Patent ID: 7990557

Claim:
An image forming system having an image forming apparatus and a print data generation apparatus which generates print data of a format interpretable by the image forming apparatus and outputs the print data to the image forming apparatus, the print data generation apparatus comprising: a print data generation unit which generates the print data; and a transmitting unit which transmits the print data to said image forming apparatus; the image forming apparatus comprising: a reception unit which receives print data transmitted from said print data generation apparatus; an image data generation unit which generates a plurality of pages of image data on the basis of the print data received by said reception unit; an image forming unit which forms the plurality of pages of image data generated by said image data generation unit on print media at a specified time interval; a calculation unit which calculates a generation time taken to generate image data of each page of the plurality of pages of image data by said image data generation unit from the print data received by said reception unit; and a control unit which controls a timing for transferring each page of the plurality of pages of image data generated by said image data generation unit to said image forming unit when the plurality of pages of image data generated by said image data generation unit is output to said image forming unit, wherein said control unit a) controls the timing for transferring image data of a page of interest so that, in a case where a generation time taken to generate image data of a predetermined number of pages following the page of interest is shorter than an image forming time to be taken to form sequentially the predetermined number of pages of the image data with the specific time interval between pages, image data of the page of interest is transferred to said image forming unit in response to generation of the image data of the page of interest by said image data generation unit, and b) controls the timing for transferring image data of the page of interest so that, in a case where the generation time taken to generate image data of the predetermined number of pages following the page of interest is longer than the image forming time, the image data of the page of interest is transferred to said image forming unit with a delay equivalent to difference time between the generation time and the image forming time.