JPH06100906B2 - Character processing method - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a character processing method capable of maintaining a relationship of equal line widths even after scaling processing.

[Prior Art] In a character processing device which has character data in an internal ROM (Read Only Memory) or an external storage device and outputs characters, various character sizes such as a heading effect and an emphasis effect can be stored in a small capacity data size. To output medium to large size with relatively high quality to a display device, printer, etc., the reference character data has an array of coordinate points on the contour, and the coordinate points are set according to the specified output size. 2. Description of the Related Art A character processing device has been put into practical use, which performs enlargement or reduction calculation and then exchanges dot information for output.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in the above-mentioned conventional example, the reference character data is used as the absolute coordinate value of the coordinate point on the contour, and the enlargement or reduction ratio according to the designated output size is added to the coordinate value. Since the final coordinates are simply obtained by multiplication, the horizontal or vertical line thickness which should be originally uniform as shown in FIG. 4 (a) is caused by the quantization error that occurs when the final coordinates are reflected on the grid points in the final output size. There is a problem in that the quality of the appearance is significantly deteriorated especially when converted to small size characters.

[Object] In view of the above points, an object of the present invention is to reduce or enlarge a character corresponding to coordinate point information specified by reference information without presetting an optimum value of a line width correction value based on an enlargement size. Attached to the reference outline by adding the calculated relative distance information corresponding to the relative distance information from the reference outline based on the coordinate point information specified by the reference information to the calculated coordinate point information. The coordinate point information of the character to be output corresponding to the coordinate point information for expressing the outer shape is derived, and based on the derived coordinate point information, it is converted into dot information and output, so that after scaling processing Another object of the present invention is to provide a character processing method capable of maintaining the relationship of equal line widths.

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

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a character processing device to which the present invention is applied. It is needless to say that the present invention can be applied to this device whether it is a single device or configured as a system.

Reference numeral 1 denotes a control unit of this apparatus, which includes a microcomputer (2), RAM (Random Access Memory), ROM (Read Only).
Internal memory (3) composed of memory, etc., hardware
It has an external memory consisting of a disk, a floppy disk, or a cartridge disk (4,5,6).

The external storage device 5 that stores the reference character data
Corresponds to the storage means of the present invention.

An image reader 7 is an image input unit for converting an image placed on a document table into an electric signal by an image pickup device such as a CCD.

An image output unit 8 is a high-speed printer (H10) that records an image on a recording material based on information converted into an electric signal, such as a laser beam printer.

9 is a CRT device for displaying control information of this device,
It is an image processing display unit of the present invention.

Reference numeral 10 denotes a keyboard provided in the control unit 1, and operating the keyboard 10 gives an operation command of the apparatus. Reference numeral 11 is a pointing device for instructing the image information to be processed on the CRT 38, and the cursor on the CRT 9 is arbitrarily moved in the X and Y directions to select a command image on the command menu and give the instruction. Reference numeral 12 is a VRAM which develops data to be displayed on the display unit 9 on a bit map. For example, in the case of character data, character image information corresponding to the code is expanded on the VRAM 12.

A program memory (PMEM) 3 appropriately selects and executes a program for editing processing and a processing program according to a flowchart of FIG. 3 described later from the hard disk 4.

The data input and arithmetically processed by this apparatus can be expanded on the image memory IMEM (13) and output from the output unit 8 corresponds to the fourth step of the present invention.

14 is BMU (bit manipulation unit)
It is possible to do DMA transfer between VRAM (12), PMEM (3), and IMEM (13) without going through the CPU. At the time of transfer, bit-by-bit logical operation, expanded figure rotation, scaling, etc. It has the function of.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the contents of reference character data stored in the external storage device 5 of FIG. Fig. 2 (a)
Reads the necessary data from multiple basic character data according to the code specified by KBD10 and mouse 11, so the offset part and the data length from the beginning of the actual data storage area are recorded from the index part a1 and the actual data part a2. It is a figure which shows the comprised character data structure. Fig. 2 (b)
FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the contents of character data read based on the code specified in a2, which is composed of a header part b1 and a coordinate value data part b2. Here, the contents of b1 and b2 will be described for the case of storing a simple character graphic in FIG. 2 (c).

The character pattern “day” in FIG. 2 (c) is coordinate origin 0, and the point sequence on the contour in the x / y coordinate system is 0,1,2 ...
Expressed as 1.

At this time, the number of coordinate points in b1 is PN = 12, the total number of contours is CN = 3, the contour start point table ST [0] = 0, ST [1] = 4, ST [2] =
8 The size of this table is specified by the CN. b2 is a data array showing the coordinate values of the point sequences 0, 1, 2, ..., 10 and 11 on the contour of the pattern shown in (c) above.

In the pattern shown in FIG. 2C, there are three horizontal lines and two vertical lines. If the absolute values of the line widths are H and V, for example, the horizontal line 4-5 is another horizontal line 0-1 serving as a reference.
From the vertical line 9-10 in the Y direction from the other vertical line 1-2 serving as a reference. Here, the standard line and the line accompanying it are determined by whether or not they represent the outer shape of the pattern.

FIG. 2 (d) is a diagram for explaining one of the arrays in (b) b ₂ with respect to the x coordinate. This data has a width of 16 bits, and the highest bit Sx is 0 if the x-coordinate value of the point is the reference outline and 1 if it is an auxiliary outline.
Is recorded. When Sx = 0, the other bits Cx record the distance from the coordinate origin in (c). Sx = 1
In the case of (c), the Rx7 bit represents the value indicating the position of the array recording the reference coordinates referenced by that point, and the Fx8 bit represents the relative distance from the reference coordinates referenced above. In the case of this embodiment, −16384 ≦ Cx16383, 0 ≦ Rx ≦ 12
7, −128 ≦ Fx127.

Note that Cx and Cy correspond to the coordinate point information stored in the storage means of the present invention.

Further, Sx and Sy correspond to the identification information stored in the storage means of the present invention.

Further, Rx and Ry correspond to the reference information stored in the storage means of the present invention.

Further, Fx and Fy correspond to the relative distance information stored in the storage means of the present invention.

Next, the control unit 1 for enlarging and reducing the reference character data read in the external storage device 5 according to the output size designated by the KBD 10 and the mouse 11 and recording the result in the IMEM (13) will be described. To do.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart for explaining the operation of the control unit 1, but for simplification, it is limited to the x coordinate value. Since the y-coordinate value may be calculated in the same manner, it is omitted here. When the operator [] is A [B], the content at position B of array A is taken out. When the operator · is A · B, the content of the component B belonging to the data A is taken out. When the operator & is A & B, the ethical product of the data A and the bit mask B is taken and only the effective bit number of B is obtained.

An array in is an array of basic data stored in the external storage device 5 in FIG. 1, and an array out is in the IMEM 13 in FIG. 1 and is an array for storing output data as a result of this operation, cur p
Is the control variable for repetition (current point), rate is the first
KBD10 in the figure, a scaling parameter for converting to a size instructed by the mouse 11, ROUND (x) is an optimum quantizing means for projecting the calculation result of x onto digital data in the output area, for example, a decimal point 4 or less. It is an integer conversion by rounding off, and SX, RX, FX and CX are constant masks respectively representing the bit masks Sx, Rx, Fx and Cx in FIG. 2 (b).

The operation of each step in the flowchart of FIG. 3 will be sequentially described below.

Step f1: iteration control variable cur initialize p (ie cur p = 0).

Step f2: The x coordinate component is set to 1 from the basic data array in.
Take out (that is, in [cur p] · x), the most significant bit Sx is determined. As a result, if the Sx bit is 0, the process jumps to step f3, and if the Sx bit is 1, the process jumps to step f4.

Step f3: This is the processing when the most significant bit Sx is 0 in the judgment of the above-mentioned step f2, and the other bit Cx of the x coordinate component extracted in step f2, that is, the coordinate value part, is ANDed with the constant mask CX. Then, the scaling operation and the optimum quantization (ROUND) of the result are applied to this using the scaling parameter rate, and the output data array out
(That is, out [cur p] · x).

The process of step f3 corresponds to the first step of the present invention.

Step f4: This step f to step f6, which will be described later, is the process when the most significant bit Sx is 1 in the determination of the above step f2. First, that point is referred to from the x coordinate component extracted in step f2. Temporary variable ref that takes out the position of the array that records the standard coordinates to be used by AND operation with the constant mask RX and stores the reference array position Temporarily store in p.

Step f5: From the x coordinate component extracted in step f2,
The relative distance between that point and the reference coordinate to be referred to is taken out by the logical product operation with the constant mask FX, and the scaling factor and the optimum quantization (ROUND) of the result are performed using the scaling parameter rate. And the result is a temporary variable off
Temporarily store in.

The process of step f5 corresponds to the second step of the present invention.

Step f6: Temporary variable ref indicating the reference array position temporarily stored in step f4, the value corresponding to the reference coordinate to be referred to which has already been subjected to the scaling operation. Output data array using p
out (that is, out [ref p] · x), and the operation result off corresponding to the relative distance temporarily stored in step f5 is added, and the result is output data array out (that is, out [cur p] · x).

The process of step f6 corresponds to the third step of the present invention.

Step f7: After the arithmetic processing of the above-mentioned step f3 and after the arithmetic processing of steps f5, 6, and 7, the control variable cur repeated in this step update p (ie cur p = cur p +
1), as a result, the total number PN of coordinate points of one character pattern
If smaller, jump to step f2. That is, the processing from step f2 to step f6 described above is repeated. Also updated cur If the value of p is not smaller than the above-mentioned PN, the processing of this flowchart is ended.

In this flow, out [ref of step f6 p] · x
Must have already been determined by the calculation of step f3 at that point. In other words, the coordinate points corresponding to the main outer shape should not be ahead of the coordinate points representing the auxiliary outer shape on the array. Therefore, the coordinate values representing the coordinate points on the contour may be set to satisfy this, or logically satisfy this (for example, only when the determination result in step f2 is 0, all calculations are performed in advance).

FIG. 4 (b) shows an output example of the actual character "raw" according to the present invention as an easy-to-understand diagram.

It should be noted that the values of FX in the flow of FIG. 3, that is, the offset values of the contour points representing the incidental outer shape, can be all uniform or can be limited to several types in the system implementing the present invention (for example, horizontal lines of Mincho type). Since the thickness is almost uniform in the same typeface), it can be calculated uniformly at the time of determining the enlargement / reduction ratio.

Therefore, if the calculation of the variable off is performed outside the flow of FIG. 3, the number of calculations can be further reduced.

[Effects] As described in detail above, according to the present invention, the enlarging / subtracting operation corresponding to the coordinate point information specified by the reference information is performed without presetting the optimum value of the line width correction value based on the reduction / enlargement of characters. By adding the scaled relative distance information corresponding to the relative distance information from the reference outer shape based on the coordinate point information specified by the reference information to the calculated coordinate point information, the coordinate information is attached to the reference outer shape. Even after scaling processing, the coordinate point information of the character to be output corresponding to the coordinate point information for expressing the outer shape is derived, and converted to dot information based on the derived coordinate point information and output. , It has become possible to provide a character processing method that can maintain the relationship of equal line widths.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a character processing device according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIGS. 2 (a) to 2 (d) are views for explaining a case of storing reference character data. FIG. 3 is a processing flow chart showing the operation of the control unit 1, and FIGS. 4 (a) and 4 (b) are diagrams showing an output example of the “raw” conventional apparatus and the character processing apparatus according to the present invention. 1 ... control unit, 7 ... manuscript reader 8 ... printer, 9 ... CRT device 10 ... keyboard, 11 ... mouse 12 ... VRAM, 13 ... IMEM 14 ... BMU

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Storage means for storing reference character pattern data as coordinate point information, wherein the identification information is for identifying whether or not the coordinate point information is coordinate point information for representing a reference outline. And reference for specifying coordinate point information for indicating the reference outer shape and coordinate point information for indicating the reference outer shape to be referred to for showing the outer shape accompanying the reference outer shape A character is desired by using a storage unit that stores information and relative distance information from the reference outline based on the coordinate point information specified by the reference information for representing the outline associated with the reference outline. Is a character processing method for scaling at a magnification of, wherein the coordinate points are stored based on identification information indicating that the coordinate point information stored in the storage means is coordinate point information for representing a reference outline. The information is expanded at the above magnification. A first step of performing a size reduction operation and deriving coordinate point information of a character to be output corresponding to the coordinate point information for representing the reference outer shape, and the coordinate point information stored in the storage unit is used as a reference. Corresponding to the coordinate point information specified by the reference information, the second step of performing the scaling operation on the relative distance information based on the identification information indicating that it is not the coordinate point information for expressing the outer shape. In the second step, the scaling calculation is performed in the second step in which the coordinate point information scaled in the first step corresponds to relative distance information from a reference outer shape based on the coordinate point information specified by the reference information. A third step of deriving coordinate point information of a character to be output corresponding to coordinate point information for representing an outer shape associated with the reference outer shape by adding the relative distance information, 3rd work Character processing method of zooming on the basis of the derived coordinate point information, a character, characterized by a fourth step for converting the dot information at a desired magnification by the.