JP2000322226A - Printer system and document print processing method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve the work efficiency for document comprehension on the user side and to heighten the user's will to read by outputting KANJI (Chinese character) with reading in KANA (Japanese syllabary) only with print operation. SOLUTION: A host computer 30 and a printer are so connected that they can communicate with each other, and a document processed by the host computer 30 is printed out by the printer. In this printer system, a printer driver 32 is provided which is provided with a KANJI extraction means, which extracts KANJI parts of character data generated by an application 31 operated on the host computer 30, and a reading in KANA addition means which adds reading in KANA to extracted KANJI to transmit them to the printer.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to connecting a host computer such as a personal computer (PC) or a workstation (WS) to a device having a printer function such as a laser printer or a digital copier by a wired or wireless communication means. More particularly, the present invention relates to a printer system and a document print processing method for extracting a kanji portion of a document processed by a host computer, adding a phonetic character to the kanji, and printing.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, with the spread of the Internet, children have more and more opportunities to touch news articles and documents containing many kanji. For example, a document such as a news article is fetched from the Internet to a personal computer, and the fetched document is transferred as print data from the personal computer to a printer so that the document is printed on a recording sheet and viewed. However, when a kanji word is used to look up in a dictionary without knowing the meaning of the word, a child or the like may not even know how to read the kanji. In such a case, a method of reading a kanji is first checked by a Japanese-Japanese dictionary, and then a meaning of a word is checked based on the reading method of the Japanese dictionary.

[0003]

However, as described above, if a sentence described in kanji contains an esoteric word, one word is used when examining the reading and meaning of the esoteric kanji. It takes a lot of time and effort to repeat the work of trial and error until the meaning of is understood. There was a problem that the willingness to read was reduced.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above, and it is possible to improve the work efficiency and the willingness to read a document on the user side by performing output by adding a phonetic character to a kanji only by a printing operation. An object of the present invention is to provide a printer system and a document print processing method that can be achieved.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, in a printer system according to the present invention, a host computer and a printer are connected so as to be able to communicate with each other and processed by the host computer. In a printer system for printing out a document by the printer, a kanji extracting means for extracting a kanji portion of character data created by an application running on the host computer, and adding a furigana to the extracted kanji, the printer And a printer driver having a phonetic addition means for transmitting to the phone.

According to the first aspect, when a document processed by the host computer is printed out by a printer, the kanji portion of character data is extracted from the print data by the printer driver, and the kanji portion is furnished. By adding, it becomes possible to easily read difficult kanji without performing a search using a dictionary by trial and error as in the past, so that you can immediately understand the meaning of the kanji and words. The attached document is obtained.

Further, in the printer system according to the second aspect, the printer driver prints a furigana at a position corresponding to the direction of the extracted kanji.

According to the second aspect, in the first aspect, the setting is made such that furigana is printed at an arbitrary position such as up, down, left, or right with respect to the extracted kanji, whereby vertical writing,
Furigana can be added to the kanji portion of any horizontally written document.

In a printer system according to a third aspect of the present invention, the printer driver includes a phonetic font, size, style, character spacing,
This is for setting character information such as an interval between the kanji and the furigana.

According to the third aspect, the phonetic character information to be added (font, size, style, character spacing,
(Such as the interval between kanji and furigana) can be set, so that printing with furigana added in a layout configuration intended by the user can be performed.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a document print processing method in which a host computer and a printer are connected so as to be able to communicate with each other, and a document processed by the host computer is printed out by the printer. A method for extracting a kanji portion of character data created by an application running on the host computer, and adding a furigana to the extracted kanji and transmitting a furigana to the printer. Including.

According to the fourth aspect, when the document processed by the host computer is printed out by the printer, the kanji part of the character data is extracted from the print data in the kanji extraction step and extracted in the furigana addition step. By adding furigana to kanji, you can add furigana to kanji extracted only by the printing process of the printer driver, and easily read difficult kanji without performing a search using a dictionary by trial and error as in the past. Therefore, a document to which a kanji and a phonetic character which can easily understand the meaning of the word can be obtained.

