US Patent 7113298 Printing system, printing method and apparatus

In a printing system connecting a print requester host and a single or a plurality of print requestee printer by way of a network, the host abstractly defines an output port to an actual printer as the print requestee printer, for printing. The host makes a print request to the abstractly defined output port so that between the host and the printer on the network there are made in sequence for printing a retrieval request from the host, a retrieval response from the printer, a print request from the host, and a response to the print request from the printer.