JPH1132196A - Communication terminal having electronic mail function and its program recording medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To appropriately decide the mail size of an electronic mail between different networks by deciding whether data that is sent with a table which stores mail sizes in each network class is divided into electronic mails. SOLUTION: When a user who sends an electronic mail inputs his own code number, he can immediately get a user's ID, a password and a network class from a user's table T1. An electronic mail address and a network class are immediately obtained from the other party table T2 and a maximum data size in electronic mail sending is acquired. A program of division decision uses the data size of text data and a maximum data size, and it is decided whether data to be sent is divided into plural electronic mails or not. When the data size is the maximum data size or more, it must be divided. Thus, all image data accumulated in image memory is divided, made an electronic mail and sent.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a communication terminal apparatus such as a facsimile apparatus with an electronic mail function, and more particularly to a communication terminal apparatus with an electronic mail function for appropriately determining the size of electronic mail between different types of networks and the communication terminal apparatus. It relates to a program recording medium.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, a wide range of computer communication networks configured by connecting a LAN or individual personal computers to a communication line such as a telephone line has become widespread. The computer communication network includes the Internet and a personal computer communication service network. The PC communication service network has NI
FTY-Serve (hereinafter referred to as Nifty), PC-
VAN and the like. Hereinafter, each of these computer communication networks is referred to as a network type. Communication between heterogeneous networks having different network types is also possible.

In the case of using a computer communication network, there are a plurality of providers (providers) that provide services such as connection to a computer communication network, rather than directly communicating from a user to a destination. The person communicates via the computer (server) of this provider. In the personal computer communication service network, there is a host that controls the service, and the user communicates via the host computer of the host. When using a computer communication network, a user connects a line to an access point of a provider or a host, and then performs a procedure called login in order to be authenticated as a subscriber. By this login, the own communication terminal device is logically connected to the computer communication network.

[0004] There are various contents of the service. Here, electronic mail on the Internet will be described. The user stores data to be communicated in an e-mail having a predetermined format and transmits the e-mail. The e-mail includes the e-mail address (e-mai) of the sending user.
l address) and the electronic mail address of the destination. These e-mail addresses include information indicating each provider. The e-mail is stored in the mailbox of the provider contracted by the other user. The recipient user, who is the recipient, can retrieve the electronic mail from this mailbox in a timely manner. Note that a user name (user ID) represented by a character string based on a domain name system (DNS) is used for the e-mail address instead of an IP (Internet Protocol) address represented only by a numerical value.

An advantage of the computer communication network is that it employs a communication system having an excellent error correction function, and allows a user to pay a communication fee to a nearest contract provider or access point and to communicate with a remote partner. Communication is possible.

On the other hand, facsimile communication for communicating image data using a telephone line has been widely used.
Communication procedures and communication methods for this have been established. Since the communication procedure and communication method of facsimile communication are different from those of a computer communication network, a conventional facsimile device cannot be connected to the computer communication network. Accordingly, the present applicant has proposed a facsimile apparatus with an e-mail function in which a facsimile apparatus has a function of converting image data into an e-mail format and performing communication.

[0007]

Incidentally, facsimile machines are often used jointly in offices and the like in addition to personal use. When a facsimile apparatus with an e-mail function is used jointly, there are a plurality of users, various types of networks to be used, and various types of destination networks, for example, from Nifty to the Internet and from the Internet. Communication between heterogeneous networks such as Nifty occurs. However, depending on the network type, there is a limit on the amount of data that can be transmitted in one e-mail (hereinafter, referred to as allowable mail size). For this reason, an electronic mail having a large amount of data, in other words, a large mail size may not be able to be transmitted. In other words, from a network where the mail size is not limited (or the allowable mail size is large), an e-mail having a mail size exceeding the allowable mail size is transmitted to a limited (or small allowable mail size) network. Can not.

[0008] A similar problem arises not only in a facsimile apparatus but also in a communication terminal apparatus with an e-mail function that is used jointly.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to solve the above-mentioned problems and to provide a communication terminal device with an e-mail function for appropriately determining the size of an e-mail between heterogeneous networks and a program recording medium therefor.

[0010]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention determines whether data to be transmitted is divided into a plurality of electronic mails based on a table storing mail sizes for each network type. Things.

The maximum mail size of an e-mail to be transmitted is determined based on the permissible mail size of the network type on the transmission side and the permissible mail size of the network type on the reception side, and the e-mail is divided so as not to exceed the maximum mail size. May be performed.

Further, the program recording medium stores a mail size for each network type and records a procedure for determining whether to divide data to be transmitted into a plurality of electronic mails based on a table in a computer-readable manner. It is.

[0013]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

In this embodiment, the communication terminal device is G
3, a facsimile machine having a G4 facsimile communication function and an e-mail function. FIG. 1 shows a flow of the operation of the facsimile apparatus. FIG. 2 shows various tables provided in the facsimile apparatus. 2A is a user table T1 for registering a user, FIG. 2B is a destination table T2 for registering a destination, and FIG. 3C is a size table T3 for registering an allowable mail size. It is. FIG. 3 shows a circuit configuration of the facsimile apparatus.

As shown in FIG. 3, the facsimile apparatus includes a main control unit 1, a reading unit 2, a recording unit 3, a display unit 4, an operation unit 5, an external storage reading unit 6, a ROM 7, a RAM 8, an image memory 9, It comprises a modem 10, an NCU 11, and a data modem 12.

The main control unit (CPU) 1 controls each part of the hardware through a bus 13 and encodes / demultiplexes.
Software (program) such as image (TIFF) conversion, binary text conversion, mail editing, auto dialer, communication procedure, etc. can be executed. Further, a program for the division determination operation and the division operation according to the present invention can be executed.

The reading section 2 reads an original with an image pickup device such as a CCD and can generate binary black and white image data.

The recording unit 3 includes a printer of an electrophotographic system or the like, and can record (print out) image data received by facsimile communication from another G3 or G4 facsimile apparatus or image data obtained by e-mail. .

The display unit 4 includes a display such as an LCD display, and operates the facsimile apparatus, image data, and the like.
It is possible to display registered contents, operation instructions, and the like.

The operation unit 5 includes numeric keys for inputting numbers, speed dial keys for speed dial operation, one touch keys for one touch operation, various function keys, start keys, and the like. The function keys have functions such as setting a telephone number / e-mail address registration mode and selecting a communication method. The numeric keys, speed dial keys, and one-touch keys also have a function of inputting characters such as alphabets.

The external storage reading section 6 can read a program or the like recorded on an external storage medium (program storage medium) 14 such as a floppy disk or CDROM. Therefore, a program to be executed by the main control unit can be provided from the external storage medium 14.

The ROM 7 stores a program executed by the main control unit for operating the facsimile apparatus, that is, a program recording medium.

The RAM 8 is composed of an SRAM, a flash memory or the like, and stores temporary data generated at the time of executing a program, and also stores various registered data in a table format. In addition, a program obtained from an external storage can be stored and provided for execution.

The image memory 9 is composed of a DRAM and stores image data.

The modem 10 has a fax modem function and is used when performing facsimile communication of image data.

An NCU (Network Control Unit) 11 can close and open an analog line.

The data modem 12 has a data modem function and is used when communicating image data by electronic mail. The data modem 12 is connected to an external telephone terminal of the NCU, and is connected to a serial port of the external interface 15 by RS232C.

Next, a program executed by the main control unit will be described.

In encoding / decoding, image data is
Encoding and decoding are performed by encoding methods such as H, MR, and MMR. Hereinafter, the image data encoded by these encoding methods will be referred to as G3 format image data. The image memory stores the G3 format image data.

In image conversion, at the time of transmission, G3 format image data is converted to a TIFF format used by a general computer.
(Tagged Image File Format)
At the time of reception, it converts the TIFF image data into G3 format image data. In addition, TIFF is Adobe System
It is a format released by the company, black and white binary,
Various CLASSes that handle black and white multivalued, full color, and the like are defined. CLASS F, one of them
Defines G3 format image data, which is image data of a document encoded by an encoding method such as MH, MR, or MMR. Therefore, the image data in G3 format can be converted into TIFF image data by adding TIFF header information of CLASS F to the head of the image data.

In the binary text conversion, at the time of transmission,
Converts binary data to text data, and upon reception,
Convert text data to binary data. There are computers on the Internet that cannot handle binary data e-mail. When transmitting binary data such as TIFF image data so as to ensure that the e-mail reaches the destination, the data is temporarily converted to text data. The text data handled on the Internet is RFC (Request For Comments) which is a document issued by the IETF (Intenet Engineering Task Force).
822, it is defined as a 7-bit code. Here, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail)
Extensions) using base64 or the like. According to this, 6-bit binary data consists of 64 characters (upper and lower case alphabets, numbers,
+, /) And converted to text data. MIME is specified in RFC1521, etc.

In the mail editing, at the time of transmission, mail header information is added to the TIFF image data converted into text data to edit the data into an e-mail format. At the time of reception, the mail header information is removed from the data in the e-mail format, Only the TIFF image data converted into data is extracted. Since it is specified that predetermined header information is added to electronic mail on the Internet as management information of the electronic mail, at the time of transmission, "F" is added to the head of the TIFF image data converted to text data.
rom: (user address) "," To: (destination address) "," Subject: (title) ", etc. In the case of communication between heterogeneous networks, a suffix is added to the destination address. .

The auto dialer sends telephone number data to the NCU in order to call the telephone number read from the table.

The program for the division determination operation and the division operation according to the present invention will be described later in detail.

Next, the structure of the table will be described.

As shown in FIG. 3A, the user table T1 includes a code number for specifying each user who jointly uses the facsimile machine, a user ID and a password of the user, and a user ID used by the user. Network type. Therefore, if a user who wants to send an e-mail inputs a code number, a user ID, a password and a network type can be obtained.

As shown in FIG. 3B, the destination table T2 includes a destination name, an electronic mail address of the destination, and a network type used by the destination. Therefore, by inputting the name of the destination to which the e-mail is to be transmitted, the e-mail address and the network type can be obtained.

As shown in FIG. 3 (c), the size table T3 includes a network type on the transmission side, a network type on the reception side, and a maximum data size. As the maximum data size, the smaller of the allowable data sizes of the network types on the transmission side and the reception side is registered. The maximum data size can be obtained from the network type between the user sending the e-mail and the destination of the e-mail.

In each of the above tables, the user's personal name, destination abbreviated number, destination one-touch, facsimile telephone number, facsimile type, provider name and the like may be registered together.

Next, an electronic mail transmission operation including a division determination operation and a division operation will be described with reference to FIG.

When the e-mail transmission mode is set by the function keys of the operation unit, an e-mail transmission operation program is started, and the display unit and the operation unit can be used for the e-mail transmission operation. As shown in FIG. 1A, a user who wants to send an e-mail inputs his / her own code number (S1). User table T1
The user ID, password, and network type are immediately obtained. That is, the network type Net on the transmission side
1 is determined. Next, the user inputs the destination name or operates the abbreviated number key or one-touch key (S
2). An e-mail address and a network type can be immediately obtained from the destination table T2. That is, the network type Net2 on the receiving side is determined. Net1 and Ne
By referring to the size table T3 in combination with t2, the maximum data size in e-mail transmission from Net1 to Net2 is obtained (S3).

After that, when the start key of the operation unit is operated (without the start key operation in the case of one touch), reading of the original, storage in the image memory (G3 format image data), TIFF conversion, MIME conversion, electronic mail Editing, calling a phone number, logging in, and sending e-mail are performed.

In the process from the reading of the document to the transmission of the electronic mail, first, as shown in FIG.
Dummy encoding (S4) is performed. In the dummy encoding, all the image data stored in the image memory are TIFF-converted and then MIME-converted. This MIM
The data size of the text data obtained by the E conversion is obtained. The division determination program (S5) uses the data size of the text data and the maximum data size to determine whether the data to be transmitted is divided into a plurality of e-mails. If the data size is less than the maximum data size, there is no need to divide. If the data size is equal to or larger than the maximum data size, the data is divided. When dividing, the data size is divided by the maximum data size, and the number after the decimal point is rounded up to determine the number of divisions. For example, the maximum data size is 160 KB and the data size is 470 KB
, The image is divided into three parts (S5 so far). Therefore, the image data stored in the image memory is divided into, for example, three according to the number of divisions, and one division is subjected to TIFF conversion,
ME conversion is performed to form one e-mail. In this e-mail, 1/3, 2 is added to the item of “Subject:”.
By sequentially describing division information such as / 3 and 3/3, it is indicated that the e-mail is a part of what number of divisions. In this way, all the image data stored in the image memory is divided into electronic mail and transmitted. In this way, after transmitting the image data of one document by a plurality of divided or one undivided e-mail, the user logs out (S6).