In the document print processing method according to a fifth aspect, in the furigana adding step, furigana is added to a position corresponding to the direction of the extracted kanji.

According to the fifth aspect, in the furigana adding step of the fourth aspect, furigana is set to be printed at an arbitrary position such as up, down, left, or right with respect to the extracted kanji, so that either vertical writing or horizontal writing can be performed. It is possible to print with the furigana added to the kanji part of the document.

Further, in the document print processing method according to the present invention, the furigana adding step includes a furigana font, size, style, character spacing,
This is for setting character information such as an interval between the kanji and the furigana.

According to the sixth aspect, in the phonetic character adding step of the fourth aspect, the character information (font, size, style, character spacing, interval between kanji and furigana, etc.) of the phonetic character to be added is set. Add furigana in the layout configuration intended by the user.

[0017]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, embodiments of a printer system and a document print processing method according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

First, the hardware configuration of the printer system according to the present invention will be described. FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a printer system according to an embodiment of the present invention. This printer system mainly includes a host computer 30 typified by a personal computer (PC) or a workstation (WS) connected to the Internet 40, and a host computer 30 such as an IEEE 1
Printer 10 connected via a bidirectional communication cable 35 such as an interface conforming to the H.284 standard
And is composed of

The host computer 30 includes an application 31 and a printer driver 32 having a function of performing data analysis of a printing process described below when converting the application 31 into a control code or a page description language and transmitting the converted data to the printer 10. It has. The Internet 40 is, for example, a TCP (Transmission Control) as a communication protocol for the Internet / intranet.
rol Protocol) / IP (Internet)
Although not shown, an image scanner, a server, and the like are connected in addition to the host computer 30 using a protocol.

The printer 10 transmits and receives various commands and print data, and develops the received print data in its own memory area. The controller 10 also performs setting operations such as printing conditions and information display for the controller 11. Operation panel 20, and a layout configuration based on a laser writing and electrophotographic process method,
Optical writing is performed in accordance with the print data sent from the controller 11 to form an electrostatic latent image on the photoreceptor, and the formed electrostatic latent image is visualized by attaching (developing) toner to supply the toner. A printer engine 12 for transferring an image to a recording sheet fed from a paper unit (not shown).

The controller 11 is a general term for control means for converting print data from the printer driver 32 into video data and outputting the video data to the printer engine 12 in accordance with a control mode set at the time of printing and a control code from the printer driver 32. For example, it is composed of the following modules.

That is, the controller 11 transmits a control signal and print data from the printer driver 32 to the printer 10, and transmits the control signal and print data from the printer 10 to the printer driver 3.
A host interface (I / F) 13 for transmitting a status signal and various information to the host computer 2 and a program ROM 14 storing a main program for managing data in the controller 11 and controlling peripheral modules. And a font RO storing various kinds of fonts used for printing.
M15 and an operation panel 2 for displaying various information of the printer 10 and the controller 11 and for giving instructions for various operations
It has a panel interface (I / F) 16 for exchanging signals with 0, and a CPU 5 for processing data (print data, control data) sent from the printer driver 32 according to a control program.

Further, it is used as a working memory used when the CPU 17 performs control processing, manages data sent from the printer driver 32 in page units, temporarily stores the data, and stores the stored data in actual printing. A RAM 18 used as a bitmap memory or the like for converting the data into a pattern and storing the video data;
An engine interface (I / F) 19 that performs signal processing such as a control signal from the printer engine 1 to the printer engine 12, a status signal from the printer engine 13 to the controller 11, and a video signal from the controller 11.
And

The operation panel 25 has keys required for setting printing conditions, and L for displaying printing conditions and the status of the apparatus.
A CD display panel is provided. Printer engine 1
Reference numeral 2 denotes an optical writing mechanism using a laser beam, an image forming mechanism using an electrophotographic process, and a paper feeding mechanism that feeds recording paper one by one and conveys the fed recording paper. A laser beam corresponding to the video signal is irradiated on the photoreceptor to form an electrostatic latent image according to the video signal and the control signal in accordance with the video signal and the control signal. This is the image forming unit that discharges the paper after the image formation.

