JP2007055115A - Printer and method for developing interruption job memory - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a printer which performs an effective interruption job processing for each page according to the amount of primary storage used, and a method for developing an interruption job memory. <P>SOLUTION: If a printing control section 102 receives a request for interruption through a communication interface 101, the development status of image data of a printing job under printing in the primary storage 104 is checked from a memory control section 103, then it is checked whether the amount of optimization interruption memory capable of maintaining the processing performance of the interruption job is secured after that the image data of the interruption job is developed. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a printing apparatus that performs interrupt processing based on an interrupt request from a connected electronic device, and an interrupt job memory development method, and more particularly to an optimal print job interrupt processing according to memory usage during image processing. The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and an interrupt job memory expanding method that can be performed in units.

  Generally, printers manage image data print requests by forming a queue in a first-in first-out (FIFO) queue and print them out in order from the first stored print job. Processing is in progress. In addition, the print order can be changed by print job interruption processing that enables a print job requiring urgent printing to be printed first before other print jobs forming a queue. In this print job interruption process, it is also possible to set a priority order for a print job and sequentially print out the print jobs with a higher priority order.

  A printer that implements a print job interrupt process normally has a hard disk for storing image data of the print job. The image data stored on the hard disk is taken out according to the print order of the print job in the queue and printed. Output.

  However, a printer equipped with a hard disk requires processing for writing and reading image data, and there is a problem that processing speed and cost performance are lowered.

  There are printers that implement interrupt processing by installing a RAMDISK (Random Access Memory DISK) instead of a hard disk. When this RAMDISK is used, the area required to implement this interrupt processing is reserved. Therefore, it cannot be used for image processing such as rasterization.

  For this reason, there is a problem that the processing performance of the printer's print output and interrupt processing deteriorates and the processing speed decreases.

  The print data is divided into a plurality of unit page groups, and when there is partial data that can be reused in the unit page group, the partial data is reused. In addition, one unit page group is printed out of the print data without sharing partial data to be reused by two unit page groups among the plurality of unit page groups. After that, as a conventional technique for interrupting other print data, there is one disclosed in Patent Document 1.

In this patent document 1, the print data is divided into a plurality of highly independent unit page groups, and another print job is interrupted between the divided units, so that the interrupted print job is resumed. When printing is performed, a huge amount of memory is not required for the printer. For this reason, interrupt printing is possible without increasing the memory capacity.
JP-A-2002-205443

  However, in the prior art disclosed in Patent Document 1, the number of pages of a unit page group can be changed by an operator so that the data size of print data can be changed, and the data size read into the memory is reduced. However, the time required for the division processing and the time required for reading the data into the memory are required, and efficient interrupt processing cannot be realized.

  SUMMARY An advantage of some aspects of the invention is that it provides a printing apparatus and an interrupt job memory development method that realize efficient interrupt processing in units of pages in accordance with the amount of main memory used.

  In order to achieve the above object, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the print data of the interrupted job is expanded into raster data on the memory area in units of pages, and the raster data expanded in the memory area is transferred to the print engine in units of pages. In a printing apparatus that prints by sending and accepts an interrupt job sent from a scanner, when expanding the print data of the interrupted job, the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupted job in the memory area is limited. And the number of optimized development pages that can be effectively printed by the print engine with the remaining amount of the memory area limited by the memory limiting unit when accepting an interrupt job sent from the scanner. Is greater than the amount of optimized interrupt memory that is the amount of memory to expand If the interrupt job print data immediately starts to be developed on the memory area, and the remaining memory area is less than the optimized interrupt memory capacity, the remaining memory area is less than the optimum And an interrupt control means for starting the expansion of the print data of the interrupt job onto the memory area after waiting for the amount of the interrupt memory to be exceeded.

  According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the first aspect of the present invention, the memory control unit is configured such that when the print data of the interrupted job is expanded, the remaining amount of the memory area becomes smaller than the optimized interrupt memory amount. The number of developed pages of the print data of the interrupted job in the memory area is limited by prohibiting the development of new pages after that.

  According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the first aspect of the invention, the memory control unit causes the remaining amount of the memory area to become smaller than the optimized interrupt memory amount when developing the print data of the interrupted job. If this is predicted, the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupted job in the memory area is limited by prohibiting the expansion of a new page.

  According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the invention according to any one of the first to third aspects, the memory control unit prints the interrupted job in the memory area when expanding the print data of the interrupted job. When the number of data development pages does not satisfy the optimized development page number, the development of a new page is permitted.

