Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Communication
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-04
2001-02-13
Coles, Edward L. (Department: 2722)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Communication
C358S001300, C358S001400, C709S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06188487
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control system and a print control method and more particularly to a print control system and a print control method for efficiently printing out at a plurality of printers connected to a network in response to print requests from print instruction systems of client systems connected to the network.
2. Description of the Related Art
While construction of a network system increases rapidly, the number and quality of printers that can be used by the users improve with high functions and low costs of printers in recent years; a printing system comprising various printers connected to a network for operating the printers in parallel becomes pervasive. However, when the printers connected to the network are available, often they are not necessarily used efficiently. On the contrary, to efficiently use the printers, some restriction or load, such as new operation required for setting specification of the printer to be used, is imposed on the users.
Problems in a conventional general print control system using printers connected to a network to execute print processing are described on the following topics:
(i) Selection of printer with light load
In the conventional system, the processing time of jobs is predicted with respect to all printers as output destination candidates and a print request is issued to the printer whose load is estimated to be the lightest from the prediction result. In this method, however, it is hard to calculate precise load and if the estimated load differs largely from the actual load, the load on the printer is furthermore increased.
(ii) Simultaneous output to printers
In the conventional system, the same print job is issued to all printers as output destinations and all print objects required for print processing are also stored in the printers. In this method, however, print jobs and print objects are all managed in the printers, thus all printers need to provide resources uniformly and it is difficult to generate reliable print jobs for all printers.
(iii) Selection of optimum printer for printing out
In the conventional system, an optimum printer for print job processing is selected based on information on all printers as output destination candidates. In this method, however, printer information required for determining the optimum printer needs to be managed intensively and if a new printer is added or change in the printer operation state such as toner out occurs, the corresponding information needs to be updated whenever necessary. Further, in determination processing for selecting the optimum printer, if new print processing becomes available, a new expression for adaptation evaluation concerning the new print processing needs to be built in the determination processing.
(iv) Changing printers for printing out
In the conventional system, if some trouble occurs in the printer executing a print job processing, the print job is transferred to another operating printer for changing the output destination as a method of changing the printer for performing the print job processing. In this method, however, whenever printer trouble occurs, the print job is transferred, thus load on the network increases and at the worst, if trouble occurs consecutively in the printer to which the print job is transferred, fruitless network traffic is generated and load on all printers is increased.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide a print control system and a print control method enabling efficient use of a plurality of printers at the minimum user's expense to solve the above-described problems in a print control system using a plurality of printers connected to a network.
To the end, according to the present invention, there is provided a print control system comprising: a print instructing system issuing a print request for printing a print object; and a plurality of print servers connected to the print instruction system through a data communication network, the respective print server having a print processing device for printing out the print object, wherein the print instruction system outputs a print job processing request as the print request to the plurality of print servers and transfers the print object to a first print server which reply a printable response in response to the print job processing request, and wherein each of the print servers generates and memories a virtual job corresponding to the print request in response to the print job processing request, and outputting the printable response at the time of being ready for processing the virtual job.
In the system, the print instruction system includes a job management server which generates and memorizes a print job containing an attribute data including selection information for the print processing device executing the print request.
In the system, the job management server includes a virtual job list for relating a plurality of virtual jobs generated by the print serves to the print job and indicating the correspondence between the virtual jobs and generating print servers, and selects a print server generating a virtual job corresponding to the print job with reference to the virtual job list.
In the system, the job management server instructs the first print server to process the virtual job and transfers the print object thereto.
In the system, the job management server instructs print serves other than the first print server to put the processing of the virtual job on hold.
In the system the job management server may instruct all print servers replying the printable response to process the virtual job and transfers the print object thereto.
In the system, the print job contains adaptation condition expressions for calculating an evaluation value to select a candidate print server for processing the virtual job, and wherein the print server calculates the adaptation condition expressions to determine the evaluation value based on operation state of the print processing device attached thereto and notifying the evaluation value to the job management server, and the job management server selects the candidate print server based on the evaluation value.
In the system, the print server processing the virtual job issues a virtual job release request to the job management server when the output of the print object is interrupted, and thereby the job management server selects next print server for processing the interrupted virtual job based on the selection information for the print processing device executing the print request contained in the print job and instructs the selected print server to process the interrupted virtual job.
In the system, the print server includes a virtual job storage section capable of storing a plurality of virtual jobs, selects one virtual job from the plurality of virtual jobs, and is operated by a job state data contained in the selected virtual job.
In the system, the job state data having a value as a data indicating one state of “processing”, “processing wait”, “instruction wait”, and “idling”, and wherein the print server executes the process of the virtual job with the print processing device attached thereto when the job state indicates the “processing wait”, notifies the printable response to the print instruction system when the job state data indicates the “idling”, and selects another virtual job stored in the virtual job storing section and executes a process of the next virtual job with reference to a job state data contained by the next virtual job when the job state data indicates one of the “processing” and “instruction wait”.
In the system, the job management server includes a print object storage section for storing the print object containing a print data, and the print servers load the print object from the print object storing section when the processing of the virtual job is instructed by the job management server.
In the system, the print servers output a printable response signal as the print
Coles Edward L.
Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner L.L.P.
Fuji Xerox Co. LTD
Wallerson Mark
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