Patent ID: 7599077

Claim:
A network printing system with a plurality of printing devices connected to a network, the system comprising: the plurality of printing devices; and a network device for converting print-request data sent from another device on the network into a format for a specified printing device to create print data, and transmitting the print data to the specified printing device via the network, wherein the network device comprises: a data receiving section that receives a print request from the another device on the network, the print request including a name of a specified document definition file, a name of the specified printing device, and the print-request data; a device information storage section for storing device information representing printing device specifications for the plurality of printing devices, the device information containing a size and margins; a document definition file storage section for storing one or more document definition files, including the specified document definition file, each document definition file representing one or more layouts of one or more documents, each document definition file including a length and a plurality of position indications for placing respective text portions, and a format converting section for determining an actual print area according to at least one of the size and the margins of the device information and converting print-request data into a print format for the printing device specified in the received print request based on a ratio between the length in the specified document definition file and a length in device information corresponding to the printing device specified in the received print request, wherein the print-request data includes text portions for each respective position indication in the plurality of position indications in the specified document definition file; the format converting section inserts the text portions into positions in the print data sent to the specified printing device according to the respective position indications in the specified document definition file, the specified document definition file is stored in the document definition file storage section in advance of transmission of the text portions in the print-request data, and the network printing system determines whether the specified printing device is available, and if the network printing system determines that the specified printing device is unavailable, the format converting section corrects each element in the print data so that the print data is reformatted for an alternative printing device based on device information for the alternative printing device.