JP2000082126A - Method and device for character/figure plotting control for page memory - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce a time for processing and to improve performance by deciding whether the gray level of a character/figure of a plotting object is solid black or not and writing this character/figure of the plotting object in a page memory as it is when it is solid black. SOLUTION: A plotting object gray level decision means 12 decides the gray level of a character/figure 3 of a new plotting object and, when the gray level is 100% (solid black), a plotting means 13 is driven without performing logical operation of the contents set in a page memory 2 of an object and the contents of the character/figure 3 of the new plotting object is plotted on image data 2a of the page memory 2 as they are. Thus, speedup of processing is attained by eliminating a part of a time for operation processing. When the gray level does not reach 100%, a logical operation means 14 fetches the image data 2a, which are already plotted, from the page memory 2, the logical operation is performed with the contents corresponding to the character/figure 3 of the new plotting object, the result is given to the plotting means 13, then the plotting means 13 writes the received contents in the page memory 2.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a character display in a page memory for a computer display or printer.
A method and apparatus for generating a graphic.

In recent years, techniques for outputting characters and graphics by a computer display and a printer have been widely used. In such a case, another character or figure may be overlaid on the original image figure in the page memory. In such a case, since a logical operation is performed, it takes a long processing time, and an improvement thereof is desired.

[0003]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional image processing apparatus for a computer display or printer, the contents to be displayed (characters, figures, graphics, etc.) are written in a corresponding area (called a page memory) as a bitmap image. Is performed. The content of this page memory is the final output result, and it is required that this output result be processed accurately and at high speed.

In a conventional apparatus, characters and figures written in a page memory are generated by, for example, a rasterizer, and are treated as having a density of 100% (pure black state). However, there has been an increasing demand to generate characters and graphics generated by a rasterizer at an arbitrary density.

[0005] Therefore, the concentration of 0 to 1 prepared in advance.
A method has been used in which a calculation is performed with a 00% dither pattern (known pattern) to generate a character or graphic having a required density.

In the conventional method, the following method (mode) is used to draw a new character or graphic on an image already written in the page memory because density information has been added.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a drawing mode, and shows two modes for drawing a figure. (1) is mode A, (2) is mode B, and in mode A, represents the original (base) image initially written in the page memory, and has a low density shown in FIG. In this mode, the figure is overwritten, and the position is shifted for convenience of explanation. In the case of mode A, the area overlapping the position where the original image data is stored is replaced with new data. On the other hand, in the case of mode B, the original drawn content initially written in the page memory shown in
After performing a logical operation (logical sum) with the character or graphic shown in FIG. 1, the new drawing content is set in the page memory. In the case of the logical operation of the logical sum of the mode B, in the area where the density of each pixel overlaps with the density of the pixel, the density of the higher density is written to the corresponding page memory position as the operation result as the logical sum of the bit densities. It is. That is, which of the original image and the pixel of the page memory is selected by the logical operation is determined by the respective densities. In the mode B of FIG. 5, data having a high density is written in an area overlapping with the mode. Of course, the logical operation in the mode B is not limited to the logical sum, and it goes without saying that there may be other operations.

[0008]

As described above, conventionally, when another character or figure is drawn in a page memory in which an image has been written in advance, there are modes A and B. Generally, either one can be selected according to various conditions. In this case, there is a problem that drawing when the mode B is designated requires more time than when the mode A is used.

The reason is that in the case of mode B, it is necessary to perform a logical operation on the contents already drawn in the page memory and the characters or figures to be newly written. The present invention relates to a character / image having other density information for a drawn image.
In the mode in which a logical operation is performed on a figure and the result is written to the page memory, characters and characters for the page memory that can reduce processing time and improve performance
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and an apparatus for controlling drawing of a figure.

