JPS61149365A - Data controlling device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To transfer data in quick response to the printing speed of a printing means by processing in parallel the first half and second half of image dot information constituting each page in a printer which prints an image by page unit. CONSTITUTION:A readout address for an image dot file corresponding to each character constituting the first half and second half of a page and printing control data are stored each in the first half and the second half table memory 7, 8. A processor 9 accesses a character generator 10, referring to data printing control data in the first half of a page constituted in the table memory 7, reads font data and transfers it to an image memory 11. In the same manner, a processor 12 reads font data in the second half of a page and transfers it to an image memory 14. A parallel and serial conversion register 15 converts font data in the first half of a page transferred to the image memory 11 and font data transferred to the image memory 14 to serial font data of one page and outputs it to a printing block 16.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a printing device that prints an image page by page by developing characters specified by input data into image dots, and particularly relates to a printing device that prints an image on a page by page basis. The present invention relates to a data control device that transmits data to a printing unit at high speed.

[Prior art and its problems]

Conventionally, in this type of device, data input from an external controller is separated into character data and control data by analyzing command data, and the character data is organized in page units. After that, the character generator was accessed and converted into a dot pattern signal, which was expanded into the image buffer memory and sent to the printing section. but,
In such a method, if the data control for modifying the characters to be printed becomes complicated, for example, when adding an underline to the characters to be printed, it becomes impossible to satisfy the throughput corresponding to the increase in the printing speed of the printing section. This has the disadvantage that the waiting time of the printing section increases and the printing output decreases.

[Purpose of the invention]

This invention has been made to eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks, and the first half stores read addresses and print control data of the image dot file corresponding to each character constituting the first half and second half of a page. and a second half table memory, and a first read control for reading out the image dot information developed in the image development means according to the read address stored in the first half table memory and transferring it to the image memory. and second readout control means for reading out the image dot information developed in the image development means in accordance with the readout address stored in the second half table memory and transferring it to the image memory. Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a data control device capable of dividing image dot information constituting each page into the first half and the second half, processing them in parallel, and transferring them in response to the printing speed of a printing means.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below based on the drawings.

〔Example〕

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention. Reference numeral 1 indicates an external controller for sending data, and 2 indicates an interface signal line for transferring data from the external controller 1 to an input buffer memory 3. In FIG. A system processor 4 interprets the input data stored in the input batza memory 3, stores character codes in the page buffer memory 5, and stores command data in the page buffer memory 6. Further, the system processor 4 organizes the input data stored in the page buffer 5 into pages and divides the input data into data for the first half of the page and data for the second half of the page. When one page of data is constructed, the first half of the data is referred to the page buffer memory 5, and the starting address information of the font pattern in the image dot file of the character generator, which will be described later, is sequentially stored in the table memory 7 from the character code. At the same time, the printing position on the page is stored with reference to the page buffer memory 6.

The page end flag and print control data regarding the character width and character height are sequentially stored in the table memory 7. Furthermore, referring to the page buffer memory 5 for the second half of the data, the starting address information of the font pattern in the character generator, which will be described later, is sequentially stored in the table memory 8 from the character code.
Refer to the print position on the page, page end flag,
Print control data regarding the width and height of nine characters are sequentially stored in the table memory 8. Reference numeral 9 denotes a processor which constitutes the first reading control means of the present invention, which refers to the data printing control data of the first half of the page constructed in the table memory 7, accesses the character generator (CG) 10, and converts the font data into words. It is read out in random order and transferred to the image memory 11. Reference numeral 12 denotes a second reading control means of the present invention, which refers to the print control data for the latter half of the page constructed in the table memory 8, accesses the character generator (CG) 13, and reads out the font data in word balance. , and transferred to the image memory 14. A parallel/serial conversion register 15 converts the font data of the first half of the page transferred to the image memory 11 and the font data transferred to the image memory 14 into one page of serial font data.

