JP4485426B2 - Distributed printing system - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a distributed printing system that efficiently prints a document using a plurality of printers, and in particular, converts a document created by application software on a client computer into image data that can be understood by the printer using a printer driver or the like. The present invention relates to a distributed printing system in which this is temporarily spooled as a print job by a print server, the print job is divided into pages or copies and transmitted to a plurality of printers on the network monitored by the print server, and is printed by a plurality of printers. .

  Along with the rapid spread of computers in recent years and the improvement of the network environment, a method of printing a document created by application software using a shared printer connected to a network is becoming common. As such printer usage forms become common, how to effectively use a plurality of network-connected printers has become a new issue.

  For this reason, when a large number of print jobs are divided into multiple pages or when the same document is printed in multiple copies, the print job is divided into required copies and these divided jobs are sent to multiple printers. By executing this method, a method has been proposed in which printing is performed faster and more efficiently than printing with a single printer.

  For example, by dividing a 1000-page document in units of 200 pages and transmitting it to five printers, it can be expected that printing will be completed much faster than when one printer prints 1000 pages. Such a job division can be easily generated at a page level by software processing on a print server type computer or by rewriting the number of copies in a print job.

  Various proposals have been made regarding the distributed printing technique, and Patent Document 1 discloses a method of collectively converting a print job into printer data before dividing the print job for each printer. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-228561 discloses a method of acquiring list information of all printers, detecting printable printers, and executing printing.

  Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-228561 discloses a method for detecting a print job attribute and dividing the print job according to the attribute. Patent Document 4 discloses a method of searching for a server without a job from job information of a plurality of printer servers and transferring a print request. Patent Document 5 discloses a method of acquiring printing capabilities of a plurality of printers for each printer and distributing jobs based on the capabilities.

JP 2002-333964 A JP 2002-91734 A Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-22170 JP-A-6-332642 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-53128

  However, in the conventional distributed printing system, the load of the original printing device is not distributed, and depending on the printer, printing may continue for a long time, and the usage rate of the printer may vary.

  For example, assuming that there are five available printers on the network, jobs A and B are spooled to the print server almost simultaneously from two client computers. For example, job A is a job for printing three copies of a 100-page document, and is transmitted as a job for printing one copy to each of printers 1 to 3. The other job B is a job for printing two copies of a 100-page document. However, since the printers 1 to 3 have not yet started printing, the printers 1 and 2 are regarded as available free printers. B is also assigned to the printers 1 and 2. When jobs are continuously transmitted from the client computer in this way, a plurality of jobs may be averaged and not assigned to the printer.

  It is an object of the present invention to provide a distributed printing system that solves the above-described conventional problems.

  Specifically, the present invention grasps the free state and the number of jobs of a plurality of printers connected to the network by using bidirectional communication, and averages and assigns jobs according to the state of the printer. An object of the present invention is to provide a distributed printing system capable of improving the efficiency of printing work.

To achieve the above object, the present invention provides a distributed printing system comprising a client computer connected to a network, a print server, and a plurality of printers, wherein the print server is a print job created by the client computer. And a control unit that generates a print job for each printer from the spooled print job. The control unit includes a job counter for each of the plurality of printers , and performs bidirectional communication with each printer. When the print job is transmitted to the printer, the job counter for the destination printer is incremented, information on the number of pages that have been printed is obtained from the destination printer, and the number of pages requested for printing in the print job Judgment is made with the number of pages that have been printed, and Job the job counter for the printer is decremented as normal, it is not matched to decrement the job counter for the printer after displaying an error as abnormal, the processing in the printer and the number of transmitted jobs is completed One feature is that a difference from the number is counted for each job counter , and a print job is assigned to each printer according to the count value.

  In another aspect of the present invention, the print server includes an analysis unit that analyzes a print job spooled in the spool unit. The analysis unit acquires information on the number of print copies from the spooled print job, and The control unit assigns a print job to each printer in accordance with the count value and the information on the number of print copies.

  Another feature of the present invention is that the print server includes an analysis unit that analyzes a print job spooled in the spool unit, and the analysis unit acquires information about the number of printed pages from the spooled print job and The control unit assigns a print job to each printer in accordance with the count value and the information on the number of printed pages.

  Another feature of the present invention is that the control unit performs two-way communication with each printer, acquires information about whether the printer is in a usable state, and is in a usable state according to the count value. Assigning a print job to a printer.

