JPH07334318A - Printer driver - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable high-speed expansion by providing an expanding means which expands a command into bit map data or an intermediate command and a means which transfers the command or data to a printer, and performing an expanding processing on a side judged to be adequate as a result of performance comparison. CONSTITUTION:The comparing means 2 of the printer driver 1 compares host performance with printer performance and a monitoring means 6 monitors the printer state. A selecting means 3 selects the side judged to be adequate for the command/data expansion according to the printer state information from the monitor means 6 and the comparison result from the comparing means 2. Then a decision means 4 decides data complexity showing how high throughput is required for the expansion according to the data kind of the command or data. Further, an expanding means 7 expands the command into the bit map data or intermediate command and a transfer means 5 transfers the command or data to the printer. Consequently, the side where fast expansion can be performed is selected to perform the fast expanding processing.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to various data (fonts, graphics, bitmap images, etc.) for a printing device.
It relates to a printer driver installed in a host computer for sending the.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, the processing for expanding fonts, etc.
The command / data was sent from the host computer to the printer, and processing was performed on the printer side. However, recently, due to the progress of semiconductor technology and the like, the performance of the host computer has been rapidly advanced, and the processing speed may be higher than that of the printer. In that case, it is faster to perform the expansion process on the host side. In fact, there are printers that perform expansion processing on the host side.

[0003]

Even if a host computer having higher performance than a printer has no expansion means on the host side, there is no choice but to execute expansion processing by the printer even if it takes time, which is efficient. Not. In addition, even if the host has the expansion means, both expansion means are not used effectively.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to solve the above problems and to provide a printer driver for selecting the side that performs the expansion processing at high speed and performing the expansion processing. Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer driver that effectively utilizes the expansion means on the unused side.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer driver which judges the complexity of data according to the type of data, and executes a command / data whose development processing is complicated on the high speed side of the development processing, and shortens the development processing time. And

In the performance judgment, the CPU performance and
An object of the present invention is to provide a printer driver that enables more efficient expansion processing by comparing the main memory capacity on the host side and the user usable memory capacity on the printer side.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer driver which performs a process corresponding to the print speed by selecting a developing means having a performance suitable for the print speed.

[0008]

In order to achieve the above object, the printer driver of the present invention comprises a comparing means for comparing the host performance and the printer performance, a monitoring means for monitoring the printer status, and a printer from the monitoring means. A selection means for selecting a side determined to be suitable for command / data expansion based on the status information and the comparison result from the comparison means, and how much processing capacity is required to expand the command / data according to the data type A determination unit for determining the data complexity, a expansion unit for expanding a command into bitmap data or an intermediate command, and a command / command
The transfer means for transferring the data to the printer is provided, the comparing means compares the host performance and the printer performance, and the selecting means selects the side judged to have good performance to enable high-speed development.

Further, when the comparing means determines that the printer performance is better than the host performance, and the monitoring means notifies that the printer is busy, the selecting means selects the host side to perform the expansion processing. It is a thing.

Further, the judging means judges the complexity depending on the data type of the command / data, and the expanding means is made different for each data based on the judgment result so that the processing is shared.

Further, the comparing means compares the memory capacities of the host side and the printer side to perform more efficient expansion processing. Further, the selection means selects the printer / host side having the performance according to the print speed to perform the appropriate expansion processing.

[0012]

According to the present invention, with the above configuration, the side that can be expanded at high speed is selected and the expansion processing can be performed at higher speed. Also,
Enables high-speed expansion processing by effectively utilizing the expansion means on the unused side. Further, the complexity of data is judged according to the type of data, and the command / data whose development processing is complicated is performed on the high speed side of the development processing, and the development processing time can be shortened. Further, in the performance determination, the CPU performance is compared with the main memory capacity on the host side and the user usable memory capacity on the printer side to enable more efficient expansion processing. Furthermore, by selecting a developing means having a performance suitable for the printing speed, processing corresponding to the speed is performed.

[0013]

【Example】

(Embodiment 1) An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram of the configuration of a host / printer. The print data requested to be printed by the application on the host side is passed to the printer driver in the command / data format. The printer driver expands the received command / data on the host side. Then, while monitoring the printer status, the command / data is transferred to the printer side. Alternatively, the command / data received from the application on the host side is directly transferred to the printer side, and the expansion process is performed on the printer side.

