The present invention relates to a print system for printing electronic image data on paper and in particular to a print system which comprises an image forming device having both a print function and a copy function as mean for printing.
A digital copier (or a digital color copier) can be grasped as a combination of a reading mechanism for optically reading an original image and preparing digital image data and a printing mechanism for printing the image data on paper. In fact, there is often adopted a development method wherein a reading mechanism and a printing mechanism are developed separately and are combined into a digital copier. The reading mechanism may be called an IIT (image input terminal) and the printing mechanism may be called an IOT (image output terminal).
The printing mechanism of a digital copier is the same as a printer used as output terminal of a computer in point of a function of forming a semipermanent image on paper based on digital image data. Then, an application also occurs wherein a digital copier is connected to a network, or the like, for use as a print engine. In such an application, for example, as shown in FIG. 25, a digital copier 10 is connected to a network 30 such as a LAN (local area network) via a print server 20 as a print control device. The print server 20 has a spooler function of accepting and scheduling print jobs output by client device 40 such as computers and an imaging function of developing a print job into the form of image data that can be processed on the digital copier. When the print server 20 supplies the image data into which the print job is developed to the digital copier, the digital copier prints the image data on paper.
A processing sequence for copying one original is called a copy job in contrast with a print job. The digital copier also used as a printer may have a mode for assigning processing priorities to print and copy jobs. For example, unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei 5-30264 discloses a digital copier having a local mode giving a higher priority to a copy job and a remote mode giving a higher priority to a print job. This digital copier is connected to a print control module called ESS (analogous to a print server). If a print job processing request comes from the ESS while the digital copier is operating in the local mode, the digital copier returns a signal indicating a busy state to the ESS.
Some digital copiers contain a large-capacity storage unit such as a hard disk drive. This type of digital copier can store image data provided by reading an original on the storage unit and read and print the image data from the storage unit. When the number of copies is two or more, the digital copier reads an original only once at the copy time of the first copy and reads and prints the image data stored on the storage unit at the copy time of the second copy or later. While the second copy or later is printed, only the printing mechanism of the digital copier operates and the reading mechanism stops. Most of the digital copiers of the type can use such idle time of the reading mechanism to previously only read the next original. Such a digital copier stores setup information such as the number of copies and the scaling factor entered through an operation panel in correspondence with the read image data of each page of the original. To print the image data later, the digital copier references the setup information. That is, the print job contents are defined according to a combination of such image data and setup information.
Generally, a print server has a user interface (UI) for displaying the state of each managed print job; or the like, and accepting operation of canceling a print job, changing the processing order, or the like. On the other hand, some digit copiers having a large-capacity storage unit have a UI for displaying the state of each managed print job, or the like, and accepting operation of canceling a print job, or the like. Hitherto, a print system made up of such a print server and digital copier has managed print job information in the print server and copy job information in the digital copier separately. Thus, the print server cannot know what copy jobs are processed or stored in the digital copier. Likewise, the digital copier cannot know information as to what print jobs are spooled in the print server.
Therefore, to know how many print jobs and copy jobs wait for print processing in the digital copier, the user must see UI displays of both the print server and the digital copier. In FIG. 25, the digital copier 10 is connected directly to the print server 20 by a cable, or the like, it is also possible that the digital copier 10 and the print server 20 are connected remotely via a network. If such a configuration is adopted, the user cannot see the UI displays of both the digital copier 10 and the print server 20 at remote locations at a time.