JP2001251469A - Internet facsimile machine - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an Internet facsimile machine capable of notifying undelivered report mail without changing devices and control procedures having high versatility such as a mail server and a communication method. SOLUTION: A reception controlling part 10 detects whether or not received electronic-mail is undelivered mail according to delivery information of the electronic-mail received from the Internet server in a delivery information detecting part 14, and notifies an user of the Internet facsimile machine of image data and text data attached to the received electronic-mail on the basis of the detection results in a printing and outputting part 21 and a displaying part 22.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an Internet facsimile apparatus for transmitting and receiving image data using an electronic mail on a network, and more particularly to an Internet facsimile apparatus for controlling an operation of transmitting and receiving image data. .

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art An Internet facsimile apparatus which transmits / receives image data by attaching it to an e-mail using a network completes the data transmission / reception operation by communicating with an Internet server which is a relay point on an adjacent network. Therefore, no matter where the destination is, the communication on the transmitting side is completed only by transmitting the data to the nearby Internet server. Therefore, the facsimile apparatus using the telephone line ( Hereinafter, facsimile communication whose communication cost is lower than that of a facsimile apparatus) can be realized.

On the other hand, in such an Internet facsimile machine, there are also specific problems that have not occurred in the facsimile machine. One of the problems is an error message (hereinafter, referred to as a message when the transmission is not completed normally).
There is a problem with the handling of non-delivery reports).

In the Internet facsimile apparatus, when transmitting image data, communication is completed only by transferring the image data to the Internet server, as described above. Since the router that is a separate device from the Internet facsimile machine is used to search for a terminal to be transmitted, the image data transmitted to the destination is transmitted by the Internet facsimile device itself.
I can't confirm that it was sent correctly.

[0005] For this reason, the Internet facsimile apparatus transmits a non-delivery report similar to that of the facsimile apparatus when an error occurs in the transmission operation after image data transmission is completed or when image data cannot be transmitted due to unknown destination. There is a problem that it cannot be output.

[0006] Normally, when non-delivery of an e-mail occurs in the e-mail, an e-mail indicating non-delivery (hereinafter, referred to as a non-delivery mail) is delivered to the terminal transmitted from the nearby Internet server. It has become.

[0007] Therefore, in the Internet facsimile apparatus, if an error occurs in the transmission operation, the Internet facsimile apparatus itself receives the undelivered mail from the Internet server, and the undelivered mail is received in the same manner as in the normal reception operation. The image data attached to the mail is printed out and notified to the user of the Internet facsimile machine.

[0008]

However, in such a method of receiving an undelivered mail of an Internet facsimile apparatus, the Internet facsimile apparatus itself receives the received data attached to the undelivered mail and receives the received data normally. Since it is not possible to distinguish the received data of the e-mail and only print out the received data attached to the undelivered e-mail as one of the received e-mails, the report of this undelivered received data is There is a problem that the possibility of being buried in a report of other received data is high.

[0009] Further, the undelivered mail to be received is attached with the corresponding e-mail so as to easily identify the undelivered e-mail. For this reason, when printing out the received data of the non-delivery mail, if the number of transmitted image data is large, there is also a problem that the consumption of the recording paper becomes enormous.

The present invention comprises means for detecting a non-delivery mail received from an Internet server, and means for clearly notifying a user of an Internet facsimile machine of non-delivery of image data, and comprising a mail server and a communication system. It is an object of the present invention to provide an Internet facsimile apparatus capable of notifying an undelivered image data as a non-delivery report without changing a highly versatile apparatus and control procedure.

[0011]

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an Internet facsimile apparatus for transmitting and receiving an electronic mail and image data attached to the electronic mail using a network. Detecting means for detecting a non-delivery mail based on the delivery information attached to the received e-mail, and, when the non-delivery e-mail is detected by the detecting means, the e-mail and an image attached to the e-mail and transmitted Notification means for notifying that data has not been delivered.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, it is possible to detect whether or not the received e-mail is a non-delivery e-mail based on the distribution information of the received e-mail in the e-mail using the network. When an undelivered e-mail is detected, the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus is notified of the presence of undelivered image data without changing a versatile device such as a mail server or a communication method and a control procedure. be able to.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in addition to the configuration of the first aspect, the notifying means prints the electronic mail and a notification of non-delivery of image data attached to the electronic mail and transmitted. It is characterized by having a printing means to perform the printing.

