Patent ID: 7679772

Claim:
A printing apparatus which performs printing by scanning a carriage, which supports a printhead having a plurality of printing elements arrayed in a predetermined direction, relative to a printing medium in a direction perpendicular to the predetermined direction, comprising: a printing data memory which stores printing data of a raster format; a buffer memory which has a storage area corresponding to each printing element and stores printing data stored in said printing data memory; a head parameter unit, for driving a selected printhead of various types of printheads, which stores information on a number of concurrently drivable printing elements according to distributed driving for each of the various types of printheads, an interval of adjacent printing elements of the concurrently drivable printing elements of each of the various types of the printheads, and a number of a plurality of printing elements of each of the various types of the printheads; a counter which counts a number of reading operations for reading out the printing data from said buffer memory; a buffer controller which controls, in accordance with the information stored in said head parameter unit, processing of reading out the printing data stored in said printing data memory and storing the printing data in said buffer memory, and processing of reading out the printing data stored in said buffer memory; and driving control means for controlling the distributed driving of the plurality of printing elements in the printhead according to the information stored in said head parameter unit, wherein said buffer controller calculates a read address in accordance with the number of concurrently drivable printing elements in the distributed driving of the selected printhead, the interval of adjacent printing elements of the concurrently drivable printing elements of the selected printhead, the number of the plurality of printing elements of the selected printhead in reading out the printing data stored in said buffer memory, and the number of reading operations counted by said counter.