[0010]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the principle configuration of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a processing device, 10 is a drawing control unit for a printer or a display, 11 is a drawing mode determining unit, 12 is a drawing target density determining unit, 13 is a drawing unit, and 14 is drawing target data and drawn data. Logical operation means, 2 is a page memory, 2a is image data already drawn in the page memory 2, and 3 is a character / figure to be newly drawn.

According to the present invention, when a rendered image is stored in a page memory, a logical operation is performed on the contents of the rendered image and the character / graphic to be newly rendered, and when the result is written to the page memory, the character to be newly rendered is stored in the page memory.・ 100% density of figure
In the case of (solid black), without performing logical operation on the contents set in the target page memory,
The processing is speeded up by writing the figure as it is and omitting a part of the calculation processing time.

The drawing control unit 10 receives a drawing instruction from the processing device 1. At this time, the drawing mode, character code,
The size etc. are also given. In this principle configuration, the character / figure 3 to be newly drawn is directly supplied to the drawing control unit 10. However, a configuration may be provided in which a character corresponding to a specified character code and size is generated. The drawing mode determination means 11 of the drawing control unit 10 determines the designated mode.
In this description, if it is determined that the character / graphic 3 to be newly drawn is to be drawn by performing a logical operation on the drawn image data 2a in the page memory 2, the drawing control in that mode is started. I do. First, the drawing target density determining means 12 determines the density of the character / figure to be newly drawn, and when the density is 100%, the drawing means 13 is driven, and the contents of the character / figure 3 to be drawn are paged as they are. The image is drawn on the image data 2a in the memory 2 and the density is 10
If it has not reached 0%, the logical operation means 14 is driven. The logical operation means 14 takes out the rendered image data 2a from the page memory 2, performs a logical operation on the corresponding contents of the character / graphic 3 to be newly drawn, and gives the result to the drawing means 13, and the drawing means 13 receives the received contents. Is written to the page memory 2.

When the density of a character or a figure is determined by the density determination unit 12, the dither pattern corresponding to a density prepared in advance corresponding to a density other than 100% (FIG. 1).
(Stored in a file not shown in the figure) and may be read and rendered in the page memory 2.

[0014]

FIG. 2 shows a printer control unit according to an embodiment of the present invention, which has a configuration in which the present invention is applied to drawing in a page memory of a printer.

In FIG. 2, 20 is a host, 21 is a printer control unit, 22 is an interface (IF) processing unit, 2
3 is a command processing unit, 24 is a graphic processing unit, 25 is a character generation unit, 250 is a character processing unit, 251 is a bitmap data development unit, 252 is a temporary development area composed of a storage device, 26 is a page memory, 27 Is a font file.

When printing by a printer, the host 2
From 0, print data including a command is supplied to the printer control unit 21. When the command is received by the command processing unit 23 via the interface processing unit 22, the printer control unit 21 interprets the command to identify a graphic or a character. In the case of a graphic, graphic data is sent to the graphic processing unit 24. , And performs a designated process for the figure and writes the result in the page memory 26.

When the print data is characters (including symbols and the like), information such as a character code, a size, a font, a mode (drawing mode), a position and a density is analyzed from the print data and passed to the character generation unit 25. In the character generation unit 25, the character processing unit 2
At 50, the data of the outline font corresponding to the character code and the size is extracted from the font file 27, subjected to necessary enlargement / reduction processing, and passed to the bitmap data development unit 251. The bitmap data developing unit 251 develops bitmap image data according to the outline font data in the temporary development area 252.

The bitmap image data of the temporary development area 252 is obtained by analyzing the above-described mode between the image data preset in the page memory 26 and the image data according to the drawing mode analyzed by the character processing unit 250. Mode A (mode (1) in FIG. 5) or Mode B
(The mode of (2) in FIG. 4) is performed. If the mode A is designated, the same processing as the conventional one is performed, but if the mode B is designated, the processing according to the present invention is performed.

