Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Masamichi Ohshima

Koji Kikuchi

Koichiro Wanda

Hidekazu Morooka

Kenichi Shirai

Kei Kitagata

Hiroyuki Kayama

Takashi Yagita

Noriyoshi Kurotsu

Hiroshi Inoue

Shuntaro Aratani

Kazumi Suga

Eiichi Matsuzaki

Masaaki Imaizumi

Mamoru Tanaka

Kenichiro Ono

Takeshi Makita

Toshiyuki Nobutani

Masami Shimakura

Kenzoh Ina

Toshiaki Shingu

Hajime Morimoto

Junichi Tanahashi

Tatsuya Sakashita

This invention provides a load distributed printing technique which efficiently uses a plurality of printing apparatuses by using small resources. To accomplish this, an information processing apparatus, which can transmit a print job to a plurality of printing apparatuses, is provided. The information processing apparatus comprises print queue setting means for setting one of a plurality of print queues corresponding to the plurality of printing apparatuses as a basic print queue and setting remaining print queues other than the basic print queue as backup print queues, print job registration means for registering print job information in the basic print queue, backup job registration means for generating backup job information corresponding to the print job information registered in the basic print queue and registering the backup job information in the backup print queue, and job control means for, when the print job information is registered in each of the basic print queue and the backup print queue, preferentially outputting a print job corresponding to the print job information to a corresponding printing apparatus, and when no print job information is registered, and a print job corresponding to the backup job information can be output, changing the backup job information to print job information and outputting the print job to a corresponding printing apparatus.

Method and apparatus for executing load distributed printing

There is disclosed an information processing apparatus which efficiently and effectively executes printing even when interruption of printing occurs in a printing apparatus. The apparatus which includes a plurality of print queues each functioning as one of a backup print queue and a basic print queue and executes output to a printing apparatus based on print job information with higher priority than output to a printing apparatus based on backup job information, comprising, output means for outputting a print job in accordance with schedule up of one of pieces of print job information and backup job information registered in the plurality of print queues, and registration means for, in accordance with interruption of printing based on job information registered in one of the basic print queue and the backup print queue, registering backup job information in the print queues except the print queue corresponding to the printing apparatus which has interrupted printing.

It is an object of the present invention to install a print server simply. In the present invention, a port monitor, an IP address and a data sending method corresponding to an installed logical printer are acquired and stored in an installed logical printer information storage module, by an installed logical printer analysis module. A logical printer auto-creation module creates the port monitor of the logical printer to be used by the print server to be installed, based on the stored information, and associates the port monitor as the port monitor of a newly created logical printer or the existing logical printer.

Output management device setting apparatus and setting method

In a print system including a print server and a plurality of printers, when the occurrence of a failure in a first printer is detected, the print job to be processed first from among the print jobs accumulated in the first printer is identified as the first print job. Print jobs other than the first print job in the first printer are transferred to a second printer, and then deleted from the first printer.

Information processing apparatus, substitute print job management method, information processing program, and recording medium

In a proxy printing system, one print job is transmitted to a first one of printers connected over a network, and when a print failure occurs in the first printer, a second networked printer processes the print job to perform proxy printing. The system detects a failure of the first printer attempting to process the print job and issues a notification. In accordance with managed history information for the first printer, the proxy printing system detects whether a printer that has previously processed a print job as a proxy for the first printer exists out of the networked printers. The system issues a notification indicating at least one detected printer as a proxy destination candidate. The system performs control so that the printer is used to execute proxy print processing, and updates the history management table after the execution of the proxy print processing.

Proxy printing system, information processing apparatus, and controlling method

There are provided an information processing apparatus and information processing method, which can implement a job or printer device monitoring scheme that allows the user to easily detect status of printing apparatus in advance. The status of a physical printer device corresponding to a predetermined logical printer, which is set as an object to be monitored, is monitored, and a result based on monitoring is displayed on a computer display as a resident display. For example, when the resident display is displayed as an icon on the task tray on the computer display, it does not disturb display of windows of other document creation applications. Also, the user need not purposely instruct to launch a monitor utility upon printing. Hence, a job or printer device monitoring scheme which is very convenient for the user can be implemented.

