JPH07125332A - Font control device in recording apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain an equal printing result regardless of the difference of a printing system by performing printing output on the basis of the data from a font control means returning separate font data set when a request font is judged to be a font to be substituted. CONSTITUTION:When a formatter 130 as a printing data forming means outputs a font request to be used on the basis of the printing data loaded down from a host computer 108, a font control part 132 judges whether the request font is a font to be substituted. The formatter 130 returning separate font data preset with respect to the request font when the request font is judged to be the font to be substituted and receiving separate font data reads font data from a magnetic disk device 106 as a font file on the basis of the received data to form printing data and delivers the formed data to a printing part 109 to perform printing.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer, and more particularly to a font management device in a recording device such as a laser beam printer for printing bitmap fonts.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Generally, in a laser beam printer, printing methods can be roughly classified into two types according to the relationship between a laser beam and an image. One is the background lighting method, which prints the areas that are exposed to light in white and the areas that are not exposed to black. On the other hand, an image writing method is one in which the part where light rays are irradiated is printed in black and the part which is not irradiated is printed in white. The laser beam printer uses the image writing method and the background writing method,
It is known that images printed by both methods have different printing results even if the same bitmap data is used due to the property of light diffusion. FIG. 8 shows the difference in print results between the image writing method and the background writing method. When the same bitmap data is used for printing, the background writing method has a smaller black portion as a character portion than the image writing method. Conventionally, a printer that applies an optical copying machine has been a background lighting system, but this system has a large total amount of light emitted to the photosensitive drum, and this system has a large change over time, which is problematic in terms of maintainability. Therefore, in recent years, many have adopted the image writing method.

[0003]

When using a font other than the font attached to the printer, the bitmap font created and managed by the host computer is downloaded to the printer, and then the font name is specified in the print data. Specify and print. Now, it is assumed that the font data to be downloaded is created optimally for a printer that uses the background writing method. As mentioned above, in the background lighting method, the black part that is the character part becomes thin, so the font data suitable for this printer is
It is a bitmap in which the characters are thickened in advance by printing. When another image writing printer is added to this same host computer, the bitmap font data created for the background writing printer is downloaded and printed on the new printer. As mentioned above, in the image writing method, the black part that becomes the character part becomes thicker, so in addition to the thickened bitmap, it becomes thicker by printing, and the printing result is the printing of the background writing type conventional printer. The part of the character that is different from the result will be thick. In this way, if the thickness of the black part changes, it becomes difficult to read or decipher especially in a machine-readable font such as a barcode. Therefore, for image writing printers, it is necessary to download a bit map font for image writing in which the character portion is thinned in advance by printing.

Therefore, in a host computer using a printer of both the background writing system and the image writing system, two bitmap fonts are prepared for each font, You must tell each printer which one to download. Also, the font is 2
Two types of print data are prepared by having different types.
Since it is necessary to instruct each printer which one to use, there is a problem that management becomes complicated. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention is intended to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a font management device in a recording device that can obtain the same printing result regardless of the difference in the printing method.

[0005]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recording device for downloading font data, designating the downloaded font by a selection command, and printing out the data, based on the downloaded print data. A font to be used, read the font data from the font file and create printing data, and whether the requested font from the printing data creation means is the font to be replaced. And a font managing means for returning different font data preset for the requested font when it is judged to be a font to be replaced, and a printing means for printing out based on the data from the print data creating means. It is characterized by having and. According to a second aspect of the present invention, in a recording device for downloading font data, designating the downloaded font by a selection command and printing out the data, a font to be used is requested based on the downloaded print data, and the font is used. A printing data creating means for reading font data from a file to create printing data, a font replacement table for registering a font corresponding to a requested font from the printing data creating means, a replacement source font name and a replacement destination The font replacement table content update request means for presenting the font name and requesting the update of the contents of the font replacement table and the corresponding font data from the font replacement table according to the requested font from the print data creating means are returned. , Font replacement table contents update request procedure A font management means for updating the contents of the font substitution table in response to a request from, characterized in that a printing means for printing out on the basis of data from the print data creating means.