  According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the invention according to any one of the first to fourth aspects, the expansion of the print data generates intermediate language print data from the print data in the memory area, and the memory The intermediate language print data generated on the area is expanded into raster data on the memory area and the intermediate language print data is deleted from the memory area. The acceptance is performed at a time when the use amount of the memory area is temporarily minimized due to the deletion of the intermediate language print data from the memory area.

  Further, according to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the invention according to any one of the first to fifth aspects, the expansion of the print data generates intermediate language print data from the print data on the memory area, The intermediate language print data generated in the above is expanded into raster data on the memory area, and the intermediate language print data is deleted from the memory area, and the interrupt job sent from the scanner is accepted. The intermediate language print data is deleted from the memory area, and is used when the usage amount of the memory area is temporarily minimized.

  According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided an interrupt job memory expansion method in which print data of an interrupted job is expanded into raster data on a memory area in units of pages, and the interrupt job is expanded in memory. At this time, the number of expanded pages of print data of the interrupted job in the memory area is limited, and when the interrupt job sent from the scanner is accepted, the remaining amount of the limited memory area determines the number of optimized expanded pages. If the amount of memory to be expanded is equal to or greater than the amount of optimized interrupt memory, the expansion of the print data of the interrupt job onto the memory area is immediately started, and the remaining amount of the memory area reaches the amount of optimized interrupt memory. If not, wait until the remaining amount of the memory area exceeds the optimized interrupt memory amount. Characterized by starting the deployment of the serial interrupt job of the print data of the memory region.

  According to an eighth aspect of the present invention, when the print data of the interrupt job is expanded in the invention of the seventh aspect, the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupt job in the memory area is limited by the same method as that of the interrupted job. It is characterized by that.

  According to the present invention, a print job of image data requested for printing is interrupted in units of pages, and interrupt processing is performed at a timing when the amount of main memory used during image processing takes a minimum value for each page. Therefore, it is possible to print out without requiring a waiting time until the start of printing, and it is possible to perform an efficient interrupt process only with the main memory without requiring an auxiliary storage device such as a hard disk.

  Furthermore, the unstable operation due to the memory shortage can be prevented by the interrupt control in units of pages.

  Hereinafter, an embodiment of a printing apparatus and an interrupt job memory developing method according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a printing apparatus and an interrupt job memory developing method according to the present invention.

  In FIG. 1, a printing apparatus 100 includes a communication interface 101, a print control unit 102, a memory control unit 103, a main memory 104 (also simply referred to as “memory”), an image processing unit 105, a display unit 106, an input unit 107, and an output unit. 108 is comprised.

  The communication interface 101 performs data communication with a scanner or a client computer via a communication line. As a communication line at this time, in addition to a network line represented by a LAN (Local Area Network) cable, a local line represented by a USB (Universal Serial Bus) cable or an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) 1284 cable is used. Can communicate with each other. When the communication interface 101 receives the data transmitted via these lines, the data is transferred to the print control unit 102.

  For example, when the printing apparatus 100 of the present invention is connected to a scanner with a USB cable, when image data of a document read by the scanner is transmitted to the printing apparatus 100 as a print request, the print request from the scanner is sent to the print control unit 102. Forward.

  The print control unit 102 includes a memory control unit 103, analyzes received print requests, and sequentially stores print jobs based on the print requests in a queue provided in the main memory 104. To do. Then, the image processing unit 105 requests the image processing unit 105 to perform image processing for the image data requested to be printed.

  The print request received at this time can include an interrupt request. If an interrupt request is specified in the received print request, the print job requested to be interrupted (hereinafter referred to as “interrupt job”). An interrupt instruction for interrupting image data is transmitted to the memory control unit 103.

  The image processing unit 105 receives an image image processed by the page unit, and the memory control unit 103 performs memory control based on the interrupt instruction, and develops the image processed image image in the page unit.

  The memory control unit 103 receives the image processed by the image processing unit 105 and performs memory control of the main memory 104 so that the output unit 108 can continuously perform image data printing processing. Memory control is performed so that the interrupt job print process can be continuously printed. This memory control is performed by the following method.

  First, the number of sheets that can be run simultaneously on the paper transport path of the output unit 108 (hereinafter referred to as “the number of sheets that can be run simultaneously”) is determined in advance by the processing performance, and one sheet is added to the number of sheets that can be run simultaneously. If the image data corresponding to the number of simultaneously runnable sheets + 1 ”is developed in the memory, the printing process by the output unit 108 can be performed continuously without interruption.

