JP2006053716A - Print system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a print system excellent in usability and convenience, capable of performing designation of a printer to be used for printing and an alternate printer on a client for failure of a printer under printing. <P>SOLUTION: This print system comprises a printer information acquisition means acquiring list information of usable printers; a printing printer designation means designating a printer to be used for printing; an alternate printer designation means designating a printer to be used instead in case of failure of the printer designated by the printing printer designation means; and a means outputting input information by the printing printer designation means and the alternate printer designation means to a print server. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a printing system.

  In the conventional printing system, only one printer can be designated for printing. When printing is to be performed with a plurality of printers, a printing instruction is issued from an application to each printer. Further, when a failure occurs in the printer that is printing, the application instructs the other printer to print again. Further, in order to change the printing time and priority order, a change instruction is issued after printing.

  Further, when the designated paper is not in the printer, a failure indicating that there is no designated paper is generated in the printer, and the printer is stopped.

  Further, the client can only know whether or not the job has been transmitted to the printer, and cannot know whether or not the paper has been discharged.

  The problems to be solved by the present invention are as follows: printing time, priority, printer used for printing, selection of alternative printer when a failure occurs during printing, and before printing. It is intended to provide a printing system that allows the client to know whether or not the paper designated in the above is set in the printer, and to improve user convenience, usability, and printing work efficiency.

  The present invention provides a printer information acquisition unit that acquires list information of available printers from a print server, a print printer specification unit that specifies a printer to be used for printing from the printer list information, and a print printer specification unit. An alternative printer designating unit for designating a printer to be used instead when a failure occurs in the designated printer, and a printing printer designating unit and a unit for outputting input information from the alternative printer designating unit to the print server It is characterized by.

  The printing system of the present invention has an advantage that it is convenient and easy to use because it is possible to designate a printer to be used for printing and to designate an alternative printer when a failure occurs in the printer being printed.

  Also, the printing time and priority order can be set on the client, so that business efficiency can be improved.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 1, the printing system includes a network 100, computers 200 and 300 connected to the network 100, and printers 400, 500, and 600. As shown in FIG. 2, the computer 200 constitutes a print server 210, and the print server 210 includes a spool unit 211, a communication unit 212, an analysis unit 213, and a control unit 214. The computer 300 includes an application 310, a printer driver 311, and a process 312 activated by the printer driver 311.

  When a print menu is selected with a general application 310, a print dialog as shown in FIG. 3 is displayed. When the printer 703 of the print server is selected from the printer selection field 702 and the option tab 701 is selected, an option dialog unique to the printer driver as shown in FIG. 4 is displayed.

  In the option dialog, the paper size and paper feed unit are usually set. In the present invention, the details of the job are set. For example, a job detail setting button 803 is provided, and when clicked, an inquiry is made to the communication unit 212 of the print server 210, a list of connected printers is acquired, and a job detail setting dialog as shown in FIG. 5 is displayed. Here, when there are a plurality of jobs, a priority 901 that is referred to in order of processing to be processed and a schedule 902 that designates the time to execute printing are set.

  Further, a printer to be used for printing is selected from the print printers 903, and the number of assigned copies 905 to be printed by each printer is assigned. When a failure occurs in the printer being printed, a printer to be used as a substitute machine is selected from the substitute printer 904. select.

  Here, the printer description language will be described with reference to FIG. In general, the printer description language 1000 includes a job header 1001 for controlling the entire job, a page header 1002 for controlling each page, and a page document 1003 serving as an image of each page. In the case of a document of two pages or more, the page header 1002 and the page document 1003 are described in the same way for the number of pages.

  When printing is executed by the application 310, the displayed document data is transferred to the printer driver 311 for each page in a GDI (Graphics Device Interface) format. When generating the printer description language, the printer driver describes information such as the priority order 901, schedule 902, print printer 903, and alternative printer 904 set in the job detail setting dialog.

  The printer description language generated in this way is spooled in the spool unit 211 of the print server 210 and passed to the analysis unit 213. The analysis unit 213 analyzes the printer description language, acquires information set in the job detail setting dialog, and passes the information to the control unit 214. The control unit 214 generates a plurality of printers that use the passed printer description language, describes the number of copies to be printed by each printer, controls the trigger according to the designated priority and schedule, and transmits the job to the printer. . When a failure occurs in the printer, the printer description language is generated by changing the number of copies that could not be printed, and transmitted to the alternative printer.

  As an opportunity for confirming whether a desired sheet is set in the printer, for example, a sheet inquiry button 801 in the option dialog shown in FIG. 4 is provided, and when clicked, the printer driver 311 prints the job detail setting dialog shown in FIG. An inquiry is made to the communication unit 212 of the print server 210 regarding the paper set in the printer set to be used by the printer. The communication unit 212 passes an inquiry instruction to the control unit 214. The control unit 214 acquires information about the paper set in the printer using a means such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), and passes it to the communication unit 212. The communication unit 212 passes the paper information to the printer driver 311. The printer driver 311 compares the desired paper with the paper information acquired from the printer, and displays the result, for example, as shown in the inquiry result 802.

  In this way, if the specified paper is not in the printer, the printer will cause a failure that there is no specified paper, and without checking the printer, check whether the specified paper is set in the printer before printing By being able to do so, it becomes possible to improve user convenience, usability and printing business efficiency.

  Generally, the printer driver loses control when it finishes sending the printer description language. To receive notification of the print result, the printer driver 311 activates the process 312 before losing control as shown in FIG. The control unit 214 of the print server 210 monitors the printer using means such as SNMP and manages the progress of the job. The control unit 214 passes the progress state or print result to the communication unit 212. The communication unit 212 notifies the process 312 and the process 312 displays a progress state or a print result as shown in FIG.

  In this way, by making it possible for the client to know how much and how much printing has been performed on which printer, or which alternative printer has been printed in the event of a failure, user convenience, ease of use, and printing Business efficiency can be improved.

1 is an overall schematic diagram of a printing system of the present invention. 1 is an overall detailed view of a printing system according to the present invention. It is explanatory drawing of the general print dialog at the time of selecting a print menu from an application. FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram of a general option dialog for setting a function specific to a printer driver. FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram of a job detail setting dialog for setting in detail functions unique to the printer driver. It is a structural diagram of a general printer description language as print data. FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an example of a progress in printing or a result display in a printer.

Explanation of symbols

100 is a network, 200 and 300 are computers, 210 is a print server, 211 is a spool unit, 212 is a communication unit, 213 is an analysis unit, 214 is a control unit, 310 is an application, 311 is a printer driver, 312 is a process, 400, Reference numerals 500 and 600 denote printers.

Claims (3)

Printer information acquisition means for acquiring list information of available printers from the print server;
Print printer designation means for designating a printer to be used for printing from the printer list information;
An alternative printer designating unit for designating a printer to be used instead when a failure occurs in the printer designated by the print printer designating unit;
A printing system comprising: means for outputting input information in the print printer designation means and the alternative printer designation means to a print server.   2. A printing system according to claim 1, further comprising a printing time input means for designating a printing time. 3. The printing system according to claim 1, further comprising priority order setting means for designating a priority order.

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