Roll-fed printing apparatus, software medium, and method for controlling a roll-fed printing apparatus

Abstract

A roll-fed printing apparatus and a method for controlling a roll-fed printing apparatus for printing images on at least one recording medium are disclosed. The roll-fed apparatus includes a print engine, a controller including a roll managing system for managing the printing of ripped images on the at least one recording medium. The method includes the steps of the controller receiving a plurality of ripped images from a raster image processor into memory of the roll managing system, for each ripped image the roll managing system establishing an arbitrary position in the plane of the at least one recording medium at which arbitrary position the ripped image is intended to be printed, the controller creating subsequent image swathes for printing the ripped images according to the established arbitrary positions of the ripped images, the print engine subsequently printing the created subsequent image swathes; and the roll managing system displaying and maintaining an image queue area including the ripped images to be printed on the at least one recording medium and the ripped images currently being printed on the at least one recording medium. The method includes the steps of the roll managing system providing a plurality of event image objects which are manually or automatically placeable in the image queue area and the image queue area is configured to receive an event image object of the plurality of event image objects between the ripped images to be printed on the least one recording medium in the image queue area, and the controller setting for an event image object of the plurality at least one printing and/or finishing command to be executed by the printing apparatus in accordance with a timing sequence of printing of the print jobs displayed in the image queue area.