In the above system configuration, various data sent from the host computer 30 are converted into control codes and the like through a printer driver 32 on the host computer 30 and passed to the controller 11 via a bidirectional communication cable 35. In contrast to this operation, similarly, various data from the controller 11 are transmitted to the host computer 30 via the bidirectional communication cable 35.
It is passed to the printer driver 32 above.

Further, the flow of data in the print system will be additionally described. First, the host computer 30
Start the application 31 on the Internet 4
Open the document or the image information including the document fetched from 0. Then, processing such as processing (editing) necessary for the image information is performed, and printing processing is executed by operation of the application 31.

In this printing process, the printer driver 32 is called from the application 31 by the OS of the host computer 30. The called printer driver 32 creates print data (PDL) that can be interpreted by the controller 11 of the printer 10. Then, the created print data is transferred to the controller 11. The controller 11 interprets the print data sent from the printer driver 32 to create bitmap data of a page image to be printed by the printer 10, and prints it on recording paper by the printer engine 12.

Next, an example of data analysis in the printer driver 32, which is a feature of the present invention, will be described with reference to flowcharts. The data analysis in the printer driver 32 is performed by inserting it into a data analysis part (interpretation system) of the print processing, that is, a part that converts a print request (command) from the application 31 into a printer language.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an example of data analysis processing of the printer driver 32 according to the embodiment of the present invention. When the data analysis is started, first, the application 31 running on the host computer 30
Character data is extracted from the data created in step (1), for example, information taken in page units (step S11).
Then, it is determined whether or not the character data extracted in step S11 is kanji data (step S12).

That is, here, the kanji portion of the character data processed by the application 31 running on the host computer 30 (such as a document fetched from the Internet 40) is extracted. The kanji data is extracted by, for example, character codes (kanji codes) and control codes inside the host computer 30, and is extracted by identifying the kanji codes. Note that the kanji codes include codes defined by JIS standards and classified into first and second levels, shift JIS codes, UNIX codes, and the like. Kanji data is extracted using kanji codes based on these standards. .

Subsequently, when it is determined that the character data extracted in step S12 is kanji data, it is determined whether furigana is added to the extracted kanji (step S13). The determination as to whether or not to add the phonetic character is performed as follows.

For example, the judgment levels of the first level and the second level of the JIS standard are determined in advance, and if the first level is a general kanji, it is relatively easy to understand, so that furigana is not added. On the other hand, in the case of the second level, it is determined that furigana addition is necessary because personal names and place names, special proper nouns, old Chinese characters, and the like are included. Alternatively, in addition to this, a plurality of judgment levels are set in advance so as to correspond to the level of the user who views the printed document, such as the elementary and junior high school student level or the adult level (general adult level), and the set judgment level is set. The determination may be made based on the level.

If it is determined in step S12 that the data is not kanji data, and if no phonetic characters are added in step S13, a normal printing process is executed (step S13).
19). If it is determined in step S13 that furigana is to be added to the extracted kanji, then a furigana position for the kanji is set (step S14). In the furigana position setting, furigana is set to be printed at an arbitrary position, such as up, down, left, or right, with respect to the direction of the kanji, so that the kanji can correspond to both vertical writing and horizontal writing.

Subsequently, the phonetic character information is set (step S15). The phonetic character information corresponds to the font, size, style, character spacing, spacing between kanji and phonetic characters of the phonetic character to be added. Interpreted by When the setting of the character information is completed in step S15, the corresponding kanji is converted into hiragana (step S16). In this case, for example, if the kanji code is JIS
If the standard is based on the first and second levels of the standard, the inverse conversion is performed to perform the hiragana conversion. Then, the above hiragana is added to the kanji data and printed (step S).
17, S18).

Therefore, as described above, the kanji portion of the character data is extracted from the print data processed by the host computer 30 by the printer driver 32, and the kanji is added to the kanji. Can be obtained. Specifically, for example, it helps a child read a document containing many kanji, such as a news article, or helps an adult understand a document containing kanji that is difficult for adults.