  That is, if the image data for “the number of sheets that can be run simultaneously + 1” is stored in the main memory 104 together with the interrupt job and the interrupted job, the printing process can be performed continuously without interruption.

  Next, an area of the main memory 104 is secured so that image data corresponding to “the number of sheets that can be simultaneously run + 1” can be always stored. In particular, an area for storing image data corresponding to “the number of sheets that can be simultaneously run + 1” of the interrupt job is secured.

  At the same time, if an area for storing the image data for “number of sheets that can be run simultaneously + 1” of the interrupt job is secured, the memory capacity for developing the image data of the interrupted job is prevented from decreasing. The memory can be used even when the interrupt job reaches an area for storing the image data for “the number of sheets that can be run simultaneously + 1” of the interrupt job.

  If the image data of the interrupted job is approaching the area for storing the image data for “number of sheets that can be run simultaneously + 1” at the time when the interrupt job occurs, Expand the image data of the interrupt job.

  Interrupt processing in such memory control will be described with reference to FIGS.

  The main memory 104 has a queue for storing a print job of image data requested to be printed in a first-in first-out (FIFO) system, and the interrupt control for the interrupt request for the memory is performed by the memory control unit 103. To change the order. Further, the image data controlled by the memory control unit 103 is stored.

  The image processing unit 105 performs image processing such as decomposing processing for converting image data in the PDL format received via the communication interface 101 into an image image in the bitmap format. The bitmap format image data is transferred to the print control unit 102.

  The display unit 106 and the input unit 107 are user interfaces, and can perform print settings by operating the buttons and keys of the input unit 107 according to the screen displayed on the display unit 106. Further, the display unit 106 can grasp the interrupt state from the screen.

  The output unit 108 prints the image data stored in the main memory 104 based on a print request from the print control unit 102. In the output unit 108, the number of simultaneously runnable sheets that can be simultaneously conveyed on the sheet conveyance path for conveying the sheets is determined in advance.

  With such a configuration, efficient interrupt processing can be realized without sacrificing processing performance related to print processing.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a usage state of the memory in the printing apparatus of the present invention.

  First, items common to FIGS. 2 to 6 will be described with reference to FIG.

  In the printer, image data (hereinafter also simply referred to as “data”) for “the number of sheets that can be simultaneously traveled + 1”, which is obtained by adding one sheet to the number of sheets that can simultaneously travel on the sheet conveyance path, is subjected to a decomposing process and stored in memory. If it can be developed upward, waste required for print output can be minimized, and high-speed printing is possible. That is, it is possible to sequentially print out without stopping the engine.

  That is, the image data for “the number of sheets that can be run simultaneously + 1” pages is an index of the number of pages that maximizes the printing performance. This number of pages is referred to as “optimized deployment page number”.

  The memory capacity required to process an interrupt job without degrading the printing performance of the interrupted job (hereinafter referred to as “interrupted job”) is called “optimized interrupt memory amount”. The memory amount is a memory capacity corresponding to the number of optimized development pages of the interrupt job.

  The total memory amount 200 shown in FIG. 2 indicates the entire memory capacity for developing the decomposed data, and the capacity (size) of the total memory amount 200 is represented by a straight line. Further, the optimized interrupt memory amount is represented on the same straight line as the total memory amount 200 with respect to the total memory amount 200.

  Furthermore, in order to further clarify the memory usage state of the interrupted job and the interrupt job, the memory growth direction of the memory used by the data of the interrupted job is shown from the left side to the right side of the total memory amount 200. The memory growth direction of the memory used by the data is shown from the right side to the left side of the total memory amount 200. Therefore, the optimized interrupt memory amount is a memory amount including the optimized development page number of the interrupt job that grows from the right side to the left side of the total memory amount 200.

  In FIG. 2 to FIG. 6, as an example, it is assumed that the number of optimized development pages is “3 pages”, and this number of optimized development pages is common to both interrupt jobs and interrupted jobs.

  Next, FIG. 2 will be described based on the common items as described above.

  2A is a diagram showing a state where data of an interrupted job having a high compression ratio is expanded in the memory, and FIG. 2B is an interrupted job shown in FIG. FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a state in which interrupt job data is expanded in a memory during print processing of job data.

  In FIG. 2A, the data of the interrupted job is data composed of 6 or more pages, and the fifth page of the interrupted job data is expanded by reaching the optimized interrupt memory amount of the interrupt job. It shows the state. In this state, the memory usage is limited without the data of the sixth and subsequent pages being expanded on the memory. When the data amount of the first page is released by printing out the data of the first page, the data of the sixth page is expanded in the memory.

