Patent ID: 6914687

Claim:
An image recording apparatus that can discharge a printing result of a printing job received from a data processing apparatus to a plurality of sheet discharge ports, said image recording apparatus comprising: registering means for registering a discrimination name of each of the plurality of sheet discharge ports that is instructed to be registered by the data processing apparatus; first notifying means for notifying the data processing apparatus of the discrimination name of each of the plurality of sheet discharge ports registered by said registering means in accordance with a request from the data processing apparatus; preparing means for preparing page information for a plurality of discrimination names of a predetermined unit of printing data included in one printing job by the predetermined unit of printing data based on the notification of said first notifying means; retrieving means for retrieving a sheet discharge port to which a discrimination name identical with a plurality of discrimination names of a predetermined unit of printing data included in the one printing job; controlling means for instructing the discharge of the number of sheet discharge copies for each sheet discharge port retrieved by said retrieving means and each sheet discharge address designated by the predetermined unit of printing data with respect to each piece of page information prepared by said preparing means; storing means for storing a state of each of the plurality of sheet discharge ports to be observed by observing the state of each of the plurality of sheet discharge ports; second notifying means for notifying the data processing apparatus of a state of an abnormal sheet discharge port if an abnormality in the state of each sheet discharge port stored in said storing means exists; and third notifying means for notifying the data processing apparatus of information of the sheet discharge port to which the printing jot is outputted at the time of finishing processing of the printing job.