Information processing apparatus, information processing method, program, and computer-readable storage medium

A print control program, which is executed by an information processing apparatus so as to transmit print data to an image-forming device and record an image, causes the information processing apparatus to re-spool as a second spool file print data that has already been spooled once as a first spool file by an operating system. A portion of the print data that is re-spooled as the second spool file is transmitted to the image-forming device during re-spooling. As result, spooling of the second spool file linked to the first spool file, and transmission to the image-forming device, is more efficient.

Print control program and information processing apparatus

To solve such a problem that it takes time to display a print setting display screen of a virtual printer to which functions of member printer drivers having different characteristics have been reflected, in an information processing apparatus for making job control of the virtual printer constructed by a plurality of member printers, a conflicting process based on each function of the plurality of member printers is executed, a construction of the member printers is examined in association with display control for reflecting a conflict result to a setting display screen of the virtual printer, and control is made to as to visualize an advance situation of the conflicting process on the basis of an examination result.

Information processing apparatus for controlling a print job using a virtual printer

A print job icon symbolically representing a print job and printer icons symbolically representing a plurality of printers are displayed on the screen of a display in an information processing apparatus. When a command to transfer the print job icon is issued, whether a requested print job can be transferred to any printer is easily determined. When the print job is selected, the information processing apparatus easily discriminates between a printer able to output the print job and a printer unable to output the print job.

Information processing apparatus, information processing method, information processing program, and storage medium

In an image processing method and apparatus, image data having multi-value levels for one pixel is input, and the input image data is quantized such that an output area of one pixel is adapted to an output device in which an output area of one pixel changes depending on the position of the pixel. A quantizing process executes an arithmetic operation based on an algorithm of a neural network on the basis of a value obtained by multiplying an output value by a weight corresponding to an area of each pixel. Therefore, even if pixels have different maximum luminances, the different numbers of bits, and different color expression capabilities, an optimum half-tone process can be performed by an algorithm based on a cellular neural network, and a high-quality image can be obtained.

Image processing method and apparatus

A display panel has a display picture area composed of a plurality of dots. The dots can be divided into a number m of first pixels having an effective area S1 and can also be divided into a number n of second pixels having an effective area S2, satisfying S1&lt;S2, m&gt;n and m/n.noteq.2a, wherein a is a natural number. As a result, the display panel can display a picture at different resolution levels without causing image quality deterioration.

Display panel and apparatus capable of resolution conversion

A display control apparatus includes display device driver means for writing image information into a frame buffer, and display scanning means for sequentially displaying the image data stored in the frame buffer for each line of the display. The display control apparatus further includes partially rewritten line determination means for obtaining from the display device driver means information regarding lines to be written into the frame buffer, and generating in accordance therewith the lines for which the display is to be scanned, and display scan line control means for obtaining from the partially rewritten line determination means lines to be scanned to specify such lines for the display scanning means.

Display control apparatus

A color display panel has a multiplicity of pixels each including a first color dot composed of a plurality of sub-dots having mutually different areas and a second color dot composed of a plurality of sub-dots having mutually different areas. Each of the first and second color dots includes at least one first sub-dot and at least one second sub-dot having an effective area smaller than that of the first sub-dot. The first or second sub-dot of the second color dot is disposed between the first and second sub-dots of the second color dot. The thus-constituted color display panel allows easy resolution conversion and multi-level gradational display.

Color display panel and apparatus

An image processor includes a quantizing unit which quantizes input image data to data of at least three or more levels. A memory stores the quantized data on a picture unit basis, and an output unit outputs the stored image on the picture unit basis. The quantizing unit quantizes the image data of a present picture in accordance with the quantized data of a previous picture stored in the memory, and quantizes the input image data of one pixel to the data of three or more levels by using a plurality of threshold values each including an upper threshold value, a standard threshold value and a lower threshold value.

Method and apparatus to reduce scintillation in dithered display systems

A high quality display image is displayed on a screen by providing an; image area information generator means (203) for generating image area information for designating an area for displaying binarization image data to be obtained by image processing of image data in the multi-level frame buffer on the screen and the area for displaying binarization image data to be obtained by approximate color conversion, based on a computer software, and a processor for processing the image data based on the image area information.

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Tokyo, Japan

Masamichi Ohshima