  In FIG. 2B, an interrupt request is received in a state where the data of the first page of the interrupted job is printed out, and the memory is released by printing out the data of the first page. This shows a state in which the number of data optimized development pages is decompressed and expanded in memory.

  At this time, by printing out the first page of the interrupted job, it is confirmed that there is no data that has reached the optimized interrupt memory amount of the interrupt job, and the data of the interrupt job is expanded in the memory.

  The amount of memory that can be used to expand the interrupt job data is the total memory amount minus the interrupted job data memory amount, which exceeds the interrupt job optimized interrupt memory amount. You can also

  In this way, it is possible to expand beyond the interrupt job optimization interrupt memory amount, and it is possible to perform interrupt processing that secures processing performance related to print output by efficient use of memory.

  Incidentally, print output is sequentially performed from the interrupt job data in the expanded state as shown in FIG. 2B, and then the interrupted job data is printed out. At this time, if the interrupt job data is composed of 4 pages or more, each page (1 to 3 pages) of the developed interrupt job is printed out in order, and then the memory is released. Sequentially, the remaining pages of the interrupt job are expanded on the memory.

  FIG. 3 is another diagram showing the use state of the memory in the printing apparatus of the present invention.

  In FIG. 3, FIG. 3 (a) is similar to the state shown in FIG. 2 (a), and shows the state in which the data on the fifth page of the interrupted job has not been developed. FIG. Similar to the state shown in b), an interrupt request is generated during printing of the data of the first page of the interrupted job, and the state where the data corresponding to the optimized development page number of the interrupt job has been developed is shown.

In FIG. 3A, the data of the interrupted job is optimized by expanding the data of the fifth page in the state where the data of the four pages from the first page to the fourth page of the interrupted job are expanded in the memory. This shows a state where the amount of interrupted memory is reached. In this case, the data of the fifth page is not expanded on the memory. (In FIG. 2A, the fifth page is expanded.)
By expanding the data of the fifth page into the memory, the memory amount to be used is predicted and calculated from the expanded data (data from the first page to the fourth page). It is determined whether or not the data of the interrupted job reaches the optimized interrupt memory amount based on the calculated memory usage amount.

  If it is determined that the optimized interrupt memory amount is reached, the print output is performed without developing the data of the fifth page in the memory. On the other hand, when it is determined that the data can be expanded without any delay, the data on the fifth page is expanded in the memory. At this time, the processing when the data of the fifth page has arrived even though it is determined that the data can be expanded without coming will be described with reference to FIG.

  FIG. 3B shows a state where data for three pages of the interrupt job is expanded in the memory in a state where data for four pages of the interrupted job shown in FIG. That is, it shows a state in which the data of the first page of the interrupted job is being printed and the interrupt job data is expanded before the memory for the data of the first page is released.

  This is because the optimized interrupt memory amount for expanding the data for the optimized expansion page number (3 pages) of the interrupt job is secured in the memory, so that the data of the first page is printed out as shown in FIG. Therefore, it is not necessary to develop the interrupt job data after waiting for the optimized interrupt memory amount to be secured.

  In the interrupt processing shown in FIG. 2 and FIG. 3, the interrupt processing is performed with the optimized expanded page number being expanded in the memory in both the interrupted job data and the interrupt job data. Print output can be performed at high speed. In particular, in the interrupt processing shown in FIG. 3, since an optimized interrupt memory amount is always ensured, more efficient print output can be realized.

  FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a memory state when the memory usage amount of the data developed in the memory usage state shown in FIG. 3 reaches the optimized interrupt memory amount.

  FIG. 4 shows that in calculating the memory usage in FIG. 3, the interrupt job data is predicted to be the memory usage data that can be expanded without reaching the optimized interrupt memory size for expanding the interrupted job data. In this example, the data is expanded in the memory, but actually, an example is shown in which the amount of optimized interrupt memory is greatly approached.

  In the example shown in FIG. 4, the fifth page of the interrupted job is larger than the other pages (pages from the first page to the fourth page), and all the data from the first page to the fourth page are printed out. In this case, the optimized interrupt memory amount cannot be secured unless the memory is released.

  For example, the data from the first page to the fourth page is expanded in the memory in a compressed state, but the data on the fifth page may be expanded without being compressed.

  In this case, when the data from the first page to the fourth page of the interrupted job is printed out and only the data of the fifth page of the interrupted job is expanded in the memory, the interrupt is generated. Job data can be expanded into an area of optimized interrupt memory.

  FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a memory usage state that approaches the optimized interrupt memory amount when the optimized expanded page number of the interrupted job is expanded in the printing apparatus of the present invention.

  In FIG. 5, FIG. 5A shows a state where the optimized development page number of the interrupted job is developed, and FIG. 5B shows a state where the data of the interrupt job is developed in the memory.

  FIG. 5A shows a state where the optimized interrupt memory amount has been reached by expanding the number of optimized expansion pages of the interrupted job, and FIG. 5B shows an optimal state from the state of FIG. 5A. This shows a state in which the interrupt job data is expanded after waiting for the interrupted job data to reach the generalized interrupt memory amount.

  FIG. 5B shows the data of the interrupted job by printing out the data of the first and second pages of the interrupted job from the state shown in FIG. 5A and releasing the data from the memory. Only the third page is shown, and it is confirmed that the optimized interrupt memory amount can be secured, and the interrupt job data is expanded.

  This is because if only the data of the first page of the interrupted job is expanded, the throughput of the print output is reduced because the number of optimized expanded pages is not reached, so the throughput is reduced by expanding the optimized expanded pages. Shows interrupt processing minimized.

  FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a memory usage state when the optimized interrupt memory amount is larger than the total memory amount in the printing apparatus of the present invention.

  FIG. 6 shows a case where the optimized interrupt memory amount is larger than the total memory amount, that is, the total memory amount is the optimized interrupt memory amount.

  In this case, since the memory usage cannot be restricted between the interrupted job and the interrupt job, the expansion is suppressed for the page exceeding the optimized expansion page number together with the interrupted job and the interrupt job. When an interrupt request is received, the interrupt job data is expanded after the memory is released by printing out all the interrupted job data.

  At this time, as the interrupt job data, the data of the expandable page is expanded with respect to the total memory amount. FIG. 6 shows a state in which only two pages of data are expanded. If the number of optimized expansion pages (3 pages) of an interrupt job is expanded, the total memory amount is exceeded.

  FIG. 7 is a graph showing the transition of the memory usage in the interrupt processing of the printing apparatus of the present invention.

  FIG. 7 shows a change in the memory usage of the interrupted job with respect to a change in time. The horizontal axis represents [time] and the vertical axis represents [memory usage] of the interrupted job.

  Image development processing for developing data in a memory is performed by first converting the data into an intermediate language and then rasterizing the intermediate language in batches in units of pages. The memory usage state for the image development processing at this time is shown below.

(State A) Since the data converted to the intermediate language is expanded in the memory in order, the memory usage increases according to the data size. (State B) An image obtained by rasterizing the expanded intermediate language in batch units Since the data is sequentially expanded in the memory, the memory usage increases by the size of the image data. (State C) Since the image data was created by rasterization, the data converted into the intermediate language is released sequentially from the memory. The graph having the shape shown in FIG. 7 can be created by performing these processes in units of pages.

  As shown in FIG. 7, all the data converted into the intermediate language is completely released from the memory, and the minimum value is obtained when the next page starts to be converted into the intermediate language. When this minimum value is taken, processing for evaluating the remaining capacity of the memory shown in FIGS.

  As a result, interrupt processing using the memory efficiently can be realized.

  With the above processing, the printing apparatus according to the present invention can perform interrupt processing by developing interrupt job data in memory in units of pages in accordance with the memory usage used by interrupted job data.

  As a result, printing can be performed without requiring a waiting time until the start of printing, and more efficient printing can be performed.

  Normally, the capacity of a memory installed in a general printer is a capacity that can expand data of more than 100 pages at a time by rasterizing and compressing a general office document. A printer having this memory capacity The present invention is particularly effective when printing out an interrupted job of several hundred pages using.

  Further, since the memory capacity for storing the interrupt job data is secured as the optimized interrupt memory amount, efficient interrupt processing can be performed only by the main memory.

  Furthermore, by performing the same process for interrupt jobs, the waiting time until the start of printing for further interrupt jobs can be shortened. By repeating this, multiple interrupt jobs can be handled. Become.

  The present invention is not limited to the embodiments described above and shown in the drawings, and can be implemented with appropriate modifications within a range not changing the gist thereof.

  For example, by applying the present invention to a printing apparatus connected to a plurality of client computers, a multiple interrupt printing system according to the priority order of each of a plurality of users can be configured, and an interrupt transmitted from the client computer Jobs can be processed.