According to the second aspect of the invention, when the non-delivery mail is received, the image data of the non-delivery can be printed as a non-delivery report by the printing means, so that the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus is notified. It can be performed.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in addition to the configuration of the first or second aspect, the printing means prints the electronic mail and a notice of non-delivery of the image data attached to the electronic mail and transmitted. When printing, the identification mark is added and printed.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, when printing the non-delivery reception data, the identification mark image data for identifying the non-delivery reception data and the normally received reception data is combined and printed. The non-delivery report can be easily found without burying the non-delivery report in the report of the normally received image data.

The invention described in claim 4 is the first to third aspects of the present invention.
In addition to the configuration of the invention described in any one of the above, the notification means includes a display means for displaying a notification of non-delivery of the image data.

According to the fourth aspect of the present invention, when the non-delivery mail of the image data is received, the image data of the non-delivery can be displayed by the display means, and all the non-delivery mail can be printed out. Instead, by using the display means, a user of the Internet facsimile apparatus can select undelivered mail to be printed or undelivered mail not to be printed, thereby reducing waste of recording paper due to report printing.

[0019]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

First, the configuration of an embodiment of the Internet facsimile apparatus according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. Here, FIG. 1 is a system diagram of a reception data detection control unit that identifies a received electronic mail and controls the output of image data attached to the electronic mail in the Internet facsimile apparatus.

The received data detection control section 10 processes the received electronic mail for text data, image data and mail header data (hereinafter referred to as delivery information), respectively. The image data and the image data are connected and combined after each data processing to generate image data (hereinafter, referred to as reception data), and the delivery information is a non-delivery mail by searching a character string of the delivery information. Is detected, and based on the detection result, the output of the image data connected and combined is controlled.

As shown in FIG. 1, the reception control unit 10
A receiving unit 11 for receiving an e-mail, an image data conversion unit 12 for converting image data attached to the e-mail into a binary format, and a text data conversion unit 13 for converting text characters of the e-mail into image data, A delivery information detecting unit 14 for detecting whether or not the mail is a non-delivery mail from the delivery information of the email, an image data analyzing unit 15 for analyzing the data format of the image data, and image data for expanding the image data to form the image data A decompression unit 16, a reception data compression unit 17 for concatenating and combining image data and image data of text data to generate reception data, and compressing the reception data. And an output control unit that controls output of received data based on a detection result of the delivery information detection unit 14.
19, a compression unit 17 includes a reception data decompression unit 20 for decompressing the reception data compressed, a print output unit 21 for printing out the reception data, and a display unit 22 for displaying the reception data.

Here, the delivery information detecting section 14, the output control section 19
The print output unit 21 and the display unit 22 constitute a detection unit, a notification unit, and a display unit according to the present invention, respectively.

The receiving unit 11 is connected to a nearby Internet server, and receives an electronic mail addressed to its own terminal. The receiving unit 11 outputs the image data of the received e-mail to the image data converting unit 12,
The text data described in the text character portion of the e-mail and the delivery information of the mail header are output to the text converter 13 and the delivery information detector 14, respectively.

Usually, the format of the e-mail received by the receiving unit 11 is POP3 (post office protocol ver.).
The received e-mail includes image data, a text character part, and a mail header part. Therefore, the receiving unit 11 separates the image data, the text character part, and the mail header from the received electronic mail, and outputs the separated data.

The image data converter 12 receives the image data output from the receiver 11, and converts the input image data from text format to binary data into a MIME (Multipurpose Internet Message).
e Extensions) The reverse conversion is performed. here,
MIME is a data conversion standard for attaching binary data to an electronic mail.

The image data conversion unit 12 outputs the image data that has been subjected to the MIME inverse conversion to the image data analysis unit 15.

The text conversion unit 13 converts the text code of the input text data into a print image code, and outputs the print image code to the reception data compression unit 17. The text conversion unit 13 can convert the text data into image data in the code conversion process, thereby converting the text data into image data similar to a normal facsimile image.

The delivery information detecting section 14 receives the delivery information of the mail header output from the receiving section 11 and searches for a character string of the input delivery information using a pointer. , It is detected whether the received email is a normally received email or a non-delivery email, and the detection result is output to the output control unit 19.

The image data analysis unit 15 converts the input binary image data into a recording format TIFF-F (Tag Image) of the data recorded in the first tag of the image data.
FileFormat class F) is analyzed, and the image data is output to the image data decompression unit 16 together with the analysis result.