To explain a specific example, as shown in FIG. 4, the facsimile apparatuses 41 and 4 with the electronic mail function are provided.
Facsimile transmission / reception via telephone lines. Further, the facsimile apparatuses 41 and 42 are connected to the Internet 46 via the servers 44 and 45, and the facsimile apparatuses 41 and 43 are connected to a personal computer communication service network 47. 44a, 45a, 47a
Is a mailbox. The facsimile device 41 can be used by users A and B. The user A has a contract with the server 44 and can access the Internet 46. User B has joined the personal computer communication service network 47. Here, when the user A transmits image data to the facsimile device 43 by e-mail, or when the user B transmits image data to the facsimile device 42 by e-mail, as described above, Since the network type is different from that of the destination, the facsimile device 41 executes the division determination based on the size table T3.

As described above, according to the present invention, an e-mail can be transmitted reliably even if there is a difference in allowable mail size depending on the network type.
In addition, since the division of the electronic mail at this time is determined by referring to the mail size registered in the table by the network type obtained from the input of the user and the destination, unnecessary division is prevented. Unnecessary division means that, for example, when the maximum mail size is fixed based on a network type with a small allowable mail size, the maximum mail size is fixed even when using a network type with a large allowable mail size. Is performed for the purpose of division. In the present invention, it is determined whether or not to divide from the permissible mail size of the network type on the transmitting side and the receiving side, and the number of divisions is also determined. Can be sent.

When an address is specified by direct input without using a user code number or a destination name (abbreviated number, one-touch), the user table T1 and the destination table T2 are not referred to. However, in the case of communication between heterogeneous networks, since a suffix is added to the destination address, communication between heterogeneous networks is determined by the presence of this suffix, and the suffix is analyzed to determine the type of network on the transmitting side and the network on the receiving side. You can know the type. For example, if the sender is Nifty, and the mail address begins with "I
NET: ”indicates that the receiving side is the Internet. Therefore, the maximum data size can be obtained based on the size table T3. Also,
If the network type or the allowable data size is unknown, the maximum data size may be adjusted to the smallest allowable data size.

In the above embodiment, the maximum data size is registered in the size table T3 in correspondence with the network type of the transmission side and the network type of the reception side, and the maximum data size is registered for the network type of the transmission side and the network type of the reception side. The maximum data size was determined based on the allowable data size for each network type in the table.
The allowable data size may be referred to for each network type on the transmitting side and the receiving side, and the smaller allowable data size may be set as the maximum data size.

Further, the present invention is not limited to a facsimile machine, but can record the above-described procedure in a program recording medium and provide the program to a communication terminal device equipped with a computer.

[0049]

The present invention exhibits the following excellent effects.

(1) It is possible to appropriately determine the mail size of an electronic mail between different networks so that the mail size is communicable and the number of divisions is not too large.

(2) The user can transmit without being aware of the network type of the destination and the allowable mail size.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart of an electronic mail transmission operation including a division determination operation and a division operation according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of various tables provided in the facsimile apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a circuit configuration diagram of the facsimile apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram in which the facsimile apparatus according to the present invention is connected to a computer communication network.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Main control part 2 Reading part 3 Recording part 4 Display part 5 Operation part 6 External storage reading part 7 ROM (program recording medium) 8 RAM 9 Image memory 10 Modem 11 NCU 12 Data modem 14 External storage medium (Program recording medium) S1 Step of inputting user S2 Step of inputting destination S3 Step of obtaining maximum data size S4 Step of dummy encoding S5 Division determination step S6 Division transmission step T1 User table T2 Destination table T3 Size table

Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification symbol FI H04N 1/00 104 H04L 11/20 101B 107

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A communication terminal device with an e-mail function, which determines whether or not data to be transmitted is divided into a plurality of e-mails based on a table storing mail sizes for respective network types. 2. The maximum e-mail size of an e-mail to be transmitted is determined based on the permissible e-mail size of the network type on the transmission side and the permissible e-mail size of the network type on the reception side so that the e-mail does not exceed the maximum e-mail size. 2. The communication terminal device with an e-mail function according to claim 1, wherein the division is performed. 3. A program recording medium in which a computer-readable recording procedure for storing a mail size for each network type and determining whether to divide data to be transmitted into a plurality of electronic mails based on a table is provided.