JP3714804B2 - Distributed printing method, distributed printing system, and recording medium - Google Patents

Description

[0001]
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a printing system that processes color documents and the like, and more particularly to a distributed printing method, a distributed printing system, and a recording medium on which a distributed printing program is recorded.
[0002]
[Prior art]
In recent years, network devices are generally used even in small offices, and many personal computers (hereinafter referred to as PCs) and printers are connected to the network. In such a network environment, conventionally, printing is generally performed according to the following procedure. FIG. 7 shows an example of a conventional system configuration connected via a network.
[0003]
That is, the client PC 71 designates one specific printer (for example, 75) and directly transmits the print data via the route B1 in the figure, or once the print job is spooled from the client PC 71 to the print server 74. Thereafter, the printer server 74 transmits print data to a specific printer (for example, 76) via the route A1 to A2, or any method is employed.
[0004]
However, regardless of which method is used, since only one printer is actually used for printing, there is a limit to greatly increasing the printing time.
[0005]
Therefore, as conventional techniques for dealing with such problems, for example, (1) a page description language parallel printing system described in JP-A-6-168087, and (2) a printer described in JP-A-7-64744. There is a server device.
[0006]
In the system (1), a print job is divided into pages, rasterized (RIP) processing is performed by a plurality of CPUs on a network, and output to a plurality of printers to increase printing speed.
[0007]
In the apparatus (2), the print job is divided into pages as described above, the contents of each page are analyzed, and output to a plurality of printers that are optimal for outputting each page, thereby speeding up printing. I am trying.
[0008]
In other words, the above-described technology makes effective use of existing network resources and performs distributed output of printing by simultaneously using a plurality of printers, thereby speeding up processing.
[0009]
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
By the way, in a general office, there is an environment in which different types of printers are mixed. In such an environment, when each page of a color document composed of a plurality of pages is distributed and output to a plurality of color printers, the following problems occur regarding color reproduction.
[0010]
That is, when distributed printing is performed with a plurality of different types of color printers, the color reproducibility varies from printer to printer. Therefore, the printed matter that is output differs in hue from printer to printer, and correct color reproduction cannot be achieved. For example, even for the same red character, the color of the red character varies from page to page, and the background color common to all pages varies from page to page.
[0011]
The present invention has been made to solve the above problems,
An object of the present invention is to use a combination of color printer color reproduction information and a user-designated printing policy in printing a color document consisting of a plurality of pages, and analyze the contents of the page at the time of printing. An object of the present invention is to provide a distributed printing method, a distributed printing system, and a recording medium on which a distributed printing program is recorded so that adaptive processing can be easily performed and a color document with good color reproducibility can be output at high speed.
[0012]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
In order to achieve the above object, according to the first aspect of the present invention, in a system in which a plurality of printers and at least one client are connected to a network, the contents of each page of print data sent from the client are analyzed . analysis result, the color reproduction information of each printer, based on the predetermined print policy from the plurality of printers, said determining each page color reproducible printer as the output destination printer A distributed printing method in which each page is distributed and printed by a plurality of printers, and the plurality of pages having poor color reproducibility when output by any one of the plurality of printers, the plurality of pages All the data is output by any one of the printers .
[0013]
According to a second aspect of the present invention, the color reproduction information includes a color gamut and color reproduction accuracy information.
[0014]
According to a third aspect of the present invention, the printing policy includes setting of priority of resolution and speed of the printer and selection of the printer.
[0015]
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, a plurality of printers, at least one client connected to the network, an analysis means for analyzing the contents of each page of print data sent from the client, and the color reproduction information of each printer are stored. The plurality of printers with reference to the stored color reproduction information storage means, the printing policy information storage means for determining and saving the printing policy, the analysis means, the color reproduction information storage means, and the printing policy information storage means distributed printing system comprising a transmitting means for transmitting the printer of the output destination of each page according to among, determining means for determining said as each page of the destination color reproducible printer printer, said determination means The determining means may output a complex color having poor color reproducibility regardless of output from any of the plurality of printers. The page, is characterized by determining any one printer in the plurality of printers as the output destination printer for all pages.
[0016]
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, the analyzing unit, the color reproduction information storing unit, the printing policy information storing unit, the determining unit, and the transmitting unit are a constituent unit of a server connected to the network. It is characterized by being.