  Also, a storage medium such as an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) can be installed, documents can be stored on the storage medium, and the stored document can be specified and printed by user operation. In the apparatus, the stored document print job, which is a print job of the stored document, is used as an interrupt job, so that the stored document can be printed at high speed.

  The present invention is applicable to a printing apparatus that implements interrupt processing and an interrupt job memory development method, and in particular, high-speed interrupt printing at low cost by efficient print output using only the main memory installed in the printing apparatus. Useful to realize.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the printing apparatus in the printing apparatus and interrupt job memory development method according to the present invention. FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a usage state of a memory in the printing apparatus of the present invention. FIG. 6 is another diagram showing a usage state of a memory in the printing apparatus of the present invention. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a memory state when the memory usage amount of the data developed in the memory usage state shown in FIG. 3 reaches the optimized interrupt memory amount. FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating a memory usage state that reaches an optimized interrupt memory amount when the optimized expansion page number of an interrupted job is expanded in the printing apparatus of the present invention. FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a memory usage state when the optimized interrupt memory amount is larger than the total memory amount in the printing apparatus of the present invention. 6 is a graph showing a transition of memory usage in interrupt processing of the printing apparatus of the present invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 Printer 101 Communication interface 102 Print control part 103 Interrupt process part 104 Memory control part 105 Main memory (memory)
106 Image processing unit 107 Display unit 108 Input unit 109 Output unit

Claims (8)

The print data of the interrupted job is expanded into raster data in the memory area in units of pages, and the raster data expanded in the memory area is transmitted to the print engine in units of pages. In a printing device that accepts interrupt jobs,
Memory control means for limiting the number of expanded pages of print data of the interrupted job in the memory area when expanding the print data of the interrupted job;
When accepting an interrupt job sent from the scanner, the remaining amount of the memory area restricted by the memory restriction means is an amount of memory for developing the optimized number of expanded pages that can be effectively printed by the print engine. If it is more than a certain amount of optimized interrupt memory, immediately start to expand the print data of the interrupt job on the memory area, if the remaining amount of the memory area is less than the optimized interrupt memory amount, An interrupt control means for waiting for the remaining amount of the memory area to be equal to or greater than the optimized interrupt memory amount, and starting development of the print data of the interrupt job on the memory area. apparatus. The memory control means includes
When the print data of the interrupted job is expanded, the expansion of a new page after the remaining amount of the memory area becomes smaller than the optimized interrupt memory amount is prohibited, thereby preventing the interrupted job on the memory area. The printing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the number of expanded pages of print data of the job is limited. The memory control means includes
When the print data of the interrupted job is expanded, if it is predicted that the remaining amount of the memory area will be smaller than the optimized interrupt memory amount, the expansion of a new page is prohibited to prevent The printing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the number of expanded pages of print data of the interrupted job is limited. The memory control means includes
When expanding the print data of the interrupted job, the expansion of a new page is permitted if the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupted job in the memory area does not satisfy the optimized expanded page number. The printing apparatus according to claim 1. The expansion of the print data is as follows:
Generate intermediate language print data from the print data on the memory area, expand the intermediate language print data generated on the memory area into raster data on the memory area, and convert the intermediate language print data to the memory area. It is done by deleting from the memory area,
The interrupt job sent from the scanner is accepted when the intermediate language print data is deleted from the memory area and the amount of use of the memory area is temporarily minimized. The printing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 4. The memory control means includes
6. When expanding the print data of the interrupt job, the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupt job in the memory area is limited by the same method as that of the interrupted job. The printing apparatus as described. In the interrupt job memory expansion method, the print data of the interrupted job is expanded into raster data on the memory area in units of pages, and the interrupt job is expanded in the memory.
When expanding the print data of the interrupted job, the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupted job in the memory area is limited,
When accepting an interrupt job sent from the scanner, if the remaining amount of the limited memory area is equal to or greater than an optimized interrupt memory amount that is a memory amount for expanding the optimized expanded page number, the interrupt job is immediately When the expansion of the print data on the memory area is started and the remaining amount of the memory area is less than the optimized interrupt memory amount, the remaining amount of the memory area becomes equal to or greater than the optimized interrupt memory amount. An interrupt job memory expansion method, wherein the expansion of the print data of the interrupt job onto the memory area is started after waiting. 8. The job memory expansion according to claim 7, wherein, when expanding the print data of the interrupt job, the number of expanded pages of the print data of the interrupt job in the memory area is limited in the same manner as the interrupted job. Method.

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