Patent ID: 7206095

Claim:
A printing apparatus in which a carriage equipped with a printhead having a plurality of printing elements arranged in a predetermined direction is made to scan across a printing medium in a direction that intersects the direction in which the printing elements are arranged, thereby performing printing on the medium, said apparatus comprising: a receive buffer for receiving print data that has been transmitted in raster form; a print buffer for storing the data, which has been stored in said receive buffer, in a plurality of areas corresponding to a plurality of blocks each consisting of a predetermined number of successive printing elements; data shifting means for shifting in a direction in which the printing elements are arranged, in accordance with printing elements used in the scan, the data in the corresponding area of said print buffer; transmitting means for transmitting the data shifted by said data shifting means to the printhead in accordance with print timings; and control means for setting the amount of the shift based on a distance over which the printing medium is transported after the scan, a flag indicating status of use provided for each area of said print buffer, and an extent of the printing elements used for printing in next scan, wherein the data shifting means is controlled based on the amount of the shift set by the control means.