JP2001010170A - Method and apparatus for controlling printing and storage medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To facilitate the addition and change of a paper size by providing a storage means for storing discrimination information for discriminating printing conditions and a parameter of each paper size based on the discrimination information, retrieving the discrimination information and the parameter according to printing information, and producing concerning margin information. SOLUTION: When a printer driver 12 provides margin information to an application program 11, a margin information providing part 13 is called by the printer driver 12 to acquire the margin information. The part 13 is composed of a margin information producing part 13-1 for producing a left margin, an upper margin, and a horizontal printable area value and a margin information table 13-2 in which data necessary for producing the margin information is stored in the form of a table. According to the setting of the printer driver, the necessary ID of a data table is acquired from an index table, and the data table assigned by the ID is retrieved to obtain the margin information.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a print control apparatus for providing margin information for print control, a print control method, and a storage medium storing a program for executing the method by a computer.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Margin information providing processing usually exists as a program or library in a printer driver, and the processing information is provided to an application through the printer driver. The margin information provision processing includes, as inputs, conditions necessary for margin calculation such as the vertical and horizontal sizes of paper and the paper size name, and outputs a left margin, an upper margin, and vertical and horizontal printable area values as a result.

In the conventional margin information providing process,
Each margin is determined for each paper size, and the processing must be switched according to the size. For example, in A4 size, the left margin is 3.4 mm, but in an envelope it is 6.4 mm. In the case of a user-defined size,
The margin was calculated from the given paper size and a fixed formula.

[0004]

In the conventional method, since the calculation processing for providing the margin information is hard-coded as a program, the system itself needs to be updated every time the paper size increases.

Further, since the printable paper size differs depending on the printer model, a margin information providing system must be developed for each model. Furthermore, the method of calculating the margin does not change only with the size of the paper, but also changes under complicated conditions by supporting continuous paper type paper without top and bottom margins and perforated paper. Is coming. As a result, a margin providing system including complicated condition judgment must be developed according to the printer model.

[0006] As a result, a situation has arisen in which the development efficiency of the margin information providing system is reduced and the quality is reduced due to the complexity of the program.

[0007]

Means for Solving the Problems In order to solve the above problems, a print control apparatus, a print control method, and a storage medium according to the present invention are characterized by having the following configurations.

[0008] That is, the print control device stores identification information for identifying printing conditions and parameters for each paper size based on the identification information, and stores the stored identification information in accordance with the print information. Margin information generating means for searching for the parameter and generating the corresponding margin information.

Further, in the printing control apparatus, the storage means has an index table storing ID numbers identified according to printing conditions, and a data table storing margin information for each paper size for each ID number. .

In the printing control apparatus, the margin information generating means calculates printable areas in the vertical and horizontal directions when a user-defined sheet is specified in the print information.

Further, the print control method includes a step of storing in a memory identification information for identifying printing conditions and a parameter for each paper size based on the identification information, and storing the identification information in the memory in accordance with the print information. Margin information generating step for searching for the identification information and the parameters which are present and generating the corresponding margin information.

In the printing control method, the storing step includes storing an index table for storing ID numbers identified for each printing condition, and a data table for storing margin information for each paper size for each of the ID numbers. To be stored.

In the printing control method, the margin information generating step calculates a printable area in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction when a user-defined sheet is specified in the print information.

Further, the present invention is a storage medium storing a program for providing margin information for print control, the program comprising identification information for identifying printing conditions, and a sheet size for each paper size based on the identification information. The code of the storing step of storing the parameter in the memory and the code of the margin information generating step for generating the corresponding margin information by searching the identification information and the parameter stored in the memory in accordance with the print information. Prepare.

[0015]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS When outputting texts and images to a printer on an operating system (OS) used by an individual, a printer driver suitable for the printer model must be used. The printer driver provides various kinds of unique information and data conversion functions for the corresponding printer to the OS or application that is the calling side.

One of the information is paper margin information. The paper margin information is mainly four information such as a left margin, an upper margin, a horizontal printable area value, and a vertical printable area value as shown in FIG. The left margin is
This is the distance from the left edge of the sheet to the left edge of the area where printing is actually desired. The upper margin is a distance from the upper end of the sheet to the upper end of the area to be actually printed. The horizontal printable area value and the vertical printable area value are respectively the horizontal and vertical lengths that can be actually printed. By receiving these four pieces of information from the driver, the application can generate accurate print data for a specific printer model without cutting off data at both ends.

