JP2002015190A - Method and system for order reception and production of publication - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent a surplus caused by market production or the like by immediately constructing editing contents, which a publication production requester requests, to produce an deliver the required number of copies and easily recomposing contents of a produced publication in accordance with circumstances to enrich the contents of the publication. SOLUTION: The publication is produced through a stage where a publication production requester 101 arbitrarily selects publication contents preliminarily materialized into units and transmit them to a publication producer 103 through an information communication network 100, a stage where the publication producer 103 reads out publication contents in units from a storage means 105 based on order reception information and performs composition processing of publications, a stage where data subjected to composition processing is converted into print data, and a stage where the publications for which orders have been individually receives are printed and bound based on print data.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] The present invention relates to a method for transmitting a request of a production client who has arbitrarily selected a plurality of publication contents prepared in advance to a publisher of a publication via an information communication network.
The present invention relates to a system and a method for receiving and producing a publication in which the creator completes and delivers a publication based on the request.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In general, when publishing books such as books, the publisher estimates the market size and the like, estimates the demand, and orders a large number of copies at once from a printing / binding company. Is common. Then, when the publication receives a great demand in the market, the publisher of the publication responds to the demand by reprinting or reprinting.

[0003] By the way, in the case of such a publication with strong demand, surplus does not occur and no return or disposal occurs, but in general, many publications are sold in a short period of time. Therefore, it is a reality that many books are returned and disposed of due to unsold products due to expected production.

[0004] In addition, ordinary book forms are arbitrarily composed and published by authors and editors, and it is naturally not possible to purchase only the necessary parts of a single publication. In this way, if a single publication contains a mix of parts that the buyer needs and parts they do not need,
Except for novels and dictionaries, they often exist, and as a simple example, publications on horticulture and animal breeding are almost unnecessary except for articles that describe the objects that buyers want to grow or breed. is there.

[0005]

Such a tendency tends to be noticeable in learning reference books and collections of problems.
In other words, this kind of educational publication has a problem that it is difficult to determine the level of the target of the publication because the student who is the purchaser has different academic ability, and it tends to be a so-called general flower content. .

[0006] A student who purchases such a study reference book / book has to study only the necessary parts of the publication, and if there is a shortage, purchases a new one and supplements it, thus incurring unnecessary expenses. It is the present situation.

Furthermore, in recent years, for example, in learning cram schools, preparatory schools, etc., there is a tendency for classroom classes to be organized in accordance with the student's scholastic ability, and learning reference books and problem books corresponding to this are demanded. Also, for example, if it is possible to adopt only a specific field corresponding to an intensive lecture or a course at a specific time, or a collection of only a specific difficulty level or a question of a question tendency, the lecture can be advanced rationally, The student's academic ability can be effectively improved.

However, since the process of printing and binding a general learning reference book / question book is indispensable, it is not easy to frequently re-edit the contents. It was difficult to create a collection of questions. Also,
Even if it is issued independently at the study school or preparatory school,
Under the same circumstances, it had to be a uniform study reference book and problem book.

[0009]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional problems, and can immediately construct editing contents requested by a client of a study reference book / problem creation requester, and create and deliver the required number of copies. The purpose of this is to make it possible to easily re-edit the study reference books and question books according to the situation, thereby enriching the contents, and to improve surplus such as expected production. The present invention provides a publication order receiving / creating system and a method thereof that do not cause any problem.

According to the present invention, the contents of publication are converted into materials in units of units in advance, and this is constructed by electronic data, thereby achieving a complete automation of a series of processes such as receiving orders, producing publications, and issuing slips such as bills. At the same time, it aims at automation of process management, production management, etc. by effectively combining information and communication networks.

[0011]

In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, a publication production requester transmits publication ordering information from a personal computer terminal or the like to a publication producer through an information communication network. An order processing unit that, at the publisher of the publication, processes the order information of the production requester and transfers it to the system, and transmits the order information to the production requester; An order information storage means for storing order information necessary for the job, a typesetting material storage means for storing and accumulating publishing contents materialized in units of units prompting the client to make a selection, and the order information storage means and the typesetting material storage means. A main body typesetting processing unit for performing typesetting processing of the ordered body of the publication based on the data of the order, a page description language processing unit for converting the typesetting data of the typesetting processing unit into a specified paper width form, A data conversion processing unit for converting data from the page description language processing unit so that the data can be stored, an editing data organization unit for converting the data from the data conversion processing unit into an editing format at the time of bookbinding, and the editing data organization unit Or a print management server that stores and stores data from the data conversion processing unit in order units, and instructs a printing machine to perform printing based on print data output from the print management server. System and

[0012] In the first system, when the creator of the publication receives the order, the order information is transmitted from the order processing unit to the production requester of the publication. System and

