JPH09156158A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To print a ruled line with good quality. SOLUTION: This printer comprises a receiving section 2 that receives print data transmitted from a host device, a developing section 4 that develops the print data accumulated in the receiving section 2 to bit-map data, an image forming memory 6 that accumulates the bit-map data developed by the developing section 4 and a printing section 8 that prints out the bit-map data in accordance with image forming coordinates accumulated in the image-forming memory 6. The developing section 4 comprises a ruled line shape data memory means 10 that stores shape data of the ruled lines (ruled line auxiliary data) corresponding to character codes indicative of ruled lines, a ruled line character generating means 12 that sets a prescribed line width to the shape data stored in the ruled line shape data memory means 10 when a character code designated by the print data is of the ruled line and a line width calculating means 14 that calculates the width of the line to be added to the shape data based on a size of the character designated in the print data and the resolution of the printing section 8.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer device for printing outline fonts, and more particularly to a printer device for printing ruled lines.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In conventional ruled line printing, outline data is expanded into bitmap data and printed as in the case of normal characters. That is, the outline expansion firmware (F / W) is used to enlarge or reduce the ruled line by the coordinate calculation by the CPU.

According to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-10069, the outline data and the firmware for the outline space are used to print with a font size larger than the designated enlargement / reduction ratio. The ruled lines are not broken.

In Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 5-309872, high-quality enlarged printing in which the dot widths (thicknesses) of a plurality of 1-dot-long vertical ruled lines are unified with respect to simply output ruled line data with a simple circuit configuration A method of obtaining an output in real time is disclosed. This is hardware (H /
W) is used to obtain a ruled line output having a 1-dot width.

[0005]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional example, when enlarging or reducing outline font data according to a designated character size, the enlarging or reducing process is realized by calculation of coordinate data. Therefore, there is a problem that the character contour is distorted during the reduction calculation and the contour is rattled during the enlargement calculation.

In particular, in the case of a simple pattern such as ruled line characters, the calculation errors thereof are prominent and the line width becomes uneven, and the balance of the characters which should be left-right symmetric is deteriorated. Has been pointed out as.

In the technique described in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-10069, since the ruled line characters are printed with a font size larger than the specified enlargement / reduction ratio, the ruled lines are not interrupted, but the enlargement ratio is simply increased. The calculation error cannot be prevented only by changing the, and the problem that the lines are not aligned or the characters are out of balance cannot be solved.

Further, in the technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-309872, when the bitmap data is expanded,
This is processed when enlarging a vertical ruled line with a width of 1 dot, and there is no guarantee for enlarging or reducing outline data.

[0009]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a printer apparatus which is capable of improving the disadvantages of the conventional example and, in particular, capable of printing ruled lines with high quality.

[0010]

Therefore, in the present invention, as a first means, a receiving unit that receives print data transmitted from a higher-level device and print data accumulated in this receiving unit are converted into bitmap data. The image forming apparatus includes an expanding unit for expanding, a drawing memory for accumulating the bitmap data expanded by the expanding unit, and a printing unit for printing out the bitmap data at the drawing coordinates accumulated in the drawing memory. In addition, the expansion unit stores the ruled line shape data storage unit in which the ruled line shape data corresponding to the character code indicating the ruled line is stored in advance, and the ruled line shape data storage unit when the character code specified in the print data is the ruled line. Ruled line character generating means for setting a predetermined line width in the formed shape data, and a line width for calculating the thickness of the line width given to the shape data based on the character size specified in the print data and the resolution of the printing section. And a calculation means.

In the first means, regarding the printing of the ruled line, the line width calculating means uniformly calculates the weight (thickness) of the ruled line based on the character size designated by the print data and the resolution of the printing section, The ruled line character generation means sets the line width calculated by the line width calculation means in the shape data stored in the ruled line shape data storage means regardless of the outline data expansion. Moreover, since the weight of the ruled line is calculated by the line width calculating means based on the resolution of the printing unit, the rounding process of dots required depending on the enlargement ratio and the printing position is not performed. Therefore, the ruled lines having the same character size have a constant line width.

In the second means, in addition to the item for specifying the first means, the line width calculation means is arranged with a plurality of line width control points for designating the line width of the ruled line, and the arrangement of the X coordinate and the Y coordinate. Arrangement information storage means for storing information is additionally provided, and the line width calculation means calculates the midpoint at the drawing coordinate of the X coordinate based on the character width of the character size and Y based on the character height.
Midpoint calculation function that calculates the midpoint in the drawing coordinates of coordinates, and linewidth control point position calculation function that calculates based on the position resolution in the drawing coordinates of each linewidth control point that is defined as the ratio from the midpoint It is equipped with and.

