JPH0562777B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a printer output control system, and particularly to a printer output control system that is used to control a plurality of workstations, such as a print server connected to a local area network (LAN) including a plurality of workstations. The present invention relates to a printer output control method when multiple printers share one printer.

[Conventional technology]

There is no known printer control method in the prior art that monitors time and continues printing file members.

Note that, as a related control method of this type, a technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 106972/1983 is known. This method is characterized by outputting the name of the first data set in order to make it easier to see the print result of the job output.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

The above conventional technology is suitable for printing job outputs sequentially, but it is suitable for printing in systems where print requests from multiple workstations occur randomly, such as a local area network print server. There was a problem that no consideration was given to preventing mixing, and the printed results were not necessarily easy to see.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and its purpose is to solve the above-mentioned problems in conventional printer output control methods, and to solve the problems of the conventional printer output control system, and to Even in a system where print requests from stations occur randomly, it is possible to output separate and easy-to-read print results without mixing print requests from each workstation and print requests from different users of the same workstation. The object of the present invention is to provide a printer output control method.

[Means for Solving the Problems] The above object of the present invention is to provide a local area network having a plurality of workstations and print servers, in which the print server writes print requests from each workstation to a spool file. When loading a file, after writing to a file, print requests are monitored, and if a print request is received from the same workstation within a predetermined continuous monitoring time, it is assumed to be a continuation of the previous print data and written to the file with the same member name. This is achieved by a printer output control method characterized in that, after the predetermined continuous monitoring time has elapsed, print requests from the same workstation are written to a file with a member name different from the previous one.

[Effect]

In the present invention, in view of the fact that print requests from each workstation occur within a sufficiently shorter time than the print server's continuous monitoring time in the case of continuous print requests, the print server treats the print requests as continuous data with the same member name. Can write to spool file. On the other hand, if the print request from the workstation is not for continuous printing,
The time required to replace a program or wait for an operator's response is much longer than the print server's continuous monitoring time.

Therefore, by setting the continuous monitoring time of the print server as described above, it is possible to output print results that are separated and easy to view without mixing print requests from each workstation.

The continuous monitoring time set in this way is referred to as a "predetermined continuous monitoring time" in this specification.

〔Example〕

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a local area network system comprising a plurality of workstations and print servers, showing one embodiment of the present invention. As shown in the figure, in this system, a workstation (WS-A) 1, a workstation (WS-B) 2, and a print server 3 are physically connected by a local area network 4. The print server 3 also includes a spool processing section (SPL) 5, a spool file 6, a continuous monitoring timer 7, a writer processing section (SWT) 8, and a printer device 9. In addition, the workstations (WS-A, B) 1 and 2 are equipped with the following:
Application programs (AP-A, AP-B) are stored.

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing the flow of processing in this embodiment. The operation of this embodiment will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2.

The spool processing unit 5 of the print server 3
Print requests from workstations are constantly monitored (step 11), and when a print request is received, the next
Check whether the printed member name continues (step 12). If there is no continuation, a new print member name is created (step 13), and spool file 6 is opened with the member name (step 15).
Next, write the print request data from the workstation to file 6 with the corresponding member name (step
16). When there is no more written data, close spool file 6 with the member name (step
17).

Thereafter, a predetermined timer value is set and a timer request is made (step 18). Then, the timer 7 is determined (step 19), and the presence or absence of the next print request from the workstation is determined (step 19).
20). If there is a next print request from the workstation and it is determined that it is from the same workstation as the previous one (step 21), the above-mentioned timer 7 is stopped (step 23), and printing member name continuation is set. (Step 24), after restoring the previous print member name (Step 14), open spool file 6 with the same member name as last time (Step 15) and add continuation data (Step 14).
16).

In addition, if a timeout occurs in the judgment at step 19, and if a print request from another workstation occurs at step 21, after clearing the print member name continuation and stopping timer 7 (step 22), Check if there is a print request from the station (Step 11)
Return to

According to the above embodiment, in a print server that processes print requests from multiple workstations, print requests from the same application program on the same workstation can continue without any changes to the application program on the workstation side. Data can be stored in a spool file with the same member name, and other data can be stored in a spool file with a different member name as separate data, so the output results of printing a spool file using a writer can be It is possible to output separate, easy-to-read print results without mixing print requests from users and print data from different application programs on the same workstation.

The above-mentioned embodiment is shown as an example, and the present invention should not be limited thereto.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, according to the present invention, in a local area network having a plurality of workstations and print servers, when the print server writes a print request from each workstation to a spool file, the write of a certain file is After that, print requests are monitored, and if a print request is received from the same workstation within the predetermined continuous monitoring time, it is considered as a continuation of the previous print data and written to the file with the same member name, and the predetermined continuous monitoring is continued. After time has elapsed, print requests from the same workstation are written to a file with a different member name than the previous one, so even in a system where print requests from multiple workstations occur randomly, it is possible to write them from each workstation. This has the remarkable effect of realizing a printer output control method that can output separate and easily visible print results without mixing print requests from different users of the same workstation and print requests from different users of the same workstation.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing the flow of processing in an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a system configuration diagram of the embodiment. 1, 2: Workstation, 3: Print server, 4: Local area network, 5: Spool processing unit, 6: Spool file, 7: Continuous monitoring timer, 8: Writer processing unit, 9: Printer device, 11- 24: Processing step.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a local area network having a plurality of workstations and print servers, when the print server writes print requests from each workstation to a spool file, it monitors the print requests after writing a certain file. If a print request is received from the same workstation within the predetermined continuous monitoring time, it will be considered as a continuation of the previous print data and written to the file with the same member name, and after the predetermined continuous monitoring time has passed, print requests from the same workstation will be A printer output control method characterized by writing a print request to a file with a member name different from the previous one.