  According to the present invention, a job counter corresponding to each printer is provided, and bidirectional communication is performed between the print server and each printer, and the difference between the number of jobs transmitted to each printer and the number of jobs completed by each printer is counted. Since a print job is assigned to each printer according to the count value, the load of the printer connected to the network is averaged, and there is an effect that the printing job can be performed efficiently.

  A distributed printing system according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 shows the overall configuration of a distributed printing system according to the present invention, which comprises a client computer 200, a print server 300, and a plurality of printers 400, 500, 600 connected to a network 100. Of course, a plurality of client computers 200 and print servers 300 may be connected, and the number of connected printers 400 to 600 is arbitrary.

  As shown in FIG. 2, the client computer 200 includes application software 210 such as a word and a printer driver 220. On the other hand, the print server 300 accepts print jobs from a plurality of client computers 200, spools the print jobs in the spool unit 310, analyzes the job contents in the analysis unit 311, and then performs control unit 312 for each printer. A print command is generated and transmitted to the printers 400, 500, and 600.

  The document data created by the application software 210 of the client computer 200 is transferred to the printer driver 220 for each page in the GDI (Graphics Device Interface) format. The printer driver 220 converts the job from the GDI format into a page description language job. FIG. 3 shows a print job described in a page description language. The print job 700 includes a job header 710 for controlling the entire job, a page header 720 for controlling each page, and an image of each page. And a document 730. If the document has two or more pages, the page header 720 and the page document 730 are alternately and repeatedly arranged, so that the page number information 740 can be acquired from the job 700.

  FIG. 4 shows information included in the job header 710, which describes detailed job control information such as the number of documents to be printed 711, the paper feed unit 712, the paper discharge unit 713, the staple 714, and the punch 715.

  Returning to the description of FIG. 2, the control unit 312 of the print server 300 includes job counters 313A, 313B, and 313C corresponding to the printers 400, 500, and 600, and the number of jobs transmitted to each printer and the jobs that have been printed. The number is monitored, and the number of unprinted jobs of each printer is counted.

  FIG. 5 shows a procedure for updating the job counters 313A, 313B, and 313C. For example, when a job is transmitted to the printer A (step S101), the job counter 313A corresponding to the printer A is incremented (step S102).

  After the job is transmitted to the printer A, the job status information of the printer A is periodically acquired in step S103. Although it depends on the printer specifications, in general, the job status may be in the status of waiting for printing, printing, cancel end, normal end, or abnormal end.

  In step S104, it is determined whether printing has been completed. If NO, the process returns to step S103, and if YES, the process proceeds to step S105. In step S105, information on the number of pages that have been printed by the printer A is acquired. In step S106, it is determined whether or not the number of pages requested for printing by the job matches the number of pages that have actually been printed by the printer A. Thus, it is determined whether or not printing of all pages requested by the job has been completed. If this determination is YES, it is determined that the print job has ended normally (step S107), and the job counter of the printer A is decremented. On the other hand, if the determination in step S106 is NO, it is determined that the print job has ended abnormally, and a message such as prompting the user to print again may be displayed. Decrement the counter.

  The present invention assigns a newly accepted print job to each printer while referring to the information of the job counter that is updated from time to time as described above. The procedure for generating a print job in the system of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIG. Will be described with reference to FIG.

  First, in step S <b> 201, print jobs from a plurality of client computers 200 are temporarily stored in the spool unit 310 of the print server 300. In step S202, the control unit 312 performs bidirectional communication with the printer via the network, and acquires the status of the printer. Although it depends on the specifications of the printer, generally, it can be considered to be in the online state during printing, failure occurrence, or online. Since communication is not possible unless the printer is turned on, the power supply is also turned off. As a result, the control unit 312 acquires information on available printers and unavailable printers among printers connected to the network. In this case, the definition of available printers can be set in several ways. For example, in the sense of a printer that can print immediately, only online printers are available, but when printing is finished, the printer that is currently printing can be used. If a job that ends in a short time is being printed, it is possible to make it a candidate. Further, even if a faulty printer has a minor fault such as a paper jam, it can be considered as a printer that can be used immediately by removing the paper. A printer that is turned off can be considered as a printer that can be used when the power is turned on. Thus, an available printer is selected from the printer status.

