Abstract: A printing apparatus which enables the operator to immediately discriminate a position of a check objective paper from results of printing has a printing mechanism for printing in at least one color on predetermined papers, a control unit for controlling a printing operation of the printing mechanism, and a detecting unit for detecting an opportunity of printing and outputting the check objective paper during the printing operation of the printing mechanism. When the detecting unit detects said opportunity, the control unit controls the printing mechanism to implement a color printing on the check objective paper in order to discriminate the check objective paper from another printed output papers. The printing apparatus is applicable to a printer which is connected to an upper apparatus such as a host computer to print data fed from the upper apparatus.

Abstract: An overlay printing technique for use with a printing device is disclosed which enables multiple overlays to be defined for each the print page. Overlay data, overlay position information and overlay scale information for each of the overlays set up by an overlay set-up unit are transferred to an overlay storage unit by overlay transferring unit. Print processing unit expands overlay data stored in the overlay storage unit according to corresponding overlay position information and overlay scale information and prints the expanded data and print data obtained by expanding general print data for each print page. One or more overlays are placed in any positions within one print page which are determined by overlay position information and overlay scale information. For multiple-frame printing, a multiple-frame processing unit translates overlay position information and overlay scale information so that each overlay fits in a corresponding frame.

Abstract: A character resource management system manages character resources to be down loaded into an output device. The character resource management system includes a first management unit for managing character styles of the character resources which may be down loaded into the output device and a second management unit for managing character pattern sets used for the character styles managed by the first management unit. Each of the character pattern sets managed by the second management unit corresponds to one of characteristics of output devices which may be coupled to the character resource management system.