Here, the TIFF-F format is an MH (Modified Huffman) coding system and an MR (Modi
fied READ) coding method and MMR (Modified Modifi)
ed READ) method, but the MH method is the only compression method defined as an international standard for Internet facsimile.
In step 15, by analyzing the TIFF-F, it is confirmed that the compression method is the MH method, and is output.

The image data decompression unit 16 decompresses the image data compressed by the MH system to form uncompressed image data, and outputs this image data to the reception data compression unit 17. It has become.

The received data compression section 17 is an image data decompression section.
The image data output from 16 and the image data of the text data output from the text conversion unit 13 are connected and combined, and the connected combined reception data is compressed by the MMR method. . The compressed received data is output to the memory 18 or the output control unit 19, and the output control unit 19 controls the switching of the output of the received data.

The memory 18 stores the received data compressed by the received data compression unit 17, and the stored received data is managed by the output control unit 19.

The output controller 19 controls the output of the received data input from the received data compressor 17 or the memory 18 based on the detection result of the delivery information detector 14.

The output control section 19 outputs the received data to the received data decompressing section 20 when the delivery information detecting section 14 detects a normal electronic mail. Further, when the delivery information detecting unit 14 detects that the non-delivery mail is received, based on the setting information set by the operation unit (not shown), the reception data of the non-delivery mail is output to the display unit 22, or , Print output section
21 to control whether to output.

The output control unit 19 sets whether to directly input the reception data compressed by the output control reception data compression unit 17 or to input the data after temporarily storing it in the memory 18 by an operation unit (not shown). It is supposed to do.

The received data decompression section 20 decompresses the received data compressed in the MMR system and restores the data to image data. The decompressed received data is output to the print output section 21. It is supposed to.

The print output unit 21 has a configuration for printing out input image data on recording paper. As a result, the image data input from the received data decompression unit 20 is printed.

The print output unit 21 can combine and output mark image data stored in the print output unit 21 before printing a non-delivery mail. The output is controlled by the output control unit 19 based on the delivery information.

FIG. 2 shows an example of the non-delivery report that has been printed out. The non-delivery report is configured to combine the mark image data with the end of the reception data of the non-delivery mail input from the reception data decompression unit 20 and output the mark image data. Since the image data is binary, it can be formed by simple OR processing and synthesis.

The display unit 22 outputs the received data specified by the output control unit 19. The display unit 22 includes a display operation unit 23, and the display operation unit
23 clears the received data displayed in the memory 18,
You can specify save and print output.

For example, the display unit 22 displays the undelivered mail shown in FIG. 3, and the displayed undelivered mail is arranged on the display screen and in the vicinity of the display screen. The display operation unit 23 selects whether or not to print out the non-delivery mail. Also,
The information of the undelivered mail displayed on the display unit 22 is the number of undelivered mails, the transmission time, and the destination mail address.

Next, a delivery information detecting section will be described with reference to FIGS.
In 14, the principle of operation of searching the character string of the delivery information of the received e-mail and detecting the non-delivery mail will be described.

First, the delivery information will be described.

The mail header delivery information shown in FIG. 4 is, for example, the delivery information of an e-mail received from the Internet server ppp.toda.ricoh.co.jp, and the e-mail address xyz@toda.ricoh.co.jp Is transmitted after transmitting the image data to a non-existent e-mail address.

In the delivery information of the non-delivery mail, “Fro
"MAILER-DAEMON@ppp.toda.ricoh.co.jp" including the name of the Internet server to which the sender described in the "m:" line is close
And "Returnmail: User unknown" indicating that the subject described in the "Subject:" line is a reply due to unknown destination.

On the other hand, in the mail header of the electronic mail normally received, what is described in the “From:” line is the electronic mail address of the Internet facsimile machine of the transmission source, and is described in the “Subject:” line. Is the subject of the image data specified by the sender.

Therefore, the delivery information of the non-delivery mail,
The character string of the delivery information differs from the delivery information of the normally received e-mail. As a result, the e-mail does not reach the destination by searching for the character string of the delivery information of the undelivered mail as described above. Can be detected.

Next, the principle of the non-delivery mail detecting operation of the delivery information detecting section 14 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. The delivery information detection unit 14 detects delivery information based on information obtained by character recognition using a search pointer, and determines whether the mail is a non-delivery mail based on the detection result. Here, the Internet server to which the receiving unit 11 is connected is ppp.toda.ricoh.co.jp, and the e-mail address of the Internet facsimile machine is
xyz@toda.ricoh.co.jp

First, a search pointer for character recognition is set at the head of the input delivery information (step S11).
Next, the character string "Subject:" is searched in descending order from the beginning of the mail header to the end of the sentence (step S12), and it is determined whether or not the character string "Subject:" is detected (step S12). Step S13). If the character string "Subject:" is not detected, step S13 is repeatedly performed.

If the character string "Subject:" is detected, the search pointer is set at the beginning of the "Subject:" line (step S14), and the character string "MA
ILER-DAEMON@ppp.toda.ricoh.co.jp "is searched (step S15).

Next, the character string "MAILER-DAEMON@ppp.tod
a.ricoh.co.jp "is detected (step S16). The string ``MAILER-DAEMON@ppp.toda.ricoh.c
If "o.jp" is not detected, it is determined that the received e-mail is not a non-delivery mail (step S17), the operation is terminated, and the character string "MAILER-DAEMON@ppp.toda.rico
If “h.co.jp” is detected, the following operation is performed.

First, a search pointer is set at the head of the "Subject:" line (step S18), and the character string "User unknown" is searched in descending order toward the end of the sentence (step S19).

Next, it is determined whether or not the character string "User unknown" has been detected (step S20).
If "nknown" is not detected, it is determined that the received e-mail is not a non-delivery mail (step S17).
The operation is terminated, and if the character string "User unknown" is detected, the received electronic mail is determined to be a non-delivery mail (step S21), and the operation is terminated.

By searching for the character string of the delivery information of the undelivered mail in this way, a specific character string indicating the undelivered mail can be detected. Delivered mail can be detected.

Usually, the delivery information of the non-delivery mail is
Since the contents of the "From:" and "Subject:" lines are standard character strings for each Internet server,
A target character string for searching for undelivered mail can be set for each Internet server.

Next, the operation principle of switching the output of the received data between the display output and the print output will be described with reference to FIG. Here, the image data and text data of the received e-mail are generated as received data and stored in the memory.
It is assumed that the delivery information is stored in the delivery information 18 and that the delivery information detection unit 14 detects a non-delivery mail and that the detection result is input to the output control unit 19.

First, it is determined whether or not the received data input to the output control unit 19 is a non-delivery mail based on the detection result of the delivery information detection unit 14 input to the output control unit 19 (step S31). . If it is determined that the received data is not a non-delivery mail, the received data is output to the received data decompressing unit 20 (step S32). And printing is performed (step S33). If it is determined that the input received data is a non-delivery mail, the following processing is performed.

First, the contents of the non-delivery mail are displayed on the display unit 22 (step S34). Here, the display section 22 can display the destination mail address, transmission time and subject of the undelivered mail, so that the undelivered mail can be specified.

Next, the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus confirms the display contents of the undelivered mail, and operates the display operation unit 23 to select whether or not to print out (step S35). If the print output is selected, the received data is output to the received data decompression unit 20 (step S32), printed out (step S33), and the operation is terminated.

If the user selects not to print out, the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus operates the display / operation unit 23.
By operating, it is selected whether or not to delete the received data (step S36).

If the user has selected not to delete the received data, the process returns to the selection of whether or not to print out (step S3).
5) If it is selected to delete the received data, the received data is deleted (step S37), and the operation is terminated.

By performing the output control operation as described above, it is possible to control the switching between the print output and the display output of the non-delivery mail.

Next, referring to FIG. 7, a description will be given of the operation principle when the mark image data is combined with the printout of the received data of the undelivered mail and the printout is switched to the printout of the received data of the normally received e-mail. . Here, the image data and the text data of the received e-mail are generated as received data and stored in the memory 18, and
As for the delivery information, it is assumed that the delivery information detection unit detects a non-delivery mail and the detection result is input to the output control unit 19.

First, the output control section 19 determines whether or not the received data is a non-delivery mail from the detection result of the input delivery information (step S51). If the received data is not a non-delivery mail, the received data is output to the received data decompression unit 20 for printing out (step S52),
Printing is performed on recording paper in the print output unit 21 (step S5).
3), end the operation. If it is determined that the mail is a non-delivery mail, the following is performed.

