Patent ID: 7528982

Claim:
A printer comprising a material-data compression/decompression section that performs at least one of compressing and decompressing rendered material data; a data storage section storing the rendered material data; a data merging section merging the material data stored in the data storage section in accordance with a print instruction to produce print data; a print output section performing printing using the print data produced by the data merging section; and a material-data manipulation section manipulating the material data, wherein the data storage section includes a compressed-data storage section storing the compressed material data and a decompressed-data storage section storing the decompressed material data; and wherein the material-data manipulation section deletes select material data stored in the data storage section and stores the select material data in at least one of the compressed-data storage section and the decompressed-data storage section; wherein the material-data manipulation section stores the select material data in the decompressed-data storage section in descending order of total usage count in the data merging section: wherein the material-data manipulation section stores the select material data having a total usage count in the data merging section larger than a specified value, in the decompressed-data storage section; wherein if an amount of material data stored in the decompressed-data storage section has exceeded a certain amount at the time of storing new material data into the decompressed-data storage section, the material-data manipulation section compares a total usage count of material data that is used the least of the material data stored in the decompressed-data storage section with the total usage count of the new material data to be stored, and wherein if the total usage count of the new material data to be stored is larger, the new material data is stored in place of the material data that is used the least.