A printing section 16 reads out serial image dot information (font data) and prints an image on recording paper by an image forming means (not shown).

Next, the operation shown in FIG. 1 will be explained with reference to FIGS. 2 to 4.

FIG. 2 shows the character generator 10 shown in FIG.
13, Ao to A71 are addresses for storing font patterns, and DOND7
1 is data stored at the address Ao Na3°. It should be noted that the font pattern is expanded to, for example, 24×24 dots.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the logical address space, which is expressed as an XY room space of, for example, 1024×1024 dots.

Figure 4 is a schematic diagram showing the data bit shift operation.
1) to (6) indicate their states, W indicates a word, and the subscript indicates a bit position.

Font data and print control data from the external controller 1 are stored in the input buffer 3 via the interface signal line 2.Next, the data is read out by the system processor 4, and it is determined whether it is character data or command data. . If the input data is character data, it is sequentially stored in the page buffer memory 5, and if it is command data, the data is analyzed and the print position on the page and font type for each character are determined.

Parameters such as the number of dots in the width direction of the character 9 The number of dots in the height direction of the character are sequentially stored in the page buffer memory 6. At this time, if each parameter is the same as the previous parameter, that data is omitted. Then, it is stored in the page buffer memory 6 in compressed form. Also, page buffer 5
, 6 has a capacity for several pages, so data is sequentially read from the input buffer memory 3 to form pages.

Here, the system processor 4 divides the data into the first half of the page and the second half of the page while configuring the data into pages. When one page of data is complete, the first half of the data is stored in the table memory 7, and the second half of the data is stored in the table memory 8, from the first character data to the start address of the font pattern of the character generator 10.13 and the character. Number of dots in the width direction Number of dots in the height direction of 2 characters,! ! Writes print control data such as character position address, page end flag, and character print position address.

On the other hand, when the data is set in the table memory 7, the processor 9 refers to the start address of the font pattern of the character rAJ, for example, and starts the character generator 10.
The character generator 1o accesses the font data and reads the font data.
A 24-dot font pattern is stored in bytes. The addresses are continuous up to Ao "A71, and each address A (1"'All has font data D
o-/D month corresponds. Since the image memory 11 writes data in units of words (16 bits), the processor 9 increments the read address of the character generator 1o.

The next font data DI is read, and font data D (1+DI) constitutes one word (2 bytes).Then, the processor 9 reads the number of dots in the width direction of the character (24 dots) from the table memory 7. , the number of dots of the read character is subtracted from this number of dots, and it is determined whether the number of dots is "0".The number of dots in the width direction of the font data Do, D, read out to the processor 9 is 16. Since it is a dot, the total number of dots at the moment is 8 dots (24-16 = 8), so one more
It is necessary to read bytes of font data. Therefore, the read address of the character generator 10 is set to 1.
The font data D2 is read out to the processor 9 by incrementing the font data D2.At this time, the total number of dots in the character width direction of the character data becomes 24 dots, indicating that there are no dots in the character width direction.

Next, the processor 9 reads the character print position data from the table memory 7. This print position is a logical address shown in the X-Y space as shown in FIG. It is necessary to convert the data into a physical address for expanding into image memory 11, that is, a physical address for writing to image memory 11, which is configured in word units (16 bits). So, for example, 1
In the case of 024 dots, the logical address can be expressed by lO bits of need data, so the logical address in the logical space X-Y is (X9~Xo), (
On the other hand, since the physical space in the image memory 11 is configured in units of 1 word (16 bits), the logical address is divided into 16 bits, that is,
The X direction is divided from address O to address 63 for every +1 address in the Y direction, resulting in a total of 65536 addresses (216), thus logical addresses (Y9 to Yo).

A physical address is expressed by a total of 16 bits of information (X9 to X4). Font data Do=D7] of 16 bits each is stored in each address divided in this way. This operation converts a logical address into a physical address. Also, if the image forming position specified by the logical address and the image forming position specified by the physical address do not match,
It is necessary to bit shift the font data specified by the physical address, so the number of bits is shifted per physical address.

