Patent ID: 8169629

Claim:
A print control apparatus for registering a plurality of printer groups corresponding to respective printing features and controlling a print process in which a print job is assigned to one member printer included in one of the printer groups, said print control apparatus comprising: a processor and memory, functioning as: a selection unit adapted to select one of the printing features in response to a user instruction for printer group selection; a registration unit adapted to register member printers forming one of the plurality of printer groups corresponding to the printing feature selected by said selection unit, in response to a user instruction for member printer registration, wherein the member printers are selected from a plurality of printers on a network before the data supplied by an application program is spooled; a displaying unit adapted to display, after data supplied by the application program is spooled, a user interface for a print process of the supplied data, wherein the user interface lists the member printers registered by said registration unit and shows status information and location information of each of the member printers, the status information indicating any temporary status of the member printer and the location information indicating a physical space where the member printer is installed; a designation unit adapted to designate, as an output target printer to be used in a current print process, one of the member printers listed on the user interface, such that any of the member printers not designated by said designation unit is temporarily removed from the current print process; and a transmission unit adapted to transmit print data formed from the data supplied by the application program using a printer driver corresponding to the one member printer designated by said designation unit to the member printer, wherein said displaying unit displays the user interface such that the designated member printer and the removed member printer are listed for a next print process without re-registration by said registration unit.