[0006]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, when a font request used by the printing data creating means is issued based on the print data downloaded from the host computer, the font managing means is the font to be replaced by the requested font. If it is determined that it is a font to be replaced, another font preset for the requested font
The printing data creation means that returns the data and receives another font data reads the font data from the font file based on the received data, creates the printing data, and passes the created data to the printing means. Is printed. According to the second aspect of the present invention, the request for updating the contents of the font replacement table held by the font management means is made by presenting the replacement source font name and the replacement destination font name from the font replacement table content updating request means.
In response to this request, the font management means updates the contents of the font replacement table, and thereafter, the font management means judges the replacement destination font based on the updated contents.

[0007]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 is a basic hardware configuration diagram of the print control apparatus. In the figure, 100 is a central processing unit (hereinafter, CPU) that analyzes character information of print data sent from a host computer 108 (hereinafter, referred to as HOST) by a preselected formatter.
Is called). Reference numeral 101 is a main storage device used by the CPU. Reference numeral 102 is an input / output interface for receiving data from HOST. Reference numeral 103 denotes an input / output interface for outputting the format-converted print data to the print output device and at the same time receiving the status (information indicating the state of the print output device) from the print output device. Reference numeral 104 is an input / output circuit for exchanging with external devices such as a display, a disk device, and a keyboard. A CRT display 105 is for displaying guidance and job status necessary for operation on the screen. A disk device 106 spools print jobs and stores fonts, forms, images, and the like. A keyboard 107 is a means for activating the system, selecting a system menu, and inputting necessary character information. 108 is
H with print data to be sent to this print control system
It is OST. Reference numeral 109 denotes a print output device (hereinafter, referred to as IOT) that actually prints on paper according to an instruction from the print control device. This IOT has 110 (IC card)
, 111 (ROM cartridge) can be installed, and resources such as fonts can be loaded.

FIG. 2 is a basic software configuration diagram of the print control apparatus. 120 indicates hardware, 121 indicates
It is called device control and consists of programs that make hardware operate efficiently. 1
22 is a disk operating system (hereinafter, D
It is called an OS) and controls resources such as a hard disk and a floppy disk. Reference numerals 120 to 122 are created for single task, and these are 123 real-time multitask operating system (hereinafter, referred to as RTMTOS) that can be operated for multitask. The above is called basic software, on which the joining software 124-
127 (hereinafter referred to as translation software) exists.

Translation software 124-
Reference numeral 127 is for trapping a function called by the print control software and selectively executing the optimum processing from the basic software. Parameter mismatches within functions are also handled within this translation. Parameters required by the basic software will be newly created and unnecessary parameters will be deleted. Reference numeral 124 denotes an OS (operating system) call conversion for DOS or RTMTOS, which is a task-related control command, memory management-related, or interrupt control-related command (CreateTask or Allocate Mem).
ory and the like is typical).
Reference numeral 125 is a file management call conversion command (Open command) related to file handling in a multitasking environment
File and Read File are typical). Reference numeral 126 is software for converting IO (input / output) control call conversion and converting IO control commands. Reference numeral 127 is software for converting control commands relating to keyboard input and CRT output by user interface call conversion.

Numeral 129 is an input data control unit for converting data to H level.
Input from OST to register print jobs. 1
30 is a formatter, which will be described later in 131 (print output control).
The data is reformatted so that it can be printed easily, and an intermediate print language (hereinafter referred to as print specifications) is created. A print output control unit 131 interprets a print specification created by a formatter, actually develops it into a bitmap, and prints it. A job control unit 128 communicates with the input data control unit, the formatter, and the print output control unit by mail to control the flow of the entire printing.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the print control software. The font data exists as a file in the hard disk 106 for each font. The input data from the HOST is received by the input data control unit 129 and passed to the formatter 130. Formatter 13
0 builds an image from input data. Formatter 13
The font data used in 0 is managed by the font name. The formatter calls a function of the font management unit 132 with a font name as an argument when font data is needed,
The file ID (index) of the font file is obtained as the font ID. After that, the formatter 130
Reads the font data based on the font ID,
Used for image formation. The font management unit 132 can refer to / update the contents of the font replacement table 133. As described above, the thickness of the character portion changes depending on the printing method. Therefore, in the case where this font is not the font data that matches the printing method of the printing unit 109 for the font name transferred from HOST. Should be replaced with the appropriate font data.
Therefore, a font replacement table 133 is prepared, and a font name that needs to be replaced, a font name that should be adopted corresponding to the font name, data that indicates whether or not replacement is necessary, and the like are stored.