[0017]
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, the server further comprises color conversion means for color-converting device-independent color data into color data for the printer, and means for collecting information relating to the printer. It is said.
[0018]
The invention described in claim 7 is a computer-readable recording medium in which a program for causing a computer to realize the distributed printing method according to any one of claims 1 to 3 is recorded.
[0019]
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.
[0020]
(Example 1)
1 is a network configuration diagram of a distributed printing system according to a first embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, 1 to 3 are clients such as personal computers, 4 is a print server, and 5 to 8 are printers. The print server 4 includes a printer driver 41, an ICC profile 42, a storage unit 43 that stores printer color reproduction information (color reproduction area information and color reproduction accuracy information), and print policy information (resolution and speed priority information). A storage unit 44 that stores device settings, a color conversion unit 45 that converts device-independent color data into printer color data, a printer information collection unit 46 that collects various types of information about printers connected to the network, and the like. A page analysis unit 47 that divides document data from the client into pages and analyzes the divided pages, and a page delivery determination unit 48 that decides which printer each page is delivered to.
[0021]
FIG. 2 shows a processing flowchart at the time of printing, and FIG. 3 shows a flow of page data at the time of printing. In this embodiment, for the sake of explanation, it is assumed that the following resources are connected on the network. That is, three clients 1 to 3, one print server 4, and four color printers are connected to the network.
[0022]
The print server 4 includes a printer driver 41 corresponding to each of the printers 5 to 8, an ICC color profile 42, and the like. The printer driver 41 generally generates a raster image by analyzing a drawing command (RIP), and performs color conversion processing and pseudo halftone processing on the image to generate an output signal of the printer. The ICC color profile (hereinafter referred to as profile) 42 is a data group describing various information related to color input / output devices (for example, a table that converts XYZ and CMY between each other), and is standardized by an intercolor consortium. Has been.
[0023]
The page division and page analysis unit 47 of the print server 4 divides the print job sent from the client for each page, interprets the contents, and the page delivery determination unit 48 determines the schedule for allocating the job to the printer. Execute processing to send data to the printer.
[0024]
Further, since the profile 42 is used, the server 4 can obtain the color gamut information (more precisely, gamut-tag in the ICC profile) 43 of each printer. Further, the color conversion unit (color conversion engine) 45 performs interpolation processing on the data in the profile 42 and converts it into color data that matches the characteristics of each printer (in this example, since it is a printer, most are CMYK formats). .
[0025]
The printer information collection unit 46 of the print server 4 always collects information about the printer. Specifically, printer device characteristics (model name, number of paper feed trays, paper size / direction, number of ink colors, image forming method, printing speed, etc.) and current status (Busy, Ready, etc.) Collect information.
[0026]
The procedure for exchanging these pieces of information between network devices has already been standardized by the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) protocol, and the device characteristics and status related to printers are also defined in the Printer-MIB (management information base). The specifications are also open to the public.
[0027]
If the printer to be managed is SNMP / MIB compatible, the print server 4 may obtain information directly from the printer via the network. If it is a non-compliant printer, the printer server 4 will be able to obtain information on the print server when the printer is newly installed. These items may be set manually.
[0028]
First, the client 1 issues a print instruction from the application program being used. In response to this instruction, print job data is sent from the client 1 to the print server 4. Here, the contents of the print job are described not in rasterized data but in a page description language (hereinafter referred to as PDL). Therefore, the processing time of the client CPU is short. Any PDL may be used, but an example is Microsoft-Windows enhanced metafile (hereinafter referred to as EMF).
[0029]
The print job transmitted to the print server 4 is first divided into pages by the page division and page analysis unit 47 (step 101), and the contents of each divided page are analyzed (step 103). . The content to be analyzed here is mainly the color gamut used in the page.
[0030]
In general, a document image described in an intermediate language such as PDL is generally composed of a plurality of simplified drawing commands (for example, drawing a line, painting a rectangle, etc.). Therefore, as one method of page analysis, for example, a method is used in which the color distribution in each page is viewed by simply counting up the used colors of one drawing command used for each page.
[0031]
In addition, since the profile 42 and the color conversion unit 45 are prepared, the analysis can be easily performed regardless of the format of the color space adopted in the PDL. Here, items other than the items related to color (for example, text data, bitmap ratio, etc.) may be analyzed.