The bit shift amount is specified using 4-bit information of logical addresses x3 to Xo. Note that the table memory 11. Processor 12. Character generator 13
．． The operations of reading and writing font data by the image memory 14 are also similar to those described above, so their explanation will be omitted.

Next, the bit shift operation will be explained with reference to FIG.

In this figure, (1) indicates, for example, that no font data is stored at the physical address N, (2) indicates the font data DOID+ to be written, and (3) indicates the logical address (X 3 to Xo). For example, if the specified shift amount is x3 to
) reads the next font data D2 and prints the 8 of "O".
(5) shows a state in which the data in state (4) is shifted by 4 bits, and (8) shows a state in which the data in state (4) is shifted by 4 bits.
) indicates a state in which the data shown in state (3) and the data shown in state (5) are combined. Note that since the font data in this embodiment is in 16-bit units, the above shift operation is performed using a 32-bit shift register (not shown). That is, a shift register that is permissible depending on the number of bits of the font data to be handled (for example, twice the number of bits of the font data) is used.

If the font data reread from the character generator 10 is simply written to, for example, address N in the image memory 11, the l word C16 is written as shown in state (2).
However, as mentioned above, if the image forming position specified by the logical address and the image forming position specified by the physical address do not match, for example, the character read from the table memory 7 may be printed. The lower order x3 to XO of the logical address of the position data is 01002°
If =4, read 7-ont data Do.

D] is shifted in a predetermined direction by 4 bits, and the lower 4 bits of the font data D1 are written at address N+1 in a state in which they protrude, ie, as shown in state (3). However, here, the next font data D2 is sent from the processor 9.
Data (state (
4) is sent out, so before writing the data in state (4) to address N+1, shift the data shown in state (4) by 4 bits in the shift register, and write the data in state (5).
), the font data Do is made to protrude to address N+2 as shown in state (3).

Font data D2 and rQ shown in DI and status (5)
After combining the data consisting of the 8-bit data of J,
As shown in state (8), font data in the width direction of the character is written at address N+1.

Subsequently, the processor 9 stores the font data that has protruded by 4 bits in a predetermined direction at address N+2, as shown in state (5).

In addition, in the above explanation, address N of the image memory 11 was explained as the writing start address of font data.
If font data is continuously sent from address -1, that is, if the font data of the previous character has been written on the image memory 11, the font data written to address N-1 will be sent to address N. There is a possibility that it has already protruded into the upper 4 bits. Therefore, before writing font data to address N, read part of the font data at address N to the work area, and write the upper 4 bits of font data and the font data Do shown in status (3).
, D, and then write to address N. This prevents part of the previous character from being erased. Similarly, before writing the data shown in state (5) to address N+2, combine it with the read data at address N+1,
If the combined data is written to address N+2, the previous character will no longer disappear.

Next, when the processor 9 completes writing information on all the dots in the width direction of the character, that is, 24 dots, into the image memory 11, it reads the number of dots in the height direction of the character from the table memory 7, and from the number of dots. Decrement rlJ and judge whether the number of dots is "0" or not. If it is not "0", writing of the dot pattern of one character to the image memory 11 has not finished, so
The address of the font pattern is incremented and the font data is written into the image memory 11 in the same manner as above. On the other hand, if the number of dots is "0", it means that the dot pattern for one character has been developed, so one more
The dot pattern for the entire page is image memory 1.
In order to determine whether the page end flag has been expanded to 1, the page end flag is read from the table memory 7. Here, if the page end flag is rlJ, image development for one page has been completed, so other controls are executed and "0
'', the image development for one page has not been completed, so read the number of dots in the height direction of the table memory 7 and repeat the above operation until 24 dots are completed.
In this way, the font pattern for one character is written into the image memory 11 by the processor 9, and when this is completed, the system processor 4 sets the print control data for the next character in the table memory 7.