FIG. 2 is a software block diagram of the printer driver in one embodiment of the present invention. Figure 2
In the printer driver 1, the printer driver 1 compares the host performance with the printer performance, the monitoring means 6 for monitoring the printer status, and the command / data expansion based on the printer status information from the monitoring means 6 and the comparison result from the comparing means 2. Selection means 3 for selecting the side that is determined to be qualified, determination means 4 for determining the data complexity indicating how much processing power is required to expand the command / data according to the data type, and the command for the bitmap It comprises a developing means 7 for developing data or an intermediate command, and a transfer means 5 for transferring command / data to a printer. Thick arrows indicate the flow of commands / data, and thin arrows indicate the flow of status information signals. Description will be given with reference to these figures.

First, the acquisition of performance data will be described. In order to simplify the contents, the judgment is made only by the CPU performance. C as default data in advance
Data such as a benchmark test showing PU performance is arranged and held in descending order of performance. As a method of obtaining the performance data of the host and the printer, the user selects each CPU data of the host and the printer from the default data, or the printer driver has a means to check the performance by itself, and a simple test is performed. There are ways to create data.

FIG. 3 is a list of CPU performance data, and shows information indicating CPU performance corresponding to each of the host and the printer. As for CPU performance, CP
U type, clock frequency, instruction cache memory capacity, etc. can be considered. In FIG. 3, C is set as the performance parameter.
There are PU types, clock frequencies, and available memory capacity. It also has pointers that point to the respective CPUs mounted on the host and printer. At least information about which of the host and the printer has better performance is enough. Once the printer is connected to the host computer, printer performance information can be obtained in host order (eg, via a bidirectional communication interface).

Next, the comparison means 2 takes out the host performance and the printer performance and compares them to determine which one can perform the expansion processing at a higher speed. Then, the result of determining which of them can be expanded at high speed is transmitted to the selection unit 3.

FIG. 4 shows the flow of data processing in the first embodiment. FIG. 4 shows a flow of data processing when it is determined that the host performance is good as a result of the performance comparison. When a command / data is sent from an application, whether the command / data uses the printer built-in font for each page. Examine (step 1). If used, the drawing position information is added, and the data is sent to the transfer means 5 as it is (step 4), sent to the printer (step 5), and developed on the printer side. If the printer built-in font is not used, the command / data is sent to the expansion means 7 (step 2) and expanded into bitmap data (step 3). When the expansion is completed, it is sent to the transfer means 5 (step 4) and further sent to the printer (step 5).

On the other hand, as a result of the performance comparison, when it is determined that the printer performance is good, the command / data is sent to the transfer means 5 immediately without passing through the expansion means 7 without checking whether it is a font built into the printer. (Step 4). The data is sent from the transfer means 5 to the printer (step 5), and the expansion processing is performed on the printer side.

However, the same is true when a printer is selected by the comparison means 2, and if the monitoring means 6 determines that the printer is in a busy state, it may be expanded on the host side.

(Second Embodiment) FIG. 5 shows the flow of data processing in the second embodiment. In the above-mentioned configuration, as a result of the performance comparison (step 11), the comparison means 2 determines that the printer performance is good, but the monitoring means 6 monitors the printer state (step 12) and prints the preceding data. If it is determined that the printer is busy, the selecting means 3
Selects the host side and performs the procedure for expanding the next data on the host side (step 14). That is, the command / data sent from the host is sent to the expansion means 7 and the expansion processing is performed on the host side. If the printer is not busy, the process of expanding the printer as it is is performed (step 13).
Further, when the subsequent data is received and the monitoring means 6 determines that the printer busy state is released, the development is performed again on the printer side. Therefore, it is possible to effectively utilize the expansion means on the busy side of both the host and the printer.

On the contrary, the host performance was judged to be good,
If the host is busy with another job or the like, the expansion process may be performed on the printer side.

(Third Embodiment) FIG. 6 shows the flow of data processing in the third embodiment. In the above configuration, as a result of the performance comparison, it is determined that the printer performance is good, and the command / data sent from the host is examined for each page by the determination unit 4 (step 21), and it is determined that the development is complicated. Only the command / data is expanded on the printer side (step 22), and the data judged to be easy to expand is expanded on the host side (step 23) and the expanded data is sent to the printer.