[0032]
Next, the printer information collection unit 46 checks the operating status of each printer. Here, it is checked whether the printer is actually operable now or whether ink or paper has run out. If the printer is not operable, the printer is excluded from the output destination candidates. Since the CPU load for checking the operation status of the printer is very small, it is actually desirable that the process for that is operated in the background and the print server always knows the status of each printer.
[0033]
Next, the page delivery determining unit 48
(1) Contents of each page analyzed in the previous step (2) Pre-determined printing policy (hereinafter referred to as printing policy)
(3) Further, with reference to three or more of the color reproduction area or color reproduction accuracy information of the printer that is the output destination candidate, it is determined which page is to be output to which printer (step 106). 5 and 6 show first and second examples of dialog boxes for setting a print policy. In the example of FIG. 5, it is possible to set the priority of how much priority is given to the resolution and speed of the printer and the setting of the minimum resolution.
[0034]
The example of FIG. 6 shows a dialog box for selecting a printer. Similarly, the output destination printer can be set in detail, such as distributed printing for all printers, or only for printers in a group designated in advance.
[0035]
The print policy setting described above may be set so that only the printer administrator can perform it on the print server, or the client may be able to give detailed instructions for each printing. In the latter case, a method of embedding print policy information in a print job using a comment area in a page description language can be considered. If there are a lot of print policy setting items and the performance of the print printer is completely different, the combination pattern of page allocation destinations will be very large, so use fuzzy inference etc. to determine the allocation destination. May be performed.
[0036]
Next, the output destination determination method will be described in more detail. For example, when printing an 8-page document, for simplicity, (1) the output color printers are three printers A, B, C out of all four.
(2) All three printers can currently print (not Busy)
(3) The color space used in PDL is device independent (XYZ or L * a * b *)
(4) Print engine method, default resolution, and paper size of three printers are the same (5) Output speeds of printers A, B, and C are 1: 1: 2 (the speed of printer C is the fastest)
(6) When determining the output destination, do not reduce the resolution for speeding up (that is, output at the printer default resolution).
The explanation is based on the assumption.
[0037]
Further, it is assumed that the result of content analysis after page division is as shown in FIG. The meanings of the symbols in the figure are as follows.
◎: The data in the page can be reproduced by the printer ○: More than half of the page data can be reproduced △: The color reproducible area is less than half ***: The color reproduction accuracy is higher than the data in the page **: Medium color reproduction accuracy.
[0038]
In this case, the output destination distribution method is determined as follows. Since the color reproduction / accuracy can be determined from those with many constraints, first, the fifth page is determined as the printer A, and the fourth page is determined as the printer B. Next, the third and second pages are the printer A or B, and the remaining first page and the sixth to eighth pages may be any of the printers A, B, and C. However, since the color reproducibility of the sixth to seventh pages is poor regardless of which printer is used for output, it is desirable that the same printer be used for suppressing variations.
[0039]
Finally, the distribution can be done taking into account the output speed ratio of printers A, B, and C.
Printer A: 3, 5-page printer B: 4, 2-page printer C: 1, 6-8 pages, etc. (The above decision is an example, and this is not the only solution. Of course, other combinations are also possible. Conceivable).
[0040]
When referring to the color reproduction accuracy information described above, it is necessary to prepare the information in the profile in advance (for example, there is a method of embedding information in an extension tag of the profile). The color reproduction accuracy information is information indicating how faithfully the original data can be reproduced by the target printer. For example, when there is L * a * b * [1] obtained by color-converting L * a * b * [0] of the original data, outputting it with the printer, and measuring the output product, A distance between coordinates (L * a * b * [0] −L * a * b * [1]) is an example. Alternatively, a plurality of output products for the same data are obtained, and the distance data (L * a * b * [0] −L * a * b * [1], L * a * b * [0] −L * a * b * [2],...) and at least one of the average value and the variance value may be employed. Therefore, for the printers A, B, C, and D described above, the distance value may be prepared in the profile corresponding to the printer as information representing the color reproduction accuracy.
[0041]
In this way, after determining the correspondence between the page and the output destination, the page delivery determining unit 48 transmits the divided and raster image developed and color conversion processed page data to the printer determined as the output destination (step). 108). After confirming the output of the page data in the destination printer, the page data on the print server is deleted (step 111). If it cannot be confirmed, only that page is retransmitted. If it cannot be confirmed again, it is processed as an error and not output. If necessary, the output result may be notified to the client side so that the correspondence between the output destination and the output result can be understood.
