Technologies in related art are known in which print instructions are transmitted from clients to servers and the servers, which have received the print instructions, convert content to be printed into print data.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-196054 discloses a method in which a server receives a print instruction and information for controlling the printing from a client and the server generates print data on the basis of the information for controlling the printing. The server in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-196054 provides a service of generating the print data to the client.
As described above, the provision of services from servers to clients has been hitherto realized in various modes. Cloud computing attracting increasing attention in recent years is also included in the modes in which servers provide services to clients. The cloud computing features spread of data conversion and data processing to many computing resources to simultaneously process requests from many clients. Many vendors currently exist which install Web services in a cloud computing environment in which the cloud computing is realized to provide a wide variety of services.
One of the most remarkable vendors is Google (registered trademark). Google (registered trademark) builds many large data centers and proposes services that are provided in association with devices to make active movements, such as development of data communication mechanisms between the devices and the services. For example, Google (registered trademark) has developed a data communication mechanism to provide services in association with image forming apparatuses to release an interface through which the image forming apparatuses establish the data communication with the cloud computing environment prepared by Google (registered trademark). The installation of this interface in the image forming apparatuses has an advantage in that there is no need to install printer drivers in the clients, as in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-196054. In addition, the installation of this interface in the image forming apparatuses allows the clients to specify image forming apparatuses where the printing is performed even if the image forming apparatuses are connected to the server via the Internet.
However, there are problems described below when vendor servers in the cloud computing environment generate print data.
A first problem is that, when the quality of print data generated in applications on the vendor servers is low, the print quality in the entire printing system using the print data is also lowered. A second problem is that there is a case in which the image forming apparatuses cannot print the print data provided by the vendor servers. In such a case, after relay servers acquire the print data from the vendor servers, it is necessary to convert the print data into a format printable in the image forming apparatuses again. The data conversion is performed multiple times to possibly degrade the print quality. A third problem is that there is a case in which the print data generated by the vendor servers is largely increased in size. In this case, the time for the relay servers to acquire the print data over networks can be increased. This is because it is necessary to decompose data in the applications, composed of font data or vector data, into the print data. A fourth problem is that there is a case in which it is not possible to acquire content from the vendor servers on the basis of information concerning the printing, received from the vendor servers. Such a problem occurs because the interface mechanism to acquire the content released by the vendor servers is not based on the information concerning the printing received from the vendor servers. This problem can be resolved if the information concerning the printing received from the vendor servers has sufficient information necessary to acquire the content. However, there is no assurance that the content can be constantly acquired because the information that can be received is determined by the vendor servers.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds