Patent ID: 7938392

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: an image forming unit configured to form an image on a medium in response to an image forming request; a plurality of first medium feed units configured to feed a medium corresponding to the image forming request to the image forming unit; a second medium feed unit configured to feed a medium to the image forming unit; an attribute management unit configured to manage first attribute information indicative of media fed by the first medium feed units and second attribute information indicative of a medium fed by the second medium feed unit, the second attribute information being smaller in amount than the first attribute information; and a feed control unit configured to select one of the first medium feed units that feeds a medium corresponding to the first attribute information that matches medium attribute information included in the image forming request, and to select the second medium feed unit upon finding matching between the second attribute information indicative of a medium fed by the second medium feed unit and the medium attribute information included in the image forming request if none of the first medium feed units feeds a medium corresponding to the first attribute information that matches the medium attribute information included in the image forming request, wherein a situation in which none of the first medium feed units feeds a medium corresponding to the first attribute information that matches the medium attribute information included in the image forming request includes a situation in which any of the first attribute information indicative of the media fed by the first medium feed units does not match the medium attribute information included in the image forming request, and a situation in which the one of the first medium feed units that feeds a medium corresponding to the first attribute information that matches the medium attribute information included in the image forming request is empty, and wherein the first attribute information managed by the attribute management unit includes information about sizes of the media fed by the first medium feed units, and the second attribute information managed by the attribute management unit includes information about a length of one side of the medium fed by the second medium feed unit.