First, the received data is converted into a received data decompression unit.
20 (step S54), and expands the received data by MMR to generate image data (step S55). Next, the identification mark image data stored in the print output unit 21 is read, combined with the received data as the image data (step S56), and printed on a recording paper (step 57). To end.

As described above, when the undelivered mail is received, the output switching processing can be performed so as to combine and output the mark image data for identification in outputting the received data of the undelivered mail. ing.

As described above, in the present embodiment, the delivery information, text data and image data of the e-mail can be obtained in the receiving section 11, and the delivery information detecting section 14 for inputting the delivery information receives the delivery information. Since undelivered mail can be detected from the character string described in
The undelivered mail can be detected only by the terminal function without changing a versatile device such as a mail server or a communication method or a control procedure.

Further, in this embodiment, the detection result of the non-delivery mail can be input to the output control unit 19 together with the reception data obtained by combining the text data and the image data.
In addition, the output control unit 19 can control the print output unit 21 having the identification mark image data for identifying the received data of the undelivered mail and the normally received data, so that the undelivered mail is detected. Then, the non-delivery mail reception data can be printed by combining the identification marks. As a result, the printed output allows the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus to be notified of the contents of the undelivered mail as an error report, and to easily find the undelivered error report from the printed output received data. .

Further, in the present embodiment, since the non-delivery can be notified to the display unit 22 together with the received data, the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus can print out all the non-delivery mail without printing out. Since it is possible to select the received data of the undelivered mail to be printed and the received data of the undelivered mail not to be printed, it is possible to reduce waste of recording paper due to report printing.

[0072]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, a non-delivery mail can be detected from a received electronic mail without changing a general-purpose device such as a mail server or a communication system and a control procedure. It is possible to notify the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus of the undelivered image data.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, when a non-delivery mail of image data is received, the image data of the non-delivery can be printed as a non-delivery report by the printing means. Can be notified.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, the non-delivery report can be easily found in the normally received image data without burying the non-delivery report.

According to the fourth aspect of the present invention, without printing out all the undelivered mails, the user of the Internet facsimile apparatus can receive the data of the undelivered mail to be printed and the received data of the undelivered mail not to be printed. Can be selected, and the waste of recording paper due to report printing can be reduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system diagram showing an embodiment of a reception data detection control unit of an Internet facsimile apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for describing synthesis of received data of a non-delivery mail and identification mark image data in one embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a display unit that displays undelivered mail in one embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a character string search of delivery information of a mail header in an embodiment, and is a diagram showing an example of delivery information.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an operation principle of a delivery information detection unit according to the embodiment;

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an operation principle of switching between display output and print output in one embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating an operation principle when switching between printout of received data of a non-delivery mail and printout of received data of an e-mail normally received in one embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 Reception control unit 14 Delivery information detection unit (detection unit) 19 Output control unit 21 Print output unit (notification unit, printing unit) 22 Display unit (notification unit, display unit)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification symbol FI Theme coat ゛ (Reference) H04N 1/32 9A001 F term (Reference) 5B089 GA26 HA10 JA31 JB03 KA12 KC47 KC53 LA12 LA18 LB12 LB14 MD08 5C062 AA02 AA13 AA29 AC04 AC05 AE08 AF02 AF15 5C075 AB90 CF01 CF04 5K030 GA17 GA18 HA08 HB04 HC01 JT05 LB18 LD14 MB18 5K101 KK01 KK02 NN18 NN19 TT06 9A001 BB04 CC07 JJ14 JJ25 JJ28 KK56

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. An Internet facsimile apparatus for transmitting / receiving an electronic mail and image data attached to the electronic mail using a network, detecting means for detecting a non-delivery mail based on delivery information attached to the received electronic mail. And notifying means for notifying that the e-mail and the image data attached to the e-mail and transmitted are undelivered when the non-delivery e-mail is detected by the detecting means. Internet facsimile machine. 2. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said notifying means includes a printing means for printing a notice of non-delivery of the electronic mail and image data attached to the electronic mail and transmitted.
The described Internet facsimile machine. 3. A printing method according to claim 2, wherein said printing means prints an electronic mail and a notice of non-delivery of the image data attached to the electronic mail and attached thereto when an identification mark is attached. Item 3. An Internet facsimile apparatus according to Item 2. 4. An Internet facsimile apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said notifying means includes a display means for displaying a notice of non-delivery of said image data.