Patent ID: 7755781

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a data receiving section to receive a data in a page-description language format; a memory section comprising a shared storage area for temporally storing a data which is generated based on the data in a page-description language format; an analysis section to analyze the data in a page-description language format so as to generate an intermediate data between the data in a page-description language format and a data in a bitmap format which is generated based on the data in a page-description language format, and to store the generated intermediate data in the shared storage area; a rasterizing section to rasterize the intermediate data stored in the shared storage area so as to generate the data in a bitmap format, to store the generated data in a bitmap format in the shared storage area, and to release an area saved for storing the intermediate data corresponding to the stored data in a bitmap format; and a print control section to allow a printing section to perform printing based on the data in a bitmap format stored in the shared storage area, and to release an area saved for storing the printed data in a bitmap format; wherein a rasterizing section comprises a judgment section to judge whether or not the following condition expression is satisfied when the shared storage area is run out in storing the data in a bitmap format, (number of rasterized pages)−(number of pages whose memory area saved for storing the data in a bitmap format has been released))>0 when the condition expression is satisfied, the rasterizing section holds a processing until the shared storage area opens, and when the condition expression is not satisfied, a process for a memory-full error is performed.