  In step S203, job counter information of a usable printer is acquired. As described above, the job counters 313A, 313B, and 313C corresponding to the printers 400, 500, and 600 connected to the network are provided, and each counter indicates the number of print jobs to be executed by the corresponding printer. Since the data is updated and stored, the control unit 312 can acquire job counter information of the usable printer by reading the values of the counters 313A, 313B, and 313C.

  In step S204, the number of copies or page number information is acquired from the print job. That is, the job spooled in the spool unit 310 is transferred to the job analysis unit 311. The job analysis unit 311 analyzes the page description language, and the print copy number information 711 shown in FIG. 4 and the page number information shown in FIG. One or both of 740 are acquired.

  In this embodiment, the job analysis unit 311 analyzes the page description language and automatically acquires the copy number information and the page information. However, the information may be manually specified by the user.

  Next, in step S205, each printer is determined based on the number of usable printers acquired in step S202, the number of unfinished jobs to be executed by each printer acquired in step S203, and the number of copies and pages acquired in step S204. A print job is assigned to each printer so that the number of jobs is averaged, and further transmitted to each printer in step S206. For example, referring to the information of job counters 313A, 313B, and 313C, jobs are assigned to each printer so that the number of jobs of all printers is averaged.

  For example, if there are four jobs in the printer 400, three jobs in the printer 500, and three jobs in the printer 600, the jobs are distributed to the printer 500 and the printer 600 so that the average number of jobs is four.

  If there are four jobs in the printer 400, three jobs in the printer 500, and two jobs in the printer 600, the jobs may be distributed to the printer 500 and the printer 600 to be four, four, or three, It may be transmitted to only the printer 600 to be 4, 3, or 3.

  Further, when referring to the information related to the number of copies 711, for example, when the number of copies is 10 and two printers 400 and 500 are usable, five copies are equally allocated to the two. In step S <b> 206, the control unit 312 rewrites the number of copies 711 to 5 copies and transmits it to the printer 400, and rewrites the number of copies 711 to 5 copies to the printer 500 and transmits it.

  Also, when referring to information on the number of pages 740, for example, when the number of pages 740 is 1000 pages and the printers that can be used are two printers 400 and 500, 500 pages each if they are evenly distributed. assign. In step S206, the control unit 312 reconstructs and transmits the job to the printer 400 only to the job header 710, the page header 720 from page 1 to page 500, and the page document 730, and similarly to the printer 500, the job header. The job is reconstructed and transmitted only to the page header 720 and the page document 730 from the pages 710 and 501 to 1000.

  In the above embodiment, the job counter is counted by the job counters 313A, 313B, and 313C. However, the page number of the job transmitted for each printer may be counted. In this case, after accepting a print job, the control unit 312 acquires job counter information of available printers, and assigns a job to each printer so that the number of pages of the job is averaged.

  For example, if there are a total of 400 pages for the printer 400, a total of 300 pages for the printer 500, and a total of 300 pages for the printer 600, and a 200 page job is printed, the jobs are distributed to the printer 500 and the printer 600 by 100 pages. The average number of pages is set to 400 pages. If there is a job of 400 pages in the printer 400, 300 pages in the printer 500, and 200 pages in the printer 600, 50 pages are distributed to the printer 500 and 150 pages are distributed to the printer 600, which are 400 pages, 350 pages, and 350 pages, respectively. Alternatively, it may be transmitted only to the printer 600 to have 400 pages, 300 pages, and 400 pages.

  Further, when referring to information on available printers, jobs are assigned so that jobs of only available printers are averaged. For example, if the printer 400 has a total of 400 pages, the printer 500 has a total of 300 pages, and the printer 600 has a total of 300 pages, and if a 200-page print job is received, both the printer 500 and the printer 600 can be used. It is only necessary to distribute 100 pages of jobs to the printer 500 and the printer 600 so that the average number of pages is 400 pages. When only the printer 400 and the printer 600 are usable printers, 50 pages are distributed to the printer 400 and 150 pages are distributed to the printer 600 so that the average number of pages is 450 pages.

  According to the system of the present invention described above, when the control unit 312 transmits a job to a printer, the control unit 312 includes a counter that counts the number of jobs or the number of pages of jobs transmitted to each printer, and each time a job is transmitted to each printer In addition, the counter of the printer is incremented by the number of transmission jobs or the number of pages, and then the control unit 312 communicates with the printer to acquire the job status information of the printer. When an end system state such as end or abnormal end is reached, the incremented number is decremented when transmitted from the counter, so that a plurality of jobs are always averaged and assigned to the printer.