FIG. 3 shows a processing flow according to the present invention, which is executed when the character processing unit 250 shown in FIG. 2 performs mode B drawing. First variable flag (FLAG)
Is set to off (S1 in FIG. 3), and it is determined whether or not the density of the new drawing target is 100% (S2). here,
When it is found that the density is 100%, the flag (FLAG) is set to ON (S3 in FIG. 3), and when it is not 100%, the process directly proceeds to the next step S4. Step S
At 4, it is determined whether the flag (FLAG) is on (on),
If not on, data for new drawing (bitmap image data expanded in temporary expansion area 252)
And a logical operation on the data described in the page memory (S5), write the result to the page memory (S6), and skip the logical operation if the flag (FLAG) is on (on). Then, the data of the new drawing target (bitmap image data of the temporary development area 252) is written to the page memory as it is.

By skipping the logical operation processing as described above, the processing can be speeded up. FIG. 4 shows an example of drawing according to the present invention. FIG. 4A shows an example of a character to be newly drawn. The bit map of such a character is stored in the bit map data developing unit 2 of the character generating unit 25 shown in FIG.
51 and its concentration is 100%
(Solid black). FIG. 2B shows the contents of the page memory. In this example, diagonal lines are set at regular intervals.
For such page memory contents, the mode B
When the character of (1) is drawn, since the density is 100%, the image data of the character is directly written into the page memory, and the result shown in (3) of FIG. 4 can be obtained.

[0021]

According to the present invention, in an image processing system having a page memory and capable of selecting a drawing mode, a logical operation process is performed on data to be newly drawn, such as characters and graphics, on image data in the page memory. In the drawing mode, the logical operation processing is bypassed when the density of the new drawing target is 100%, so that the processing can be performed more efficiently and the processing time can be reduced.

In a normal document, solid black (density 100
%), The use of characters or the like is overwhelmingly high. Therefore, if the processing speed can be increased only by processing the characters or the like of the density, the performance degradation of the mode can be compensated.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the principle configuration of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of an embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a processing flow of the embodiment.

FIG. 4 shows an example of drawing according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a drawing mode.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Processing apparatus 10 Drawing control unit 11 Drawing mode determining means 12 Drawing target density determining means 13 Drawing means 14 Logical operation means 2 Page memory 2a Image data already drawn 3 Characters / graphics to be newly drawn

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification symbol FI Theme coat ゛ (Reference) G06F 15/72 350 9A001 F term (Reference) 2C087 AA11 AA16 AB05 BC05 BD09 DA02 5B021 CC10 DD07 LD15 LG08 5B057 CA08 CA18 CB07 CB16 CE08 CE13 CH11 5B080 CA01 DA01 FA05 FA07 FA08 5C073 AA02 CE04 9A001 BB03 JJ35 KK42

Claims (3)

[Claims] In a method for controlling the drawing of characters and graphics on a page memory for a printer or a display, a logic is used for a drawn image in a page memory to be newly drawn with characters and graphics having density information. When the drawing mode in which the calculation is performed and the result is written to the page memory is designated, the density of the character / graphic to be drawn becomes 10%.
It is determined whether it is 0% or not. If it is 100%, the character / graphic to be drawn is written as it is in the page memory.
If it is less than%, a logical operation is performed between the character / graphic to be rendered and the rendered image in the page memory, and the result is written to the page memory. . 2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of using a dither pattern to write a character or graphic having an arbitrary density into a page memory. 3. A drawing control apparatus for drawing characters and graphics on a page memory for a printer or a display.
A command processing unit for analyzing an instruction including drawing data from a higher-level device, and the command performing a logical operation on a drawn image in a page memory with a new drawing target character / graphic having density information A character generation unit that is activated when a drawing mode is designated to write the result to a page memory, wherein the character generation unit determines the density of the character or graphic to be drawn and determines that the density is 100%. Is detected, the character / graphic to be drawn is written to the page memory as it is, and if it is less than 100%, a logical operation is performed between the character / graphic to be drawn and the rendered image in the page memory, and the result is paged. A character / figure drawing control device for a page memory, which controls writing to a memory.