JPH01286867A - Document preparing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable the articles of a plurality of pages to be printed at high speed by converting the articles of a long page which requires a long time of conversion in data for printing in advance before the start of printing. CONSTITUTION:When the articles of a single page consisting of characters and figures provided in a mixed form are saved in a document storage section 3, an analysis section for documentary data conversion speed 8 checks all documentary data of a document storage section 3 before printing and calculates a conversion time for each page based on the number of ordinary characters and figures and each unit conversion time. Then, the analysis section detects a page requiring a longer conversion time than the operating time of a drive stop control device 7. After this, the document data of such a page is retrieved from the document storage section 3, then it is converted to dot data and stored in a temporary storage section 9 for advance-converted data. Next, this dot data is read from the temporary storage section 9 for advance-converted data per page, and the document data of a page which is not stored in the temporary storage section 9 for advance-converted data is read from the document storage section 3. Finally, the readout document data is converted in a data buffer for printout conversion 5 and then is output to a printout device 6.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a document creation device that develops print data into dots on a page-by-page basis and prints the dots.

BACKGROUND TECHNOLOGY In general, this type of document creation device prepares for printing on a page-by-page basis by developing document data composed of code data into dot data for printing, and then starts printing by starting a page printer, which is a printing device. By repeating this operation page by page, multiple pages of the document are printed.

In this case, in order to extend the life of the printing device, the printing device is configured to stop driving if the next data is not input after a predetermined period of time has elapsed after printing one page.

FIG. 3 shows a conventional document creation device of this type.

In FIG. 3, 1 is a document input section for inputting documents; 2 is a document editing section for editing documents by deleting, moving, copying, etc. from the document input section 1; 3 is a document editing section 2 As shown in FIG. 4, the document storage unit 4 for storing a document edited by
This is a character pattern storage section in which a character pattern (dot data) for printing each character, such as a pit map pattern of 24.32x32 dots, is stored.

5 is a print output development data buffer for decomposing print data into dots and developing this dot data page by page as described later; 6 is a print output for printing with the print data from the print output development data buffer 5. The device (page printer) 7 is a print output development data buffer 5
This is a drive stop control device that stops the drive of the print output device 6 in order to extend the life of the print output device 6 when no data is input to the print output device 6 for a predetermined period of time.

Next, the operation of the above conventional example will be explained with reference to FIG.

In FIG. 4, for example, when a one-page document containing a mixture of characters "Japanese..." and figures is stored in the document storage unit 3, and this document is to be printed, one page of documents is stored in the document storage unit 3. The data is extracted, character patterns corresponding to each character ``日'', ``hon'', ``word'', and ``no'' of the character data ``Japanese'' are extracted from the character pattern storage unit 4, and the characters for one page are extracted. The pattern data is expanded into the print output expansion data buffer 5.

Note that graphic data of the document data is developed by drawing dot data of the circle in the print output development data buffer 5 by a program based on vector information, for example, center position data and radius data in the case of a circle.

When the development of the character pattern data for one page is completed, the print output device 6 is activated and this data is outputted to the print output device 6, thereby printing one page of the document.

When printing of one page of document is completed, character pattern data for the next page is expanded and printed, printing one page at a time, and the data of the next page is printed even after a predetermined time has passed. When the output is not output to the output device 6, the drive stop control device 7 stops the drive of the print output device 6, and when the data of the next page is input, the print output device 6 is activated again and prints that page.

Therefore, in the conventional example described above, it is possible to print a document of multiple pages by developing document data of multiple pages into dot data of a character pattern for each page and printing.

Problems to be Solved by the Invention However, in the above-mentioned conventional document creation device, document data of multiple pages is developed into dot data of character patterns for each page and printed, and figures etc. are drawn by a program. The time required for this development becomes longer, and therefore, as shown in the upper part of FIG.
Since the print output device 6 is prepared for printing (time r) for each page, there is a problem that the printing speed is slow.

Note that the print output device 6 such as a page printer does not become ready to print immediately after startup, but for a certain period of time after startup, for example, 1.
It becomes ready to print after 0 seconds, so it takes a long time to develop the dot data, and once the print output device 6 is stopped, time is wasted due to the preparation time r for printing the next page. However, it is not possible to print multi-page documents at high speed.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In view of the above-mentioned conventional problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a document creation device that can print documents of multiple pages at high speed.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to achieve the above object, the present invention calculates in advance the time it takes to develop document data into printing data for each page, and processes the document data of pages whose development time is longer than a predetermined time. Converts the document data into printing data, converts the document data of pages whose development time is shorter than a predetermined time into printing data at the time of printing, and outputs these printing data page by page to printing means. This is what I did.

Effects According to the above configuration, the present invention develops a document whose pages take a long time to develop into printing data before printing starts, so that data can be quickly output to the printing means during printing, and therefore, the printing means can quickly output the data for each page. Multi-page documents can be printed at high speed without stopping the drive.

