1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system and more specifically to a configuration of obtaining the status of a printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known a printing system with a printer driver which controls printing and a printer utility which controls printer maintenance, both of which are installed in a host computer. In this type of printing system, a user generates printing data by a printer driver and sends the printing data to a printer. On the other hand, there is known a printer utility which performs maintenance such as cleaning of the head of an inkjet printer or adjustment of the head's position, as well as checking the remaining amount of ink or battery in the printer (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-301728). The printer utility is executed by the host computer.
There are cases in which a printer utility and printer driver are or are not installed in a coupled manner in a printer system. For example, in certain operating systems such as operating systems of a Macintosh (Registered Trademark), the printer utility and printer driver are installed in the host computer as different modules. In such a case, when a user starts a printer utility and selects a desired function, the printer utility directly performs sending and receiving of data, and executes each type of process.
In the case that the printer utility and printer driver are installed as separate modules in the host computer, the printer driver opens the printer interface upon starting print processing, and performs sending and receiving of data with the printer. When print processing is finished, the interface is closed. During the time between the opening and closing of the interface, the interface is in an occupied state by the printer driver, and other processes cannot access the printer. Therefore, when the printer driver is executing print processing, the printer utility cannot communicate with a printer, and, for example, cannot obtain the status of the printer. For this reason, the user cannot check the remaining amount of ink or battery of the printer while in the middle of printing, nor the printer's operation mode.