  At that time, when the analysis unit 311 analyzes the page description language to acquire information on the number of copies or the number of pages and uses the acquired information for job generation, the control unit 312 determines the number of printers and the number of copies or pages. Automatically generates a job for each printer, so you can specify multiple copies by specifying the number of copies you want without having to consider the number of connected printers and the number of copies to be assigned to each one with a single print instruction from the application. It becomes possible to perform printing in a distributed manner on the printer, and there is an effect that the convenience of the user, the usability, or the printing work efficiency can be improved.

  In addition, when the print server performs two-way communication with the printer, acquires printer status information, and performs distributed printing for only available printers, the convenience of the user, ease of use, or high rate of printing work is further increased. There is an effect of obtaining.

  Although one embodiment of the present invention has been described above, various modifications can be easily made without departing from the basic concept of the present invention. For example, if there is a difference in the printing speed of the printers connected to the network, the information is stored in advance in the memory of the control unit 312, the distribution ratio corresponding to the printing speed is calculated, and the distribution ratio is calculated in step S 205 described above. It is also possible to allocate the number of copies and the number of pages corresponding to each printer to each printer.

1 is an overall configuration diagram of a distributed printing system according to the present invention. 2 is a schematic configuration diagram of a client computer and a print server in the system of the present invention. FIG. FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a print job. It is explanatory drawing of a job header. It is a flowchart which shows one Example of the procedure of the update of the job counter in this invention system. It is a flowchart which shows one Example of the job production | generation procedure in this invention system.

Explanation of symbols

100: network, 200: client computer, 210: application,
220: Printer driver, 300: Print server, 310: Spool unit,
311: Job analysis unit, 312: Control unit, 400: Printer A, 500: Printer B,
600: Printer N, 700: Page description language, 710: Job header, 711: Number of copies,
712: paper feed unit, 713: paper discharge unit, 714: staple, 715: punch,
720: Page header, 730: Page document, 740: Number of pages,

Claims (6)

In a distributed printing system comprising a client computer connected to a network, a print server, and a plurality of printers,
The print server includes a spool unit that temporarily spools a print job created by the client computer, and a control unit that generates a print job for each printer from the spooled print job,
The control unit includes a job counter for each of the plurality of printers, and performs bidirectional communication with each printer. When a print job is transmitted to the printer, the job counter for the destination printer is incremented.
Obtain information on the number of pages that have been printed from the destination printer, determine whether the number of pages requested for printing in the print job matches the number of pages that have been printed, and if they match, Decrement the job counter
If there is a mismatch, an error is displayed as an error and then the job counter for the printer is decremented, thereby counting the difference between the number of jobs sent and the number of jobs completed for each printer for each job counter .
A distributed printing system, wherein a print job is assigned to each printer in accordance with the count value. 2. The print server according to claim 1 , wherein the print server includes an analysis unit that analyzes the print job spooled in the spool unit, and the analysis unit acquires information on the number of print copies from the spooled print job and sends the information to the control unit. And the control unit assigns a print job to each printer in accordance with the count value and the information on the number of copies. The print server according to claim 1 , further comprising: an analysis unit that analyzes a print job spooled in the spool unit, wherein the analysis unit acquires information on the number of printed pages from the spooled print job, and the control unit And the control unit assigns a print job to each printer in accordance with the count value and the information on the number of printed pages. 2. The control unit according to claim 1 , wherein the control unit performs two-way communication with each printer, acquires information on whether the printer is in a usable state, and prints on the printer in a usable state according to the count value. A distributed printing system characterized by assigning jobs. 5. The print server according to claim 4 , wherein the print server includes an analysis unit that analyzes the print job spooled in the spool unit, and the analysis unit obtains information on the number of print copies from the spooled print job and sends the information to the control unit. And the control unit assigns a print job to a printer in a usable state according to the count value and the information on the number of print copies. 5. The print server according to claim 4 , wherein the print server includes an analysis unit that analyzes a print job spooled in the spool unit, and the analysis unit acquires information about the number of printed pages from the spooled print job, and the control unit And the control unit assigns a print job to a printer in a usable state according to the count value and the information on the number of printed pages.

Images