In the second means, in the calculation of the line width, the X coordinate and the Y coordinate in which a plurality of line width control points for designating the line width of the ruled line are defined and the drawing coordinate in the drawing memory are matched, First, the midpoint of the X and Y coordinates of the ruled line of one character is calculated, and then the position of the line width control point defined as the ratio from this midpoint is determined. Furthermore, since the ruled line character generating means generates coordinate data or bitmap data for each ruled line based on the position of the line width control point at the coordinates that match the drawing coordinates in this drawing memory, the character size is the same. The ruled lines having different shapes have the same line width.

In the third means, in addition to the matter for specifying the second means, the ruled line character generating means has a control point selection function for selecting a line width control point based on the line width designation designated by the print data. It is equipped with the structure.

The present invention aims to achieve the above-mentioned object by each of these means.

[0016]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the arrangement of a printer device according to the present invention. The printer device receives the print data transmitted from the higher-level device, the receiving unit 2, the expanding unit 4 that expands the print data accumulated in the receiving unit 2 into bitmap data, and the expanding unit 4. A drawing memory 6 that stores bitmap data and a printing unit 8 that prints out bitmap data at the drawing coordinates stored in the drawing memory 6 are provided.

In addition, the expanding unit 4 stores the ruled line shape data (ruled line auxiliary data) corresponding to the character code indicating the ruled line in advance, and the character code specified in the print data is the ruled line. The ruled line character generating means 12 for setting a predetermined line width in the shape data stored in the ruled line shape data storage means 10 at a certain time, and the shape data based on the character size designated by the print data and the resolution of the printing section. A line width calculating means 14 for calculating the thickness of the line width is provided.

This will be described in detail.

The expansion unit 4 generally comprises outline font storage means for storing outline font data, and outline font expansion firmware for expanding the outline font data into bitmap data. . To develop the outline font data into bitmap data, first, the data is taken out from the outline font storage means and the characters are enlarged or reduced to create coordinate data. Then, the outline of the character constituted by the coordinate data is filled.
This bitmap data is drawn in the drawing memory 6.

In this embodiment, an outline font is not used when printing ruled lines. When the print data transmitted from the higher-level device includes a character code designating a ruled line, the ruled line character generating means 12 generates coordinate data of the ruled line. The ruled line character generating means 12 does not use the data from the outline font storage unit, but generates the coordinate data from the shape data (ruled line auxiliary data) of the defined ruled line of monologue.

The ruled line character generating means 12 generates coordinate data of ruled lines based on the shape data whose line width is undefined and the line width calculated by the line width calculating means. The ruled line shape data is prepared for all ruled lines, and is defined by a structure that can be searched by a character code. Therefore, the search time for the shape data is shortened, and the data structure of the entire shape data is relatively simple.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for explaining the calculation processing of the line width of the ruled line by the line width calculation means 14. The line width calculation means 14 calculates the line width of the ruled line at the drawing coordinates in the drawing memory based on the character size specified by the print data. This line width is calculated so that even ruled lines having different shapes have the same line width if the character sizes are the same.

The line width calculating means 14 calculates the line width based on the arrangement information that defines the arrangement of the portion drawn as a ruled line. If the shape, character size, and line width of the ruled line are clear, points that can be arranged are explicitly determined. FIG.
As shown in, a ruled line is drawn between points indicated by and if it is a thin ruled line, and a ruled line is drawn between points defined by and if it is a thick line.

Here, the points indicated by the X and Y coordinates shown in FIG. 2 are called line width control points. This line width control point is defined as a ratio from the midpoint. Figure 2 shows the minimum number (6 ways) to show the appearance of ruled lines.
Is shown. Here, a set of line width control points of X coordinate and Y coordinate is referred to as arrangement information. This placement information is stored in the placement information storage unit 18. Further, in the example shown in FIG. 2, the line width control points are defined for each of the X coordinate and the Y coordinate. However, for example, only 6 points are defined for the X coordinate and only the and are defined for the Y coordinate. Alternatively, the line width given by can be applied to the midpoint of the Y coordinate.

