operation example of the printing system of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an operation example of the printing system of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Printer engine 2 controller 3 network 4 Client personal computer 21 Spooler 24 Printer controller 41 applications 42 operating system 43 Printer driver

   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued front page    (72) Inventor Hisashi Makido             1-8 Mihama, Urayasu City, Chiba Toray Co., Ltd.             Ceremony company Tokyo office F term (reference) 2C061 AP01 AR03 HJ06 HN05 HN15                 5B021 AA01 BB00 EE02 FF03 LL05

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. A printing system having one controller and two or more printing devices, the controller comprising a printer controller for receiving print data, converting the print data, and transmitting the print data to the printing device. Is a printing system having a function of distributing print data and transmitting different data to two or more printing devices. 2. The printing system according to claim 1, wherein common paper can be printed by two or more printing devices. 3. The printing system according to claim 1, wherein printing can be performed on both sides of a common paper by using two printing devices. 4. A common paper by two or more printing devices,
The printing system according to claim 1, wherein color printing of different printing colors is possible. 5. The printing system according to claim 1, wherein the printing device is an electrophotographic printer. 6. A printer controller having a function of receiving print data and converting the data into data to be transmitted to a printing device, and a function of transmitting the converted data to the printing device, wherein the print data is distributed to two or more printers. A printer controller having a function of transmitting different data to each device.