The same applies when the host performance is judged to be good. That is, the time required for the development can be shortened by performing the development processing on both the host and the printer at the same time. When analyzing each command / data, directly check the command type, data amount, compression, etc. For example, in the case of a bitmap data without compression, it is judged as simple and is expanded on the host side. On the other hand, in the case of a scalable font or graphics data, it is determined to be complicated, and the drawing position and data are expanded on the printer side. The final unfolded images are combined to make the entire image. In other words, depending on the complexity of data expansion, the expansion means differs, and the expansion processing can be distributed.

(Fourth Embodiment) FIG. 7 shows the flow of data processing in the fourth embodiment. In the above configuration, the CPU performance and memory capacity of the host / printer are used as performance data.
Even if the CPU performance is good, if the available memory is small, the expansion will take time. First, CPU performances are compared (step 31), and if it is determined that the performance on the printer side is good, the memory capacity of performance data is checked (step 32). If there is enough, a process of expanding with a printer is performed (step 33). If it is determined that the performance on the host side is good, or if the memory capacity on the print side is not sufficient, the memory capacity on the host side is checked (step 3).
4). If it is sufficient, the host side performs the expansion process (step 35). If not, the process of developing is performed on the printer side (step 33).

(Fifth Embodiment) FIG. 8 is a diagram showing an example of a performance data format in the case of selecting a developing means in the fifth embodiment. In the above configuration, the printing speed of the printing device is taken into consideration. That is, no matter how fast the development is performed, if the printing speed is slow, unprinted data is accumulated, and as a result, the printing speed cannot be increased. Therefore, if you add print speed as printer performance,
You can choose the side that is close to the performance according to the speed. As shown in FIG. 8, the performance data arranged in descending order of performance as shown in FIG. 3 is divided according to each printing speed. This is the C that was actually installed in the printer.
It is data created based on PU and print speed.
With this, it is possible to select the side having the performance corresponding to the printing speed. If there is no corresponding performance, substitute the closest performance.

[0027]

As described above, according to the present invention, the expansion processing time can be shortened by performing the expansion processing on the side that is judged to have higher performance. Further, by effectively utilizing the expansion means on the unused side, high speed expansion processing is enabled. Further, it is possible to shorten the expansion processing time by judging the plural times of the data according to the type of the data and executing the command / data in which the expansion processing is complicated on the high speed side of the expansion processing. In the performance judgment, CP
By comparing the U performance with the main memory capacity on the host side and the user usable memory capacity on the printer side, more efficient expansion processing is enabled. Further, by selecting the developing means having the performance suitable for the printing speed, the processing corresponding to the speed becomes possible.

As a result of the above, it is possible to provide a printer driver capable of performing flexible expansion processing at high speed depending on the performance of the host / printer and the situations of both.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual configuration diagram of a host, a printer driver, and a printer.

FIG. 2 is a software block configuration diagram of a printer driver according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a CPU performance data configuration.

FIG. 4 is a flow of data processing in the first embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flow of data processing in the second embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flow of data processing in the third embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flow of data processing in the fourth embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing an example of a performance data structure in the fifth embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Printer Driver 2 Comparison Means 3 Selection Means 4 Judgment Means 5 Transfer Means 6 Monitoring Means 7 Developing Means

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. Comparing means for comparing host performance and printer performance, monitoring means for monitoring printer status, and a result of comparison from the comparing means and printer status information from the monitoring means are qualified for command / data expansion. The selection means for selecting the determined side, the determination means for determining the data complexity indicating how much processing power is required to expand the command / data according to the data type, the command as bitmap data, or It is characterized in that it has a developing means for developing an intermediate command and a transferring means for transferring a command / data to a printer, and is configured to perform a developing process on the side judged to be qualified as a result of the performance comparison. Printer driver. 2. The comparing means compares the CPU performances, and when the monitoring means determines that the performance is higher on the side determined to have higher performance, the comparing means performs the expansion processing on the side determined to have lower performance. The printer driver according to claim 1, wherein the printer driver is configured. 3. The comparing means compares the CPU performances, and on the side judged to have higher performance, on the side judged to have higher performance only on the part where the processing expansion is complicated without performing all expansion processing. The printer driver according to claim 1, wherein the printer driver is configured so as to shorten the developing time. 4. The printer driver according to claim 1, wherein the comparing means makes a determination based on the CPU performance, the main memory capacity on the host side and the user usable memory capacity on the printer side. 5. The printer driver according to claim 1, wherein the comparison means makes a determination based on a printing speed of the printing device.