The line width calculation means 14 calculates the midpoint of the X coordinate based on the character width of the character size and the midpoint of the Y coordinate based on the character height by the midpoint calculation function.
This midpoint is the midpoint in the area of one character in the drawing coordinates of the drawing memory 6. Further, the line width control point position calculation function calculates the position at the drawing coordinates of each line width control point determined as the ratio from the midpoint, based on the arrangement information shown in FIG. Further, this line width is output to the ruled line character generating means.

By such processing, the line width calculating means 14 can calculate the line width that is uniquely determined by the character size and the resolution of the printing unit 14 (resolution of drawing coordinates in the drawing memory). Therefore, the thickness of the ruled line does not change, and therefore the ruled line can be printed with high quality.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing an example of processing for generating coordinate data of ruled lines. When the print data is received, the expansion unit 4 confirms whether the character code in the print data is a ruled line (step S1, character attribute determination function).

If the line is not a ruled line, a normal outline font expansion process is performed and the image data is printed out.

If the line is a ruled line, the character size of the character code is checked to see if the line width has been calculated for the character size. If the line width has not been calculated, the line width calculation means 14 is activated to first determine the midpoint based on the character size (step S2). Furthermore, based on the resolution of the printing unit 8 and the position of the midpoint,
The position of each line width control point is calculated (step S3).

On the other hand, the ruled line character generation means 12 reads out the shape data corresponding to the character code from the ruled line shape data storage means 10 (step S4). Further, the line width control point is selected based on the line width specified by the character attribute attached to the character code or the line width specified by the character code itself (step S5). Next, the line width portion overlapping the shape data is extracted and used as coordinate data. Development unit 4
Fills the outline of the character determined by the coordinate data and stores it in the drawing memory 6.

When the ruled line to be printed is a dotted ruled line such as a horizontal dotted line or a vertical dotted line, since the shapes are different, special processing is performed to obtain the coordinate value. Further, in the case of dot ruled lines and other ruled lines, when a space request with a very small character size is issued, the coordinate value is corrected by each method.

[0033]

Since the present invention is constructed and functions as described above, according to this, the line width calculating means determines the weight (thickness) of the ruled line based on the character size designated by the print data and the resolution of the printing section. ) Is uniformly calculated and the ruled line character generation means sets the line width calculated by the line width calculation means to the shape data stored in the ruled line shape data storage means regardless of the outline data expansion. The ruled line can be printed using only the line width that the calculation unit stably generates according to the resolution of the printing unit. Therefore, for ruled lines with the same character size, the line width should always be constant. You can As described above, it is possible to provide an excellent printer device which is not available in the related art and which is capable of printing ruled lines with high quality.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of line width calculation by the line width calculation means shown in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a ruled line expansion process in the configuration shown in FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 2 receiving unit 4 developing unit 6 drawing memory 8 printing unit 10 ruled line shape data storage unit 12 ruled line character generation unit 14 line width calculation unit 18 arrangement information storage unit

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A receiving unit for receiving print data transmitted from a higher-level device, a developing unit for expanding the print data accumulated in the receiving unit into bitmap data, and bitmap data expanded by the expanding unit. In a printer device including a drawing memory that stores a drawing line and a printing unit that prints out bitmap data at the drawing coordinates stored in the drawing memory, the expansion unit creates a ruled line corresponding to a character code indicating a ruled line. Ruled line shape data storage means for storing shape data in advance, and ruled line characters for setting a predetermined line width in the shape data stored in the ruled line shape data storage means when the character code specified in the print data is a ruled line Generating means and calculating the thickness of the line width given to the shape data based on the character size designated by the print data and the resolution of the printing unit. Printer apparatus comprising the line width calculating means that. 2. An X coordinate and a Y in which a plurality of line width control points that specify the line width of the ruled line are defined in the line width calculation means.
An arrangement information storage unit that stores arrangement information of coordinates is also provided, and the line width calculation unit calculates the midpoint of the drawing coordinate of the X coordinate based on the character width of the character size and the character height. Based on the resolution, the midpoint calculation function for calculating the midpoint of the Y coordinate in the drawing coordinate based on the above, and the position in the drawing coordinate of each of the line width control points defined as a ratio from the midpoint based on the resolution. The printer device according to claim 1, further comprising a line width control point position calculation function for calculating the line width control point position. 3. The ruled line character generating means is provided with a control point selecting function for selecting the line width control point based on a line width designation specified by the print data. Printer device.