Patent ID: 8422040

Claim:
An image forming system, comprising: one or more image forming apparatuses; and a management apparatus configured to manage and operate the image forming system, to receive a print request transmitted from an information processor, and to instruct, in accordance with the print request, one of the image forming apparatuses specified as a printing destination to perform a predetermined image forming operation, wherein the management apparatus includes a storage unit; a software component retention part configured to retain one or more software modules in a predetermined storage area of the storage unit, the software modules each including a first software component configured to generate print data from application data and a second software component configured to generate output format data in a data format interpretable by a corresponding one or more of the image forming apparatuses by parsing the print data, wherein the first and second software components are configured to be installed or uninstalled by adding or deleting the software module including the first and second software components; a determination part configured to determine, based on the one of the image forming apparatuses specified as the printing destination, one of the software components retained in the storage unit to be used to generate the output format data corresponding to the one of the image forming apparatuses specified as the printing destination; and a transmission part configured to transmit the output format data generated by the determined one of the software components to the one of the image forming apparatuses specified as the printing destination, and the one of the image forming apparatuses specified as the printing destination includes an image forming part configured to generate bitmap image data by interpreting the output format data transmitted from the transmission part of the management apparatus, and to form a predetermined image on an image forming medium based on the generated bitmap image data.