On the other hand, the processor 1.2 starts processing at the same time as the processor 9, and prints the start address of the font pattern of the character generator 13 from the table memory 8, the number of dots in the width direction of a character, the number of dots in the height direction of one character, etc. The processor 9 reads the data, reconstructs the font data developed in the character generator 13 word by word, and stores it in the image memory 14.
In accordance with The processor 12 then writes the font data into the image memory 14 until the end flag of the latter half of one page becomes rlJ. When the font data for one page is completed, the first half font data written in the image memory 11 is read out to the parallel-serial converter 15 according to the physical address.
The print data converted into serial data is sequentially sent to the printing unit 16 to start printing. When printing of the font data written in the image memory 11 is completed, the latter half of the font data written in the image memory 14 is read out to the parallel-serial converter 15 according to the physical address and converted into serial data. The printed data is sequentially sent to the printing unit 16 and printing starts.

The printing operation of the printing unit 16 is performed by a laser beam printer using a known electrophotographic process (not shown), which performs printing by turning the laser on and off according to the serial data converted by the parallel-to-serial converter 15. Even if the printer is a laser beam printer with a high printing speed, as mentioned above, the font data of one page is divided into the first half and the second half and processed in parallel, so the throughput of the printing section 16 will not be reduced. It disappears.

Next, the physical address calculation of the font data read from the processor 9 and character generator 10 will be explained.

When the processor 9 finishes writing the font data in the width direction of the character into the image memory 11, the processor 9 reads the next line's dot pattern, that is, the font data D3, from the character generator 10, and writes it into the image memory 11 as described above. However, when moving to the next line, the physical address is simply the font data D.
2, that is, the number of dots corresponding to the width of the recording paper to be printed or the effective print width is calculated, and a value obtained by converting this into the number of words is obtained. Then, add this value to the physical address specified for the print start of the first line, that is, the physical address of the first line, to determine the start address of the second line, and the start address of the third and subsequent lines is the number of words specified above. It is calculated by adding the value converted to the start address of the previous line.

In addition, one page of font data is divided into the first half and the second half, but if a character is exactly in the center of the page, the processing is left to the processor 9, and the font data is spread across the image memory 11 and the image memory 14. The processor 9 and the processor 13 manage the end address of the image memory 11 and the start address of the image memory 14 in which the font data is written. Furthermore, the capacities of the image memory 11 and the image memory 14 do not have to be the same.

Note that if you want to superimpose data such as an underline on the font data developed in the image memory 11 or the image memory 14, the image memory 1
If you simply write to the font data written in 1 or the image memory 14, the font data of the character will be erased, so regardless of whether or not there is a bit shift, the font data of the newly written character and the above underline etc. It is only necessary to perform an OR with the data of , and then write it to the image memory 2.

Next, referring to FIG. 5, the processor 9 shown in FIG.
, 12 will be explained. In addition, (1) to (21
) represents each step.

To access the table memory 7, 1) read the start address of the font pattern, the number of dots in the width direction of the character, and the number of dots in the height direction of the character. At the same time as reading, increment the address of the font pattern (3), subtract "8" from the number of dots in the width direction of 5 characters at a (4), and store the calculated value in the work area of the processor 9. here,
Step (5) to judge whether the value calculated with 0 is "0", if NO, character generator 1
Reads 1 byte of font data from 0 and increments 7 addresses of the font pattern (
B), then subtract r9J from the number of dots in the width direction of one character (7) and store the calculated value in the work area again. On the other hand, if the judgment in step (5) is YES,
- In the case where all the dot patterns in the width direction are read, that is, when the font data of the odd-numbered byte in the width direction of the character is read, zero data (all 8 bits are 0) is added and it becomes 1 word data. Do (8).

