Network printer and network printing method

A network printer comprising:

• a communication task for receiving data via a network;
• an image production task having a lower priority than said communication task and interpreting the data supplied from said communication task thereby producing image data;
• a print processing section which controls a drive of a print engine based on the image data supplied from said image production task;
• and
• a single central processing unit switchably executing said communication task and said image production task,
• wherein an operation state of said image production task is controlled in accordance with a rate of receiving data which are supplied from said network to said communication task and a data processing rate in said image production task.

A network printing method in which a communication task for receiving data via a network, an image production task of interpreting the data supplied from said communication task thereby producing image data, and a print task for performing printing based on the image data supplied from said image production task are switchably executed by a single central processing unit, wherein a priority for acquiring execution privilege in said processing unit is higher in a sequence of said print task, said communication task and said image production task, said method comprising steps of:

• determining a size of a memory block for storing the data supplied to said image production task in accordance with a rate of receiving the data which are supplied from the network to said communication task and a data processing rate in said image production processing task so as to provide said image production task with a suitable execution time period;
• storing the data received from said network into a memory block of the determined size by said communication task;
• informing said image production task that the data are stored into said memory block;
• reading data from said memory block to produce image data by said image production task;
• informing said print task of the production of image data;
• and
• performing printing based on the supplied image data by said print task.

A recording medium on which a program for controlling a network printer which performs printing based on data received via a network are recorded, wherein the program for causing a computer to realize the following elements are recorded in such a form that said program is readable and understandable by the computer, said elements comprising:

• a communication processing section which receives the data via the network;
• an image production processing section which interprets the data supplied from said communication processing section and produces image data;
• a print processing section which controls a drive of a print engine based on the image data supplied from said image production processing section thereby performing printing;
• and
• an operation state controlling section which controls a transfer amount of the data which are supplied from said communication processing section to said image production processing section in accordance with a rate of receiving the data from said network and a data processing rate in said image production processing section.