Next, a margin information providing system according to the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 shows a portion related to margin setting at the time of print processing on a general OS.
Reference numeral 11 denotes an application program such as a word processor or drawing software, and reference numeral 12 denotes a printer driver. The printer driver 12 provides margin information to the application program as one of printer-specific information. Reference numeral 13 denotes a margin information providing unit according to the present invention.

When the printer driver 12 provides margin information to the application program 11, it is assumed that the printer driver 12 itself has called the margin information providing unit 13 and has acquired the information.

The margin information providing unit 13 is composed of two parts, a margin information generation unit (13-1) and a margin information table (13-2). Margin information generator 13-1
Generates a left margin, an upper margin, and printable area values in the vertical and horizontal directions. The margin information table 13-2 stores data necessary for the margin information generation unit 13-1 to generate margin information in a table format.

The tables are usually stored in a file format, and there are two types of tables, index tables and data tables. The data table stores paper sizes and various margin values corresponding thereto. The index table contains the setting conditions of the printer driver and the data table that contains margin information that matches the setting conditions.
ID is stored. The margin information generation unit first obtains a required data table ID from the index table according to the settings of the printer driver, and further retrieves the data table specified by the ID to obtain margin information.

The printer and the printer driver 12 according to the present embodiment support paper sizes A4, A5, B5, envelope, and postcard size, and the user can turn on continuous paper as a special function from the user interface on the driver. / OF
F, ON / OFF of perforated paper can be selected. “Continuous paper” is paper in which paper of a certain size is continuously connected, and is a specially-shaped paper having a vertical margin of 0 mm. `` Perforated paper '' is a special paper size intended to print at the full size of the paper by perforating the top, bottom, left and right edges of the paper, cutting the perforation after printing the entire inside of the perforation is there. When the setting of the continuous paper is selected to be ON, the setting of the perforated paper cannot be selected, and the value of the margin dedicated to the continuous paper is set for each paper size. Similarly, when perforated paper can be selected and ON is set, a margin value dedicated to perforated paper is set for each paper size. As described above, the setting of the margin changes according to the setting selected by the user.

FIG. 2 shows a flow of a margin information providing process according to the present invention.

In step S21, parameters are received from a calling side (in the present embodiment, a printer driver). Parameters include vertical and horizontal paper size, paper size code that encodes paper size, and ON / OFF of continuous paper and ON / OFF of perforated paper, which are printing conditions.
Receive information on.

Next, the process proceeds to step S22, in which the index table is read from the margin information table to the memory. Here, the structure of the index table is as shown in FIG. This table stores the ID of a data table in which printer driver setting values and corresponding margin information are stored. In FIG.
When the continuous paper setting is ON, refer to the data table with ID = 100. When the continuous paper is OFF and the perforated paper setting is ON, ID = 110, and both the continuous paper and the perforated paper are used. When it is OFF, it means that ID = 120 is referred to. Note that ALL in the figure means that all states are matched. The index table describes conditions relating to all margin settings, and is prepared so that there is one table ID suitable for any setting.

In step S23, the index table loaded in the memory is searched based on the print condition items obtained in step 21, and an ID of a data table matching the print conditions is obtained.

Next, in step S24, the data table of the ID acquired in step S23 is loaded into the memory. Each data table for each table ID has a structure as shown in FIGS. 4 (a), (b) and (c).
The unit of the value of the margin is 1/100 mm. The data table contains each paper size, and a left margin, an upper margin, and a vertical and horizontal printable area value corresponding to the size. For example, in the table of ID = 100, for A4 size paper, the left margin is 340, the upper margin is 0, the horizontal printable area value is 20320, and the vertical printable area value is 29700. However, in the case of the user-defined size, the value of the maximum marginal printable area is set instead of the value of the horizontal printable area, and the value of the lower margin is set instead of the value of the vertical printable area.

Next, the process proceeds to step S25, in which the data table loaded in the memory in step S24 is searched based on the paper size code obtained in step S21, and the upper margin, the left margin, and the vertical and horizontal printing are possible. Get the region value. However, only in the case of the user-defined size, the maximum horizontal print area value and the lower margin value are obtained instead of the vertical and horizontal printable area values.

In step S26, it is determined whether or not the paper size code obtained in step S21 means a user-defined size, and if it is a user-defined size (S26-Y).
es) advances the process to step S27. If the size is other than the user-defined size (S26-No), the process proceeds to step S2.
Proceed to 8.

