A printing system includes a printer in which particular information is
set to designate the printer is a qualified printer, and a host device
for transmitting print information created by a particular application to
the printer. The particular application has an information adding unit
that adds information to the print information. The printer has a
decision unit that decides whether the information added to the print
information matches the particular information stored in the printer, and
a print processing unit that prints the print information only if this is
the case. This arrangement enables qualified electronic form data to be
printed only by a qualified printer, and a qualified printer to print
only qualified electronic form data, without requiring significant
modifications of existing printer programs or electronic form data
specifications.