Also, by setting the furigana to be printed at an arbitrary position such as up, down, left, and right for kanji,
Printing can be performed by adding furigana to both vertical and horizontal documents. Furthermore, since the phonetic character information (font, size, style, character spacing, interval between kanji and phonetic characters) to be added can be set, printing with phonetic characters added in a layout intended by the user can be performed.

According to the present invention, in addition to the above-described embodiment, the software for the above-described document print processing method can be recorded on a computer-readable recording medium, and can be read and implemented on a computer.

For example, the document print processing method described above
This is realized by executing a prepared program on a computer such as a personal computer or a workstation. This program is recorded on a computer-readable recording medium such as a hard disk, a floppy disk, a CD-ROM, and an MO, and is executed by being read from the recording medium by the computer. This program can be distributed via the above-mentioned recording medium through a network such as the Internet.

[0039]

As described above, according to the printer system of the first aspect, a kanji portion of character data is extracted from print data and furigana is added to the kanji.
It is possible to obtain output results with kanji added with kanji only by printing operation, for example, helping children read documents containing many kanji such as news articles, and also including kanji difficult for adults Since it assists in understanding the document, the work efficiency and the willingness to read the document on the user side can be improved.

According to the printer system of the second aspect, the setting is made such that furigana is printed at an arbitrary position such as up, down, left, or right with respect to the direction (vertical / horizontal) of the extracted kanji. In addition, printing can be performed by adding furigana to any horizontally written document.

According to the printer system of the third aspect, the phonetic character information to be added (font, size, style, character spacing, spacing between Chinese characters and phonetic characters, etc.)
Can be set, so that it is possible to print with a phonetic addition in a layout intended by the user.

According to the document printing processing method of the fourth aspect, the kanji portion of the character data is extracted from the print data in the kanji extracting step, and the furigana is added to the kanji extracted in the furigana adding step. You can obtain output results with kanji added with kanji only by printing operation, for example, helping children read documents containing many kanji such as news articles, and including kanji that are difficult for adults Since it helps the user to understand the document, the work efficiency and the willingness to read the document on the user side can be improved.

According to the document print processing method of the fifth aspect, in the furigana addition step, furigana is set to be printed at an arbitrary position such as up, down, left, or right with respect to the extracted kanji. Can be printed with the furigana added to any document.

According to the document printing processing method of the sixth aspect, in the phonetic character adding step, character information (font, size, style, character spacing, interval between kanji and phonetic characters, etc.) of the phonetic character to be added can be set. As a result, it is possible to perform printing with a furigana in a layout configuration intended by the user.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a printer system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating an example of data analysis processing of the printer driver according to the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 Printer 11 Controller 12 Printer Engine 30 Host Computer 31 Application 32 Printer Driver 35 Two-way Communication Cable 40 Internet

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. A printer system in which a host computer and a printer are connected so as to be able to communicate with each other and a document processed by the host computer is printed out by the printer. The printer system is created by an application running on the host computer. A printer system comprising: a kanji extracting unit for extracting a kanji portion of character data; and a furigana adding unit for adding a phonetic character to the extracted kanji and transmitting the character to the printer. 2. The printer system according to claim 1, wherein the printer driver prints a phonetic letter at a position corresponding to the direction of the extracted kanji. 3. The printer driver according to claim 1, wherein the printer driver sets character information such as a font, a size, a style, a character spacing, and a space between the kanji and the furigana to be added to the kanji. The printer system according to 1. 4. A document print processing method in which a host computer and a printer are connected so as to be able to communicate with each other, and a document processed by the host computer is printed out by the printer. An application running on the host computer A document print processing method, comprising: a kanji extracting step of extracting a kanji portion of created character data; and a furigana adding step of adding furigana to the extracted kanji and transmitting it to the printer. 5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the furigana adding step adds furigana to a position corresponding to the direction of the extracted kanji. 6. The method according to claim 4, wherein in the furigana adding step, character information is set to a font, a size, a style, a character spacing, a spacing between the kanji and the furigana to be added to the kanji. 5. The document print processing method according to 5.