In step S27, each margin value for the user-defined size is calculated. This is because only in the case of the user-defined size, the printable area value in the vertical and horizontal directions changes according to the value of the actual size obtained in step 21.
This is because it must be calculated. The printable area values in the vertical and horizontal directions are obtained by the following equations using the values obtained in step S25.

Horizontal printable area value = paper horizontal size− (left margin value) × 2 However, if horizontal printable area value> maximum printable area value, the maximum printable area is the horizontal printable area value.

Vertical printable area value = vertical size of paper- (upper margin value)-(lower margin value) In step S28, the calling side is notified of the left margin, upper margin, and vertical and horizontal printing determined in step S25 or step S27. Return the possible area value to the caller and end the process.

With the above processing, the margin information is provided to the printer driver.

In the present embodiment, the tables are stored using the file system, but the method of realizing the tables is not limited as long as the tables and programs are separated. Further, the effect of the invention is not changed even if the program section is written in a ROM or the like and is made into hardware, so that the program format is not limited.

[0035]

[Other Embodiments] Even if the present invention is applied to a system including a plurality of devices (for example, a host computer, an interface device, a reader, a printer, etc.), an apparatus (for example, a copying machine) Machine, facsimile machine, etc.).

Further, an object of the present invention is to provide a storage medium (or a recording medium) recording a program code of software for realizing the functions of the above-described embodiments to a system or an apparatus, and to provide a computer (a computer) of the system or the apparatus. It is needless to say that the present invention can also be achieved by a CPU or an MPU) reading and executing the program code stored in the storage medium. In this case, the program code itself read from the storage medium implements the functions of the above-described embodiment, and the storage medium storing the program code constitutes the present invention. Also,
When the computer executes the readout program code, not only the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized, but also the operating system (OS) running on the computer based on the instructions of the program code.
It goes without saying that a case where the functions of the above-described embodiments are implemented by performing some or all of the actual processing, and the processing performs the functions of the above-described embodiments.

Further, after the program code read from the storage medium is written into a memory provided in a function expansion card inserted into the computer or a function expansion unit connected to the computer, the program code is read based on the instruction of the program code. Needless to say, the CPU included in the function expansion card or the function expansion unit performs part or all of the actual processing, and the processing realizes the functions of the above-described embodiments.

When the present invention is applied to the storage medium, the storage medium stores program codes corresponding to the above-described flowchart (shown in FIG. 2).

[0039]

As described above, the margin information is stored in the table file, the program section and the data section of the margin information generating means are separated from each other, and the program section is made common, whereby the paper size is reduced. Can be easily added and changed.

It is possible to deal with each printer by creating only a table file for the model.
Development efficiency can be improved.

Further, by using two types of tables, an index table and a data table, even when complicated conditions are given, it is possible to easily search and generate margin information without requiring a program modification of the margin information generating means. It becomes possible.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a system configuration.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a flow of a process of providing margin information.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of an index table.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a configuration example of a data table for each table ID.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating margin information.

[Explanation of symbols]

 11 Application Program 12 Printer Driver 13 Margin Information Providing Unit 13-1 Margin Information Generating Unit 13-2 Margin Information Table

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification symbol FI Theme coat ゛ (Reference) G06F 3/12 G06F 3/12 ME

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. An identification information for identifying a printing condition,
Storage means for storing parameters for each paper size based on the identification information, and margin information generating means for searching for the stored identification information and parameters according to print information and generating corresponding margin information; A print control device, comprising: 2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the storage unit stores an index table storing an ID number identified for each printing condition.
The print control apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a data table storing margin information for each paper size for each D number. 3. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the margin information generating unit calculates a printable area in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction when a user-defined sheet is specified in the print information. Print control device. 4. An identification information for identifying a printing condition,
A storage step of storing parameters for each paper size based on the identification information in a memory; and a margin for searching the identification information and the parameters stored in the memory in accordance with print information and generating corresponding margin information. An information generating step; and a print control method. 5. The storage step includes: an index table for storing an ID number identified for each printing condition;
5. The print control method according to claim 4, wherein a data table storing margin information for each paper size for each D number is stored in a memory. 6. The margin information generating step according to claim 4, wherein a printable area in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction is calculated when a user-defined sheet is specified in the print information. Print control method. 7. A storage medium storing a program for providing margin information for print control, the program comprising: identification information for identifying printing conditions; and a paper size for each paper size based on the identification information. A code of a storing step of storing the parameter in the memory, and a code of a margin information generating step for searching the identification information and the parameter stored in the memory according to the print information and generating corresponding margin information; A storage medium comprising: