Patent ID: 8098385

Claim:
A spool file modifying device employed in a printing system which generates a spool file for a print job and converts the spool file into print data suitable to a printer to be used, the spool file being stored in a storage, the spool file including intermediate files independent of a type of the printer, said spool file modifying device comprising: a spool file retrieving system that retrieves the spool file stored in the storage; a halftone mode designating system that judges whether the retrieved spool file includes data indicating that an image is to be printed in a reduced area of a print sheet or not, and if the retrieved spool file does not include halftone mode information, (a) designates a halftone mode as a processing mode to be used when judged that the spool file includes the data indicating that an image is to be printed in a reduced area of a print sheet, and (b) does not designate the halftone mode as the processing mode to be used when judged that the spool file does not include the data indicating that the image is to be printed in the reduced area of the print sheet; and a modifying system that: modifies the spool file not including the halftone mode information into a modified spool file including the halftone mode information when the halftone mode designating system judges that the spool file includes data indicating that an image is to be printed in a reduced area of a print sheet and designates the halftone mode; and maintains the spool file not including the halftone mode information when the halftone mode designating system judges that the spool file does not include data indicating that an image is to be printed in a reduced area of a print sheet and the halftone mode designating system does not designate the halftone mode, said modifying system replacing the unmodified spool file with the modified spool file, in the storage, when the spool file is modified; and a converting system that converts the spool file into the print data irrespective of whether the spool file is modified by the modifying system or not.