Patent ID: 7839516

Claim:
An information processing method of an information processing apparatus having a virtual printer capable of comprehensively controlling a plurality of member printers based on a print command to perform a predetermined output method, said information processing method comprising: an instructing step of instructing to add or delete a member printer to be comprehensively controlled by the virtual printer; a first setting control step of setting common print setting information to the virtual printer and individually setting individual printing setting information to each of the plurality of the member printers; a registration step of registering via a user interface of the virtual printer, the common printing setting information which is set in the virtual printer, a combination of information of the plurality of member printers, and individual printing setting information which is set in each of the plurality of member printers, in the virtual printer as one reusable composite printing setting information; a display controlling step of displaying in the user interface of the virtual printer a plurality of composite printing setting information that have been registered by repeating several times said registration step, such that any one of composite printing setting information can be selected; a selection step of selecting, via the user interface of the virtual printer, any one of composite printing setting information from the plurality of composite printing setting information; a second setting control step of automatically setting to the virtual printer driver the common printing setting information and automatically setting to each of the plurality of member printers included in the combination of information the individual printing setting information corresponding to the member printer, in response to a selection of the composite printing setting information in said selection step; and a generating step of generating the plurality of jobs by comprehensively controlling the plurality of member printers to which the common printing setting information and the individual printing setting information is individually set by the second setting control step.