Next, 1, for example, 2 bytes of data combined in steps (2), (8) or step (8) are combined into one word (8), and then it is determined whether the print position data is physical address data. YES)
In the case of , the process proceeds to step (13), and in the case of NO, that is, in the case of logical address data, the logical address data is converted to physical address data and the data is stored in the table memory 7.
Or write the physical address to table memory 8 (1
1) Next, load the lower 4 bits of the logical address data previously stored in the work area, that is, the bit shift amount M (12). Next, load the 1-word font data prepared by the processor 9. is shifted by the bit shift amount loaded in step (12), that is, M bits, and the shifted font data is combined with the font data that overflowed from the previous M bit shift (13). At the same time, the physical address of the image memory 11 is incremented (1).
00, then judge whether the font data in the width direction of one character is finished (15), and if NO, step (2)
If YES, the font data that protrudes from the shift operation in step (13) is written into the image memory 12 (1B), and then the number of dots in the height direction is read from the work memory and subtracted by "1" (17). The value is “0”
18), if YES, read the end flag by referring to the table memory 7, and determine whether the end flag is "1" (1θ), N
If O, return to step (1).

If YES, proceed to the image development operation for the next page (20); on the other hand, if the judgment in step (18) is NO, that is, if the image development for one character has not been completed, the image development operation for the next page will proceed. In order to write font data in the width direction of the characters, the number of words determined by the size of the recording paper is calculated, this is added to the physical address stored in the table memory 7, and the result is stored in the table memory 7 again. Return to (1) (21).

In the above embodiment, the case where font data is exchanged in units of 1 word, that is, 16 bits (2 bytes) has been explained, but depending on the capacity of the shift register and the number of dots in 1 character, font data can be exchanged in units of 1 byte or 16 bits. It goes without saying that the above bits may be processed as a unit.

Further, in the above embodiment, a case has been described in which the processor 9 reads the image dot information while referring to the table memory 7 for data of each character and print control data, but the operation of the processor 9 is divided into two processors, The first processor is the character generator 10
Parallel processing is possible if the font data developed in the pattern buffer is constructed once in a word boundary, and the second processor transfers the font data constructed in the pattern buffer to the image memory 11. Furthermore, the transfer speed can be increased.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, the present invention includes a table memory for the first half and the second half that stores the read address and print control data of the image dot file corresponding to each character constituting the first half and the second half of the page, and a first read control means for reading the image dot information developed in the image development means according to the read address stored in the table memory of the second half, and transferring the image dot information to the image memory; A second readout control means is provided which reads out the image dot information developed in the image development means according to the readout address and transfers it to the image memory. Since the data can be processed in parallel, it can be transferred in response to the printing speed of the printing means, which has the advantage of improving the throughput of the printing section.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration block diagram showing one embodiment of this invention, FIGS. 2 to 4 are diagrams explaining the operation of the embodiment of FIG. 1, and FIG. 5 is a processor showing one embodiment of this invention. 3 is a flowchart showing the control operation of FIG. In the figure, 1 is an external controller, 2 is an interface signal line, 3 is an input buffer memory, 4 is a system processor, 5 and 6 are page buffer memories, 7 and 8 are table memories, 9 and 12 are processors, and 10.13 is a character generator. 11 and 14 are image memories, 15 is a parallel/serial converter, and 16 is a printing section. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3

Claims (1)

[Claims] It has an image dot development means that reads and develops image dot information of a character specified by input data from an image dot file, and transfers the image dot information developed by the image dot development means to the image memory page by page. In the data control device, a first half table memory and a second half table memory each storing a read address and print control data of the image dot file corresponding to each character constituting the first half and second half of the page; a first read control means for reading out the image dot information developed in the image development means in accordance with the read address stored in the table memory of the second half, and transferring the image dot information to the image memory; and second read control means for reading out the image dot information developed by the image development means in accordance with the read address read out and transferring it to the image memory.