PURPOSE: To prevent a printing request at high priority from being awaited by adding priority information corresponding to urgency to printing request information, and printing from the request having the higher priority.

CONSTITUTION: When printing requests from plural work stations 1 to 3 are received, a terminal controller 4 prepares a printing request information group and the priority, then rearranges the group, and prepares the printing request information group conforming to the priority. Then, the terminal controller 4 issues a printing instruction according to the priority to an external output device 6. Thus, since the priority corresponding to the urgency is added to the printing request from the respective work stations, the requests can be printed from the one having the higher priority.