[0013] In the first or second system, a third system including a separate-print typesetting processing unit for performing typesetting processing of a separate-print publication attached to the body of the ordered publication;

[0014] In the first to third systems, a fourth system including a cover typesetting processing unit for performing a typesetting process of a cover for binding the main body of the ordered publication;

In the above-mentioned first to fourth systems, order data and production progress data are accumulated and stored, and a requester of publication production and / or a process manager of the system can monitor the production progress status and the shipping / delivery status. A fifth system including a process management server capable of confirming,

In the above first to fifth systems, a sixth system including an order management server for accumulating and storing data necessary for accounting settlement from a process management server and issuing a bill or the like;

A step of arbitrarily selecting and publishing the contents of the publication materialized in units of the unit to the creator of the publication via the information communication network by the creator of the publication arbitrarily. A step of reading the publication contents of the unit from the storage means based on the order information and performing a typesetting process on the publication, a step of converting the type-processed data into print data, and receiving an order individually based on the print data. Printing and binding the publication.
Method and

[0018] The first method includes a step of, after sending out the ordered publication and completing the delivery, issuing a bill to a production client of the publication based on the data of the order management server. The two methods,

[0019] In the above first and second methods, a step of confirming the progress of the production of the target publication via the information communication network by the publication production requester and / or the publication creator is included. A third method,

In the above-mentioned first to third methods, a fourth step includes a step of alerting a publisher and / or publisher of the publication when the order of the publication exceeds the processing capacity of the system. And the method of the present invention responds to the problem of the present invention.

[0021]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The embodiments of the present invention will be described below. In order to facilitate understanding of the present invention, publications are described as examples in which learning reference books and problem books are ordered and created. However, as long as the content of the publication can be materialized in units, it can be widely applied to other publications and is not limited to the publication content of the publication. In the embodiment of the present invention, an example in which the Internet and an intranet are mainly used as an information communication network and a personal computer (hereinafter, referred to as a personal computer terminal) is connected to the information communication network will be described.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the outline of the present invention.
In the figure, reference numeral 100 denotes an information communication network using the Internet, and the information communication network is a client of a large number of publications in cooperation with the publisher of the publications (in this embodiment, a learning cram school, a preparatory school). 10)
1, 101, ... personal computer terminals 102, 102, ...
Are connected, and the keyboards 102A, 102A,.
・ Transfer ordering information to the publisher of the publication by performing an input operation from.

Reference numeral 103 denotes the information communication network 10
The host computer 104 includes a host computer 104, a server system 105 connected to the host computer, and a printing machine 106.

By the way, the production requester 101 includes the producer 1
From 03, guidebook 10 of contents as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3 in advance
7 are distributed. That is, FIG. 2 shows a table of mathematics as an example of a subject, and the table of contents includes a course number 109 and a course name 110 arranged in a course code 108.
Is displayed.

From the next page onward, as shown in FIG.
In correspondence with the course code 108, the elementary teaching materials 111 are displayed in four units per page, and one page is organized in one course unit. FIG. 3 shows an example in which pages corresponding to the course codes 317 and 318 are disclosed, and the teaching materials 111 are printed in the same manner in other courses.

Next, the configuration of the system of the present invention and the flow of processing will be described with reference to FIG. In FIG.
Reference numeral 1 denotes e-mail data composed of the personal computer terminal 102 of the production client 101. This e-mail data is input on a screen shown on the personal computer terminal 102 as shown in FIG.

The input on the screen of FIG. 5 relates to bibliographic items such as the order form requested by the production client, ie, the orderer, the code number of the orderer, and publications such as the number of courses, the number of copies, and the course code. Broadly divided into data. Therefore, at this stage, the production requester selects and extracts the necessary teaching material 111 from the guide book 107 and inputs the course code 108 of the required target teaching material.

When the input is completed as described above, the production client 101 operates the personal computer terminal 102 to send the order information input via the information communication network 100 to the publisher 103 of the publication as electronic mail data E1. introduce.

Next, the publisher 103 of the publication receives the transmitted e-mail data E1 as the order receiving information in the form of the e-mail data E2, and is immediately processed by the reception processing section 1. In the reception processing unit 1, in order to notify that the order has been received from the production client 101, an order number,
The total number of courses received is transmitted via the information communication network 100. At the same time, the order information is stored in the order information storage means 2 and the process management server 15 for each order unit.

Numeral 3 denotes a typesetting material storage means, which publishes the contents of the publication in units of units and stores and stores them. In this embodiment, the teaching materials 111 shown in FIG. 3 are stored and stored in a database. The course code is 10
The designated teaching material 111 is read by the designation of 8. The typesetting material storage means 3 stores teaching materials 11
The answer corresponding to No. 1 and data for forming a cover for binding the main body of the publication are also stored and stored at the same time.

