JPH05165940A - Electronic filing system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide the electronic filing system which effectively utilize a small-sized general computer like a personal computer without exclusively using the extension slots of a computer main body by various boards. CONSTITUTION:A magneto-optical disk device 3 for image data storage is connected to the personal computer 11, which controls the input and output of data to and from the magneto-optical disk device 3. An image processor 5 is connected to the personal computer 11 through an input/output interface and the image processor 5 performs image processing. Then an image scanner 7 and a printer 9 are connected to the image processor 5 and decentralized processing is performed by the personal computer 11 and image processor 5.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic filing system, and more particularly to an electronic filing system using an image scanner, a magneto-optical disk device or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Documents, drawings, etc. are captured as an image by an image capturing means such as an image scanner, image processing is performed on this image and converted into appropriate image data, and this image data is stored as a file in a storage device such as an optical disk device. However, there is known an electronic filing system configured to read image data from the storage device in response to a request, transmit the image data to a laser beam printer, and output a hard copy of the image data.

This electronic filing system includes a dedicated machine and a system using a small general-purpose computer such as a personal computer.

[0004]

An electronic filing system using a dedicated machine generally has a problem that it is expensive and lacks versatility in system construction because the entire system including peripheral equipment is constructed by dedicated equipment. I'm out. In addition, this electronic filing system is generally C
Although it has an image processing gate array and an LSI separately from a main processor such as PU, it has only one CPU, which is used for image processing such as image compression / expansion, rotation, enlargement, and reduction.
I / O processing is performed for all input / output devices such as image scanners, magneto-optical disk devices, and laser beam printers. Therefore, the CPU processing speed limits the speed of data input / output processing. In order to speed up the input / output processing, it becomes necessary to use an expensive high-speed CPU.

In an electronic filing system using a small general-purpose computer such as a personal computer, the small general-purpose computer performs all image processing and input / output processing on the internal memory, so the processing speed is slow. In addition to the problem that the CPU has a large load, this electronic filing system has an external input / output interface board for an external device such as an image scanner or a laser beam printer, an image compression / expansion processing board, and a magneto-optical disk device. Since the system is constructed by loading the interface board etc. for the computer into the expansion slot of the computer main body, the expansion slot of the computer main body is occupied by these boards, and physical restrictions are imposed when using it for other purposes of the small general-purpose computer. It causes the problem of giving.

The present invention has been made by paying attention to the above-mentioned problems in the conventional electronic filing system, and a small general-purpose computer such as a personal computer without occupying the expansion slot of the computer main body with various boards. Effective use of image processing,
An object is to provide an electronic filing system that performs input / output processing at high speed.

[0007]

According to the present invention, there is provided a storage device for storing image data such as a document and a drawing, a computer system for controlling access of data to and from the storage device, and It is connected to a computer system through an input / output interface, has a main processor, an image processor, an input interface for image capturing means, and an output interface for a printer, and inputs an image signal from the input interface to perform image processing. An image processing device that bidirectionally transmits image processed image data to and from a computer system and that outputs image data to the output interface, and is connected to the input interface of the image processing device,
An image capturing unit that captures an image of a document, a drawing, or the like and outputs the image signal to the image processing apparatus, and the output interface of the image processing apparatus are connected, and image data is given from the image processing apparatus to print. And an electronic filing system.

In order to achieve the above object, the electronic filing system according to the present invention is characterized in that the image processing apparatus includes a data compression / decompression module of the MMR encoding system.

[0009]

According to the above construction, the data input / output to / from the storage means, that is, the processing such as the file operation is performed by the computer system, and the image processing, the input of the image signal from the image capturing means and the output of the image data to the printer are performed. The processing is performed by the image processing apparatus, and the distributed processing is performed by the computer system and the image processing apparatus.

[0010]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the overall configuration of an electronic filing system according to the present invention. The electronic filing system includes a small general-purpose computer system 1,
It is constructed by a magneto-optical disk device 3 as a mass storage device, an image processing device 5, an image scanner 7 as an image capturing means, and a laser beam printer 9.

The small general-purpose computer system 1 includes a general-purpose general-purpose personal computer 11 having a prop disk drive, a CRT 15 as a display device connected to the personal computer 11 by an analog RGB cable 13 and the like, and a personal computer 11. Keyboard 1 connected by keyboard cable 17
9 and 9. In addition to the keyboard 19, as input devices, the personal computer 11 includes
A pointing device such as a mouse may be connected.

Although not shown in the figure, the personal computer 11 has a CP of 16 bits, 32 bits or the like.
U and main memory (internal memory) are built in, the operating system, system program, and various parameters are read from the floppy magnetic disk of the prop disk drive, information regarding filing management information is fetched from the keyboard 19, and the CRT 15 is read. The screen display of various information and operation instructions and the input / output of data to / from the magneto-optical disk device 3 and the image processing device 5 are controlled.

A hard disk unit is connected to the personal computer 11 as an external memory,
Operating system, system program,
Various parameters may be stored.

Although not shown in the figure, the personal computer 11 has a plurality of normal expansion slots on its back surface, and two of these expansion slots each have an input / output interface with a connector. Boards 21, 23
(See FIG. 2) is loaded. The input / output interface by the input / output interface boards 21 and 23 is a bidirectional pair or the like and has an asynchronous transmission type, for example, A
NSI (American National Sta)
SCSI (S by the Nardard Institute)
mall Computer System Inte
rface).

The input / output interface board 21 has an SC
The magneto-optical disk device 3 is connected by an SI input / output interface cable 25, and the image processing device 5 is connected to the input / output interface board 23 by a SCSI input / output interface cable 27.

The magneto-optical disk loaded in the magneto-optical disk device 3 is an image data file area for storing image data as each file by the personal computer 11 and a database file area for storing a database file of management information for filing image data. And are formatted so that they are reserved respectively.

The image processing apparatus 5, as shown in FIG. 2, is a RISC (reduced instruction set computer) -CPU.
Main processor 29, an image processor 31 which is a bitmap processor, and a main memory 33.
A frame memory 35 for storing image data, a binary image signal compression / expansion module 37, an input / output interface section 39 for connection with the personal computer 11, a floppy disk interface section 41, a font card, etc. It has a font generator 45 to which font data is given from the font ledge 43, a scanner interface unit 47, and a printer interface unit 49.

The main processor 29, the image processor 31, the main memory 33, the binary image signal compression / expansion module 37, the input / output interface unit 39, and the floppy drive interface unit 41 are bidirectionally connected to each other by the multi-bus 51, and the image The processor 31, the frame memory 35, the binary image signal compression / expansion module 37, the font generator 45, the scanner interface unit 47, and the printer interface unit 49 are bidirectionally connected to each other by an image bus 53.

The input / output interface section 39 for connecting to the personal computer 11 has an SCS equivalent to the SCSI standard of the input / output interface board 23 when the input / output interface board 23 is of the SCSI standard.
According to the I standard.

Binary image signal compression / expansion module 37
Is an MMR (Modified Modified Re) that is a standard encoding method for G4 digital facsimiles.
ad) It may be a data compression / decompression module of an encoding system. This is because in order to maximize the compression efficiency, the information change pixels changing from white to black on each scan line, or vice versa, are more than the reference pixels on the encoding scan line or other scan lines. This is an encoding method in which the relative distance is used to perform encoding without limiting the number of scanning lines, and thereby the image data capacity can be significantly reduced.

A floppy disk drive unit 55 is connected to the floppy disk interface unit 41 so that the floppy disk drive unit 55 reads the operating system and system program for the image processing apparatus 5 from the floppy magnetic disk loaded therein. Is becoming

The image scanner 7 is connected to the scanner interface section 47 by a scanner video cable 57.

The laser beam printer 9 is connected to the printer interface section 49 by a printer video cable 59.

The image processing device 5 operates according to a predetermined system program, binarizes the image signal input from the image scanner 7 to the scanner interface section 47 by the image processor 31, converts the image signal into image data, and converts the image data. Data is compressed by the main processor 29 and the binary image signal compression / expansion module 37 to be processed at high speed as numerical data.

FIG. 3 shows a processing flow in the electronic filing system according to the present invention. When filing the drawing OD, a scanner reading command is sent from the personal computer 11 to the image processing apparatus 5.
When the image processing device 5 receives the scanner reading command,
The image processing device 5 outputs a start command to the image scanner 7 to read the image reading data of the drawing OD from the image scanner 7, and the read image signal is used as bitmap data in the frame memory of the image processing device 5. Enter in 35.

In response to a command from the personal computer 11, the image processing apparatus 5 generates data such as enlargement, reduction, rotation and MMR compression in the frame memory 35, and transmits this data to the personal computer 11. In other words, the read image signal is converted into predetermined image data by the image processor 31 of the image processing device 5, and this image data is converted by the main processor 29 and the binary image signal compression / expansion module 37 of the image processing device 5. The data is compressed and transmitted to the personal computer 11 via the input / output interface cable 27.

The personal computer 11 reads the contents of the drawing by the image data from the image processing device 5
A screen name is displayed on the RT 15, and a file name or the like is attached to the image data from the image processing device 5 based on the filing management information input from the keyboard 15, and the image data is transmitted to the magneto-optical disk device 3 by the input / output interface cable 25. The input filing management information is transmitted to the magneto-optical disk device 3 by the input / output interface cable 25.

As a result, the magneto-optical disk apparatus 3 writes the image data, in this case, the image of the drawing OD in the image data file area of the magneto-optical disk as a single file in the MMR compressed state, and the filing management information of the drawing OD. To a database file that is built in the database file area.

When drawing out the drawing OD filed on the magneto-optical disk of the magneto-optical disk device 3,
The file name of the file is input from the keyboard 15.
As a result, the personal computer 11 searches the magneto-optical disk of the magneto-optical disk device 3 for a file of the corresponding image data, reads it out, displays it on the screen of the CRT 15, and, if necessary, reads it out and filing management information related to the drawing. Is read from the magneto-optical disk of the magneto-optical disk device 3 and is displayed on the CRT 15.

The image data of the drawing OD read by the personal computer 11 is printed by the input / output interface cable 27 together with the print output command and the image processing apparatus 5 is operated.
Transmitted to. The image processing device 5 receives the image data of the drawing OD and the print output command, and the image data is then stored in the frame memory 35 by the main processors 29 and 2.
The value image signal compression / expansion module 37 performs expansion / decompression, performs processing for printout, and outputs this to the laser beam printer 9. As a result, the laser beam printer 9 prints the drawing OD and outputs it.

If necessary, the filing management information relating to the read-out drawing is transmitted from the personal computer 11 to the image processing apparatus 5 by the input / output interface cable 27, and the filing management information is processed for printout. Laser beam printer 9
And is also printed out by the laser beam printer 9.

The input / output operations of the data filing as described above are all performed by operating the keyboard 19 of the personal computer 11 on the basis of the screen display by the CRT 15 of the personal computer 11, whereby the user can recognize the presence of the image processing apparatus 5. I / O operations of data filing can be performed without being conscious of, and the transparency of the processing space can be obtained here.

In the above, the present invention has been described in detail with respect to a specific embodiment, but the present invention is not limited to this, and various embodiments are possible within the scope of the present invention. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art.

[0035]

As will be understood from the above description, according to the present invention, a storage means such as a magneto-optical disk device and an image processing device are connected to a small general-purpose computer such as a personal computer, and an image scanner is connected to the image processing device. An electronic filing system is constructed by connecting the image capturing means and the printer as described above, and the input / output of data to / from the storage device, that is, file operation and the like is performed by a small general-purpose computer, and image processing and image signal transfer from the image capturing means are performed. The input processing and the output processing of the image data to the printer are distributed processing, which is performed by the image processing apparatus, so that the data filing processing can be performed at low cost and at high speed.

In the electronic filing system according to the present invention, an image processing apparatus is connected to a small general-purpose computer such as a personal computer, and an image capturing means such as an image scanner and a printer are connected to the image processing apparatus. Therefore, as viewed from the small general-purpose computer, the input / output device including the image capturing means and the printer is integrated into one, and the input / output processing in the small general-purpose computer is facilitated. In this case, the expansion slot of the computer body of the small general-purpose computer is not occupied by the external input / output interface board for the external device such as the image scanner or the laser beam printer, and is physically used in the other uses of the small general-purpose computer. No more restrictions.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the overall configuration of an electronic filing system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing in detail an embodiment of an electronic filing system according to the present invention centering on an image processing apparatus.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an outline of a processing flow in the electronic filing system according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 small general-purpose computer system 3 magneto-optical disk device 5 image processing device 7 image scanner 9 laser beam printer 15 CRT 19 keyboard 21, 23 input / output interface board 25, 27 input / output interface cable 29 main processor 31 image processing processor 35 frame memory 37 Binary image signal compression / expansion module 51 Multi-bus 53 Image bus

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A storage device for storing image data such as documents, drawings, etc., a computer system for controlling the input / output of data to / from the storage means, and a main processor and an image which are connected to the computer system via an input / output interface. It has a processor, an input interface for image capturing means, and an output interface for a printer, inputs an image signal from the input interface to perform image processing, and bidirectionally transmits the image-processed image data to a computer system. And an image processing device that outputs image data to the output interface, and that is connected to the input interface of the image processing device, captures an image of a document, a drawing, or the like, and outputs the image signal to the image processing device. Image capturing means, and the output of the image processing device. Electronic filing system connected to the interface, characterized in that a, a printer for printing given the image data from the image processing apparatus. 2. The electronic filing system according to claim 1, wherein the image processing apparatus includes a data compression / decompression module of an MMR encoding system.