Next, referring to FIG. 4, an embodiment of font substitution of the font management unit will be described. Now, "BARCODE" and "BAR" are used as barcode fonts. 2 of PRT2 "
There are two fonts, "BARCODE" is the background printing method, "BARCODE" It is assumed that "PRT2" is suitable for the image writing printing method, the printer of this embodiment is the image writing printing method, and the "BARCODE" font is sent from HOST. At this time, the formatter 130 is a bar code font “BARCODE” that is affected by a slight change in the line thickness.
In order to use, the function of the font management unit 132 is called. The font management unit 132 uses the font replacement table 133.
Refer to. Since the font ID is "4" for "BARCODE" which is a request from the formatter, "4" is returned as the font ID. The formatter reads the font data stored in the hard disk based on this font ID "4" to form an image. I
D "4" is suitable for image writing printing method "B"
AR Since it is "PRT2", correct printing can be performed by the printing unit of the image light, regardless of the print data for background light sent from the HOST.

In the example of FIG. 4, the font replacement table 13
A font name and a file ID corresponding to the font name are stored in the table 3 in the form of a table, and the hard disk 106 has four fonts. Mincho: Alphabet font, no font replacement required Gothic: Alphabet font, no font replacement required BARCODE: Bar code font for background light, font replacement required BAR PRT2: Bar code for image light
There are fonts and no need for font replacement, and their font IDs are 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

On the other hand, the font replacement table 133
Has font IDs of 1, 2, 4, and 4. The font is replaced by the difference between the font ID in the font replacement table and the file ID in the hard disk.

Since the Mincho font, Gothic font, etc. are intended to be read by human eyes, even if a font for a background writing printer is printed on an image writing printer, no trouble occurs. do not do. On the other hand, BARCODE fonts and MICR fonts (E13BP, etc.), which are supposed to be read by machines, have fonts for background writing printers that are printed on image writing printers. The replacement of is mandatory.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing another embodiment of font substitution in the font management section. In this embodiment, the formatter 130 sets the requested font name to "BARC.
The function of the font management unit 132 is called as "ODE". The font management unit 1 that has received the font ID response request
32 refers to the font replacement table 133. In the font replacement table 133, for the “BARCODE” font, the replacement target font “BAR PRT
2 ”is registered. The font management unit 132 determines that the font name “BARCODE” from the formatter is the font to be replaced, and uses the font “BAR”. Check the file ID of "PRT2". The font management unit 132 displays "BAR ID of "PRT2"
Acquire "4". The font management section is "BAR PRT2 ”font I
"4" which is D is returned to the formatter as the font ID of the "BARCODE" font. The example of FIG. 5 also has the same conditions as the case of FIG. In this example, the font ID is not stored in the font replacement table, and only the replacement target font name is stored. Since the font management unit accesses the font replacement table and the hard disk each time the formatter calls a function, it takes more time to answer than the example of FIG. 4, but the size of the font replacement table can be reduced. Becomes Therefore, this embodiment is effective for a device in which resource is more important than time.

FIG. 6 updates the contents of the font substitution table.
It is a figure which shows the Example which does. In the font substitution table
The content is updated via the user interface 134.
Do it. Change the "BARCODE" font to "BAR PR
When replacing with "T2" font, the user interface is "BARCODE" font.
And "BAR Font with "PRT2" font as an argument
The function of the management unit 132 is called. The font management section is "BAR PRT2 ”file I
Examine D. As a result, the font management unit acquires ID = 4. The font management unit displays "BARC" in the font replacement table.
Updated by inserting "4" instead of "3" in "ODE"
I do. After that, using the method shown in FIG. 4, the "BARCODE" font
When using "BAR Return the file ID of "PRT2"
Becomes

FIG. 7 shows another method for updating the font substitution table.
It is a figure which shows the Example of. In this embodiment, the user interface 134 is “BARCOD
"E" font and "BAR" PRT2 ”font as an argument
The function of the event management unit 132 is called. The font management unit displays "BARC" in the font replacement table.
"ODE" font and "BAR" PRT2 ”font name
To the required font name and used font name items, respectively.
Pay and change the font replacement necessity flag to "Yes".
It After that, using the method shown in FIG. 5, the "BARCODE" font
When using "BAR Return the file ID of "PRT2"
Becomes In this embodiment, the font replacement table 133
Is the requested font name, used font name, replacement required flag
And the need for replacement changes with time.
It is advantageous when

The font to be replaced (BA in the above example
R Introduction of PRT2 font) into printer system
Is an optional cartridge font or floppy
-Use a medium such as a diskette. Customer needing replacement
Printers from these media when installing after purchasing the printer
・ Replacement font in the system (BAR in the above example PR
T2 font) is introduced. In the replacement font data
Is the replacement source font name (BARCODE in the above example)
Font) is stored. Font manager replaces
Font replacement table when fonts are installed in the system
Automatic table from media by updating
The change is made to reduce the burden on the user.

The table may be updated by downloading the replacement font from HOST. This method involves updating on the HOST side,
By reducing the items that the administrator of the printer should perform at the time of installation, there is no inconsistency in the status of multiple printers,
One HOST is effective when centrally managing a large number of printers. Already replaced font (BA in the above example
R When the replacement source font (BARCODE font in the above example) is downloaded to the printer equipped with the PRT2 font), the replacement source font is not used. In such a case, the information of the replacement source font is discarded when downloading. As a result, useless storage of font information is avoided and the magnetic disk is effectively used. In each of the above embodiments, only the replacement method for the font on the hard disk is described, but the fonts on other media such as the font in the cartridge and the font in the IC card can be similarly replaced. Is. In particular, in the case of a bar code, it is possible to prevent the line thickness from changing depending on the printing method and causing a hindrance to machine reading.

In addition to fonts, the same problem can be solved by using the same means for forms, images and logos.

[0022]

According to the invention of claim 1, a printer not suitable for the font data managed by HOST has a font corresponding to the downloaded font,
Since the download font selected by the print data is replaced with the optimum font for the printer, the HOST can obtain the same print result despite the difference in the image forming method while managing only one font. it can. According to the second aspect of the present invention, the relationship between the replacement source font and the replacement destination font can be updated using the user interface, so that it is possible to cope with the case where the printer format is changed.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a basic hardware configuration diagram of a print control apparatus.

FIG. 2 is a basic software configuration diagram of a print control device.

FIG. 3 is a configuration diagram of print control software.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of font substitution of a font management unit.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing another embodiment of font substitution of the font management unit.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of updating a font replacement table.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing another embodiment of updating the font replacement table.

FIG. 8 is a comparison diagram of print results according to image forming methods.

[Explanation of symbols]

100 ... Central processing unit (CPU), 101 ... Main storage device, 102 ... Input / output interface, 103 ... Input / output interface, 104 ... External device interface, 105 ... CRT display, 106 ... Magnetic disk device, 107 ... Keyboard, 108 ... Host computer, 120 ... Hardware, 121 ... Device control,
122 ... Disk operating system, 123 ...
Real-time multi-task system, 124 ... OS call conversion, 125 ... File management call conversion, 126 ...
IO control call conversion, 127 ... User interface call conversion, 128 ... Job control section, 129 ... Input data control section, 130 ... Formatter, 131 ... Print output control section, 132 ... Font management section, 133 ... Font substitution table, 134 ... User interface.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A recording device which downloads font data, specifies the downloaded font by a selection command, and prints out the data, requests a font to be used based on the downloaded print data, and extracts the font file from the font file. font·
When the print data creation means that reads the data and creates the print data and the font requested by the print data creation means is the font to be replaced, and the font to be replaced is determined A recording apparatus comprising: a font management unit that returns different font data preset for a requested font; and a printing unit that prints out based on the data from the printing data creation unit. Font management device. 2. A recording device which downloads font data, specifies the downloaded font by a selection command and prints out the data, and requests a font to be used based on the downloaded print data, and from the font file. font·
The print data creation means that reads the data and creates the print data, the font replacement table that registers the fonts corresponding to the fonts requested by the print data creation means, the replacement source font name and the replacement destination font name The font replacement table content update request means for presenting and requesting the update of the contents of the font replacement table, and the corresponding font data from the replacement table according to the requested font from the print data creation means, and the font replacement table content A recording apparatus comprising: a font management means for updating the contents of the font substitution table in response to a request from the update requesting means; and a printing means for printing out based on the data from the printing data creating means. Font management device.