Reference numeral 4 denotes a main body typesetting processing unit for performing a typesetting process on a part to be a main body of a publication, and stores data stored in the typesetting material storage means 3 in the order information storage means 2. Based on the extracted data, in the present embodiment, the teaching materials 111 constituting the main body of the publication are extracted.
In addition, the table of contents is subjected to typesetting in a specified order.

Reference numeral 5 denotes a separate-print typesetting processing unit, which in the present embodiment performs typesetting processing of an answer corresponding to the teaching material 111 constituting the main body, and stores data stored in the typesetting material storage means 3. Are extracted based on the data accumulated and stored in the order information storage means 2, and the answers are typeset in a designated order.

Reference numeral 6 denotes a cover typesetting processing unit for typesetting the cover for binding the teaching material 111 constituting the main body. Here, as a specific example of the cover typesetting process, the title of a publication requested to be produced, for example, “summer text” or the name of a study school, the name of a preparatory school, a design figure, and the like.

Further, the ordering and production of a publication by the system of the present invention is a so-called customization of a publication, so that the number of pages varies for each order, and therefore, the thickness (bunch) of the finished publication is different. Although the width varies, the position of the title or the like printed on the spine must be accurately centered.

In a conventional method of aligning a spine, a book cover is set on a main body such that characters printed on the spine are positioned at the center of the spine in bookbinding. Therefore, the setting position is changed according to the thickness of the publication. However, such a method cannot solve complicated work at the bookbinding stage, and cannot cope with complete automation of publication creation.

The cover typesetting unit 6 in the system according to the present invention carries out a program processing based on the data stored in the order information storage means 2 so that the print character of the spine is located at the center thereof. I have. This means that the width of the cover is fixed based on the edge of the cover,
The size of the character to be printed is determined according to the thickness (number of pages) of the publication, and the center of the character is made to coincide with the center of the spine. That is, by increasing the print characters for a thick publication and decreasing the print characters for a thin publication, the center of the print character on the spine always coincides with the center of the spine.

By the way, since a publication is printed in vertical composition in the case of a Japanese language and is printed in a horizontal composition in the case of English and mathematics, the page turning direction is reversed. Therefore, in the system of the present invention, the cover typesetting processing unit 6 determines the data from the order receiving information storage unit 2 and performs the typesetting process so as to print the coversheet corresponding to the horizontal printing or the vertical printing.

Reference numerals 7A and 7B denote page description language processing units, which convert the typesetting data of the main body typesetting unit 4 and the separate printing typesetting unit 5 into a designated paper width form.

Reference numeral 8 denotes a data conversion processing unit which performs conversion processing so that data from the page description language processing units 7A and 7B can be stored.

Reference numeral 9 denotes an editing data organizing unit which converts data from the data conversion processing unit 8 into an editing format at the time of bookbinding.

Reference numeral 10 denotes a print management server which stores data from the editing data organizing unit 9 in order units. The print management server 10 is required to print a main body of a publication and a separately-printed publication. The data of the final form is accumulated and stored, and the data is output to the print processing 11 based on a command from the host computer under process control.

On the other hand, the data subjected to the typesetting processing in the cover typesetting processing unit 6 is output to the print processing 14, and is subjected to the bookbinding processing 12 and the cutting processing 13 along with the main body and the table of contents of the printed matter by ordinary means. Will be delivered.

The above is the main part of the system of the present invention. Since all the steps until the print data is output to the printing press are electronic data processing, all the steps of the data processing are automated. And the process can be easily managed.

Accordingly, the present invention includes a process management server 15 configured to be connectable to the Internet and an intranet, and monitors the progress of the production of the ordered publication by a system administrator and / or the publication creator. It was configured so that the production requester could confirm it.

That is, the order management server 15 receives the order data from the order processing unit 1, stores and stores the data, and performs input operations such as a print progress input 17A and a bookbinding progress input 17B from outside the system. Then, the system administrator displays the current progress status of printing and bookbinding on the process progress information screen 1.
6 can be confirmed, while the production client 101
Similarly, print / print the publication requested on the process progress information screen 18.
You can check the progress of bookbinding.

Further, according to the present invention, after the completed publication is sent out and delivered, the data is taken into the order management server 19, and the invoice 20 is issued by the processing based on the order data from the order processing unit 1. It also has a system that enables it. Further, since the order management server 19 can constantly manage the order volume, when the order of the publication exceeds the processing capacity of the system, a warning is sent to the production client and / or the producer on the screen of the personal computer terminal. It is possible to display.