[0042]
As described above, according to the present embodiment, since a color document consisting of a plurality of pages can be distributed and output to a plurality of color printers while considering the color reproduction range, the color variation can be suppressed in a significantly shorter time than before. It becomes possible to output.
[0043]
In the above description, the page division of the print job described in the intermediate language is performed on the print server side, but this may be performed on the client side. In that case, it is necessary to be able to recognize that it is distributed printing and the page order from the print server side (for example, to give a certain regularity to the naming method of the print job).
[0044]
Further, the case where at least one print server is prepared has been described, but the present invention can be realized even when there is no print server. In this case, each client needs to have each means (program) and information (print policy information, profile corresponding to the printer, etc.) existing on the server described above.
[0045]
Furthermore, in the above description, the PDL of the print job may be different from the PDL that can be interpreted by the printer. In this case, format conversion (PDL1 → PDL2) may be performed on the print server before transmitting the page data to the output destination printer. Since only format conversion is performed on the server, the overhead associated with the processing is negligible.
[0046]
(Example 2)
The second embodiment is an embodiment when the present invention is realized by software. A recording medium such as a CD-ROM stores the distributed printing processing procedure and processing function of the present invention, and the present invention is realized by installing the recording medium on the client side and the print server side. If the print server is not used, the program need only be installed on the client side.
[0047]
【The invention's effect】
As described above, according to the present invention, a color document consisting of a plurality of pages is distributed and output to a plurality of color printers in consideration of the color reproduction range of the printer. A high-quality color document can be output at high speed.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 shows a configuration of Embodiment 1 of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a process flowchart of Embodiment 1 of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a flow of page data during printing.
FIG. 4 shows the analysis result of page contents after page division.
FIG. 5 shows a first example of a dialog box for setting a print policy.
FIG. 6 shows a second example of a dialog box for setting a print policy (selecting a printer).
FIG. 7 shows a conventional system configuration example connected by a network.
[Explanation of symbols]
1, 2, 3 Client 4 Print server 5, 6, 7, 8 Printer 41 Printer driver 42 ICC profile 43 Color reproduction information storage unit 44 Print policy information storage unit 45 Color conversion unit 46 Printer information collection unit 47 Page division, page analysis 48 pages delivery decision section

Claims (7)

In a system in which a plurality of printers and at least one client are connected to a network, an analysis result obtained by analyzing the contents of each page of print data sent from the client, and color reproduction information of each printer are determined in advance. Based on the printing policy, a printer capable of color reproduction of each page is determined from among a plurality of printers as an output destination printer , so that each page is distributed and printed by a plurality of printers. A printing method, wherein a plurality of pages having poor color reproducibility even when output from any of the plurality of printers are all output by any one of the plurality of printers. Distributed printing method.   The distributed printing method according to claim 1, wherein the color reproduction information includes a color reproduction area and color reproduction accuracy information.   The distributed printing method according to claim 1, wherein the printing policy includes setting of priority of resolution and speed of the printer and selection of the printer. A plurality of printers, at least one client connected to the network, analyzing means for analyzing the contents of each page of print data sent from the client, and color reproduction information storage means for storing the color reproduction information of each printer The printing policy information storing means for determining and storing the printing policy, the analyzing means, the color reproduction information storing means, and the printing policy information storing means, and each page is selected from the plurality of printers. determining means for determining the color reproducible printer as the output destination printer, a distributed printing system comprising transmitting means, a to send the printer of the output destination of each page according to said determining means, said determining means For multiple pages with poor color reproducibility when output from any of the multiple printers, Distributed printing system characterized by determining any one printer in a plurality of printers as the output destination printer for all pages.   The analysis unit, the color reproduction information storage unit, the printing policy information storage unit, the determination unit, and the transmission unit are a component unit of a server connected to the network. Item 5. The distributed printing system according to Item 4. 6. The distribution according to claim 5 , wherein the server further comprises color conversion means for color-converting device-independent color data into color data for the printer, and means for collecting information relating to the printer. Printing system. The computer-readable recording medium which recorded the program for making a computer implement | achieve the distributed printing method of any one of Claim 1 thru | or 3 .

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