Printing system including a printer and client devices connected by a network
AssigneeBrother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsAkihiro Yamada, Hiroyuki Funahashi, Yoshiko Orito
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
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.
Claims7
A printing system for performing printing operations for print data, comprising:
- a network, a print controller connected to the network, a mail server connected to the network, and a plurality of client devices connected to the network, wherein:
- each of the plurality of client devices includes a print data transmitter that transmits print data sets to the print controller;
- the print controller includes:
- a print data receiver for receiving the print data sets from the client devices;
- a print data manager for designating correspondence between received print data sets and print management information that indicates conditions of printing operations for each of the received print data sets;
- and
- a notification data preparer that prepares, based on the print management information, notification data to be notified to at least one client device, and that transmits the notification data to the mail server;
- the mail server includes an electronic mail preparer that prepares the received notification data into an electronic mail message, and that transmits the electronic mail message to the at least one client device;
- and
- the at least one client device further includes an electronic mail receiver that receives the notification data in the electronic mail message from the mail server.
A print control method for controlling printing operations performed in a printing system that includes a network, a print controller connected to the network, a mail server connected to the network, and a plurality of client devices connected to the network, the print control method comprising the steps of:
- transmitting print data sets from one of the client devices to the print controller;
- receiving, at the print controller, the print data sets from the client devices;
- designating, in the print controller, correspondence between the received print data sets and print management information that indicates conditions of printing operations for each of the plurality of received print data sets;
- preparing, in the print controller, the notification data based on the print management information to be notified to at least one client device;
- transmitting the notification data from the print controller to the mail server;
- preparing, at the mail server, received notification data into an electronic mail message to the at least one client device;
- and
- receiving, at the at least one client device, the notification data in the electronic mail message from the mail server.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.