Patent ID: 8270034

Claim:
A printing apparatus, comprising: a printing unit which performs printing on a tape-like print medium along a direction of a length thereof; a size designating unit which designates a size of a print area on which the printing unit performs printing; a print size adjusting unit which adjusts a print size of second information according to the size designated by the size designating unit, so that: (i) first information comprising image information which is of a symbol of a two-dimensional code and which is defined to have a predetermined print size, and (ii) the second information which is character information, are printed in the print area having the size designated by the size designating unit; a determining unit which determines whether or not the character information having predetermined print attributes including at least one of a predetermined character size and a predetermined character spacing, is printable together with the first information having the predetermined print size within the print area having the size designated by the size designating unit, wherein the determining unit performs the determination by comparing a reference initial setting length with the print area having the size designated by the size designating unit; a processing unit which performs a process of thinning out pattern information corresponding to the character information having the predetermined print attributes, so that the character information is printed together with the first information having the predetermined print size, when the determining unit determines that the reference initial setting length is greater than the print area having the size designated by the size designating unit; a control unit which controls the printing unit to print the first information having the predetermined print size and the second information whose print size is adjusted by the print size adjusting unit, on the tape-like print medium; an input unit which inputs conversion-purpose character information which is to be converted to the image information of the symbol; and a converting unit which converts the conversion-purpose character information input from the input unit into the image information of the symbol; wherein the size designating unit designates the size of the print area in the direction of the length of the tape-like print medium; wherein the print size adjusting unit sets at least one of a character size and a character spacing of the second information according to the size designated by the size designating unit; and wherein the control unit controls the printing unit to print the first information and the second information in a serial arrangement on the print area, along the direction of the length of the tape-like print medium.