[0047]

As described in detail above, according to the present invention, the contents of publication are previously made into units and converted into a database as electronic data. It is possible to construct the required number of copies, create the required number of copies, and deliver the products. Also, since the editing is very flexible, it is easy to re-edit and it is possible to always provide a well-publicized publication.

Further, according to the present invention, a series of data processing from the order processing to the output of data to the printing press can be completely converted into electronic data and automatically performed. Can be processed.
In addition, since the process management can be unified by using the electronic data, the progress can be confirmed from the personal computer terminal of the production client inside or outside the system.

Further, according to the present invention, by providing a plurality of typesetting material storage means for each arbitrarily determined category,
The system's development potential is extremely high, as it can respond to a wide variety of orders.

[Brief description of the drawings]

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

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a table of contents of a guide used in the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a guidebook teaching material used in the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a system of the present invention and a flow of processing.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of an input screen of a publication production requester according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 ···· Reception processing unit 2 ···· Order information storage unit 3 ···· Type material storage unit 4 ···· Main body typesetting unit 5 ···· Reprinting typesetting unit 6 ······ Cover typesetting processing unit 7A ···· Page description language processing unit 7B ····· Page description language processing unit 8 ····· Data conversion processing unit 9 ······· Edited data organization unit 10 Print management server 11 Print process 12 Bookbinding process 13 Cutting process 14 Print process 15 Process management server 16 Process progress Information screen 17A: printing progress input 17B: bookbinding progress input 18: process progress information screen 19: order management server 20: bill E1: email data (production Requester) E2 ... E-mail data (creator) D1 ... Internet Door D2 ···· intranet

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Takashi Okunuki 1-23-31 Horifune, Kita-ku, Tokyo Tokyo Book Printing Co., Ltd. F term (reference) 5B049 BB25 CC05 CC08 DD01 FF02 FF03 GG00 GG04 GG07

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. A system in which a client of a production of a publication transmits ordering information of the publication from a personal computer terminal or the like to a publisher of the publication via an information communication network. An order processing unit that processes the order information of the requester and transfers the order information into the system, an order information storage unit that stores the order information necessary for producing the publication, and a unit that prompts the client to select A typesetting material storage unit for storing and storing materialized publication contents; a main body typesetting processing unit for performing typesetting processing of a main body of the ordered publication based on data from the order information storage unit and the data from the typesetting material storage unit; A page description language processing unit that converts the typesetting data of the typesetting processing unit into a specified paper width form; and a data conversion process that converts data from the page description language processing unit so that the data can be stored. An edit data organization unit that converts data from the data conversion processing unit into an editing format at the time of bookbinding, a print management server that accumulates and stores data from the edit data organization unit or the data conversion processing unit in order units, A print order receiving / producing system, wherein a print instruction is issued to a printing machine based on print data output from the print management server. 2. The system according to claim 1, wherein when the creator of the publication receives the order, the order information is transmitted from the order processing unit to the requester of the publication. Order and production system. 3. A separate printing composition processing unit for performing a typesetting process of a separate printing publication attached to a main body of a received publication, and a page description language processing unit for converting data from the separate printing composition processing unit into a designated paper width form. 3. An order receiving / producing system for a publication according to claim 1, further comprising: 4. A publication order receiving / producing system according to claim 1, further comprising a cover typesetting processing section for performing a cover typesetting process for binding a main body of the received publication. . 5. A process management server for accumulating and storing order data and production progress data so that a client of publication production and / or a process manager of the system can check the progress of production and the status of shipment / delivery. The order of publications according to claim 1 to claim 4, characterized in that:
Production system. 6. A publication according to claim 1, further comprising an order management server for accumulating and storing data necessary for accounting settlement from the process management server and issuing a bill or the like. Order receiving and production system. 7. A step of arbitrarily selecting and publishing the content of the publication, which is materialized in units of a unit, to a creator of the publication via an information and communication network by a requester of the production of the publication. A step of reading the publication content of the unit from the storage means based on the order information and performing a typesetting process on the publication; a step of converting the typeset processed data into print data; and A method for receiving and producing a publication, comprising: printing and binding the ordered publication; 8. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of, after sending out the ordered publication and completing the delivery, issuing a bill to the client of the production of the publication based on the data of the order management server. Item 7. Order and production method for publications described in item 7. 9. The method according to claim 7, further comprising the step of: confirming the progress of the production of the target publication via an information communication network by the publication production client and / or the publication creator. 9. A method for receiving and producing a publication according to claim 8. 10. The method according to claim 7, further comprising the step of: issuing a warning to a publisher of the publication and / or a publisher of the publication when the order of the publication exceeds the processing capacity of the system. Item 9. Order and production method for publications described in item 9.