Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-kaisha

Hiroyuki Funahashi

Satoshi Okimoto

Akihiro Yamada

Kiyoshi Takahashi

Yoshiko Orito

Hajime Usami

Toru Tsuzuki

Makoto Hasegawa

Masahiro Murakami

Eiji Yokota

Isao Kagami

Naoki Hashimoto

Takanobu Hirayama

Mitsuyoshi Uehara

Masaru Mizuno

A network system includes printers as terminals interconnected via a network. Each of the printers can obtain information on the others, and transmit the obtained information together with information on itself to a browser computer as a controller. Therefore, by obtaining the information only from one of the printers, the computer can obtain together with it the information on the others. In this system, it is possible to obtain the information on the printers efficiently without using a server computer.

Network system, terminal and recording medium

An image forming apparatus includes: a printing unit that performs a printing operation; a printing possibility determination unit that determines whether printing is possible, at the time of starting the printing operation; a printing stop unit that stops the printing operation, when the printing possibility determination unit determines that printing is impossible; a notification unit that notifies an error, when the printing operation is stopped; a notification time counting unit that counts a period in which an error is notified; a notification release unit that releases error notification, when the period in which an error is notified by the notification unit is counted for a predetermined time; and a stopped state reset unit that returns a stopped state of the printing unit whose printing operation is stopped, to a standby state before the printing unit performs the printing operation, when notification of an error is released.

Image forming apparatus

A printing system that includes: a printing condition command receiving unit that receives a primary printing condition command, the primary condition command being included together with printing image data in printing control data; printing condition command converting unit that converts the primary printing condition command to a secondary printing condition command corresponding to a printing apparatus; and a printing apparatus that carries out processing related to printing the printing image data based on the secondary printing condition command.

Printing system and printing apparatus

A printing system includes a printer and computers connected by an network. A mail server is provided for transmitting notification data from the printer to the computers in the form of an email message. Print data stored in the printer is erased once the print data has been used for reprint operations a certain amount of times. If the amount of print data stored in the printer exceeds a reference size, then print data sets are selected for erasure based on predetermined conditions. Data stored in the printer can be retrieved from the printer and amended at the computer.

Printing system using email to notify client devices of printing management information of print data sets

Printing system providing print controller capability to retrieve amend and update data stored in local memory of a printer

A laser beam printeris connected to a host computer and receives job datafrom the host computer. The job dataincludes a transmission time information. If the laser beam printeris provided with a clock IC, a CPUof the laser beam printerreads a current time from the clock ICand set the current time as receiving time information. On the other hand, if the laser beam printeris not provided with the clock IC, then the CPUsets the transmission time informationincluded in the received job dataas the receiving time information.

Printing device capable of utilizing job data transmitted from host computer for managing printing operations

Printing system including a printer and client devices connected by a network

With a push of a maintenance button disposed on a printer, printer information mail is created based on information previously stored in a memory, and sent to a mail server. The sent mail is read by a support server, the support server extracts maintenance information that best suits the contents of the sent mail from a database, and sends it as maintenance information mail to the mail server in reply to the mail. When the maintenance information mail arrives at the printer, cleaning is performed or error remedy is displayed or printed, according to the contents of the maintenance information mail.

Service support system and method for image forming apparatus

A printing system includes a plurality of networked printers where macro data can be stored efficiently and quickly in selected printers. First, a host computer reads macro data stored in a HDD of a predetermined printer and displays the macro data on a CRT display. Then, upon the user's selection of macro data to be copied and the IP addresses of destination printers, the selected macro data is transmitted to each of the destination printers. Each of the destination printers receives the selected macro data and stores it in its HDD.

Printing system and method of managing data in the printing system

A print system capable of exchanging data in the form of electronic mail between a plurality of computer systems using very low-cost communication via the Internet , rather than one-on-one communication. When the printer driver of a personal computer selects a personal computer on another computer system as the destination for transmitting print data, the printer driver and the print mail transmission utility create print mail in which a mail header including print information is added to the print data for the contents of the mail, and the print mail is transmitted via the Internet addressed to the personal computer . The print mail reception utility of the personal computer receives the print mail and prints the print mail on a printer based on the print information included in the mail header.

Printing system

When the received mail is determined to be print mail in S based on its mail header, the program first determines in S what page description language is used to describe the print data in the mail. In S , the program selects a printer which is being presently set to interpret that page description language. Then, in S , print data in the print mail is printed using the printer thus selected in S . If there exists no printer appropriately set to interpret that page description language, the program selects in S a printer provided with a function to interpret that page description language. The program then sets the function mode of the printer into a mode to interpret the page description language. Then, in S , print data in the print mail is printed using the thus selected and set printer. Thus, the print mail is printed by a printer which can appropriately interpret the processing format of the print data included in the received print mail. Hence, the print data will not be printed erroneously. The user on the receiving end can receive printed matter in the form desired by the user on the transmitting end.

Mail printing system with printer selecting function

When the print sheet number determined based on the mail header is equal to or higher than the predetermined value (&ldquo;Yes&rdquo; in S,), the print confirmation screen is displayed in S,to request the user to indicate whether or not to print the print mail. If the program determines in S,that the user has indicated his/her desire to print, then the mail is printed in S,and S,However, if the user has not indicated a desire to print, the print operation is not performed. With this configuration, not all received print mail is immediately targeted for printing. The user can defer printing of print mail having a large amount of data according to circumstances on the receiving end. The large amount of print mail data will not occupy the printer on the receiving end for a long period of time. Hence, urgent or important printing can be given a higher priority.

Mail printing system with print confirming function

An image forming apparatus is provided to smoothly form images corresponding to received image data even if the memory becomes full when collated printing is executed. If the memory never becomes full during collated printing, images for all of the pages are expanded to intermediate data, stored in a page memory, and complete collated printing is enabled. In the meantime, if the memory becomes full while the print data of part of a page is expanded to intermediate data and stored, the controller, controls so that the page memory can be written after collated printing is executed up to a page immediately before the partial page and the residual pages are printed in the form of collated printing. Therefore, even if the memory becomes full, printing can be executed in a form as close to collated printing as possible.

Growing community of inventors

Nagoya, Japan

Hiroyuki Funahashi