EXAMPLES Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing an embodiment of a document creation device according to the present invention, and FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for comparing the operations of FIG. 1 and a conventional document creation device. Components that are the same as those shown in FIG. 3 are given the same reference numerals.

In FIG. 1, 1 is a document input section for inputting documents using a kana keyboard, etc.; 2 is a document editing section for editing documents from the document input section 1 by deleting, moving, copying, etc.; and 3:
As shown in FIG. 4, a document storage section 4 for storing the document edited by the document editing section 2 as code data stores one character, for example, a bitmap pattern of 24 x 24.32 x 32 dots. This is a character pattern storage section in which character patterns (dot data) for printing are stored.

5 is a print output development data buffer for decomposing print data into dots and developing this dot data page by page as described later; 6 is a print output for printing with the print data from the print output development data buffer 5. The device (page printer) 7 is a print output development data buffer 5
This is a drive stop control device that stops the drive of the print output device 6 in order to extend the life of the print output device 6 when data from the print output device 6 is not output for a predetermined period of time.

Reference numeral 8 denotes a document data development speed analysis unit that calculates the development time of document data for each page in advance based on the document data from the document storage unit 3 and detects pages whose development time is longer than the operating time of the drive stop control device 7. , 9 is a pre-expanded data storage section for expanding page data detected by the document data expansion speed analysis section 8 in units of pages.

Next, the operation of the above embodiment will be explained.

In FIG. 1, for example, when a one-page document containing a mixture of characters "Japanese ~" and figures as shown in FIG. 4 is stored in the document storage unit 3, and this document is printed, document data development speed analysis The unit 8 examines all document data from the document storage unit 3 before printing, and calculates the time required for developing dot data for printing for each page.

In this case, the data can be classified as (1) normal characters, which are stored in the character pattern storage unit 4 and whose dot data is copied as is to the print output development buffer 5, which takes a relatively short development time; (2) double-width, white characters; (3) Special characters, such as shaded characters, which are newly generated by a program from a seed character pattern and take a little longer to develop; There are shapes that take a long time to develop.

The document data expansion speed analysis unit 8 calculates the number of these normal characters,
The development time of each page is calculated based on the number of special characters, the number of figures, and the unit development time of each, and the drive stop control device 7 calculates the development time of each page.
Detects pages whose expansion time is longer than the operating time.

Then, the document data of that page is taken out from the document storage unit 3 and developed into dot data as shown in FIG.
The pre-expanded data is stored in the storage section 9.

After executing the above processing, the dot data of the page stored in the pre-expanded data storage unit 9 is read out for each page, and the document data of the page that is not stored in the pre-expanded data storage unit 9 is stored as a document. Read from part 3 and read from part 4
As shown in the figure, when the data is expanded by the print output expansion data buffer 5 and outputted to the print output device 6, the print output device 6 is activated only when printing the first page of the document, as shown in the lower part of FIG. Therefore, when printing an n-page document, the printing time can be reduced by a maximum of (n-1)r compared to the conventional example.

In addition, the lower part of Figure 2 shows the figure b1 of the page with a long development time,
This shows a case where only b2 and b3 are expanded before printing, and characters a2 and a3 other than this figure are expanded during printing. In this case, all the data on the page that takes a long time to develop is not expanded before printing. , printing can start earlier.

As described in detail, the present invention calculates in advance the time required to develop document data into print data for each page, and converts the document data of pages whose development time is longer than a predetermined time into print data. When printing, the document data of pages whose development time is shorter than a predetermined time is converted into printing data, and these printing data are output to the printing means page by page, so printing can be done quickly. Therefore, multi-page documents can be printed at high speed.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing an embodiment of the document creation device according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for comparing the operations of FIG. 1 and the conventional document creation device, and FIG. is a functional block diagram showing a conventional document creation device, and FIG.
FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of the operation of the document creation device shown in FIGS. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1... Document input section, 2... Document editing section, 3... Document storage section (first storage means), 4... Character pattern storage section, 5... Print output expansion data buffer ( 6. Print output device, 7. Drive stop control device, 8. Character data expansion speed analysis section, 9. Pre-expanded data time storage section (second storage means). ).

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) a first storage means for storing document data;
a second storage means for storing print data expanded from the document data stored in the first storage means in page units;
, calculates the development time for each page of the document data stored in advance in the third storage means and the first storage means, and stores the document data of pages whose development time is longer than a predetermined time in the first storage. means for reading page by page from the means, converting it into data for printing and storing it in the second storage means; and at the time of printing, document data of pages whose development time is shorter than a predetermined time from the first storage means. Read page by page,
A document creation device comprising means for converting the data into printing data and storing it in the third storage means, and outputting the printing data stored in the second and third storage means page by page to the printing means. (2) Claim (1) characterized in that the predetermined time is the time from when the printing means finishes printing the page until it stops driving if data for the next page is not input.
) The document creation device described in ). (3) The document creation device according to claim (1) or (2), characterized in that graphics of document data on pages whose development time is longer than a predetermined time are developed in advance, and data other than the graphics is developed at the time of printing. .