JP2003303184A - Document managing method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To manage a document with a preview image. <P>SOLUTION: A print intermediate data managing module 116 obtains print intermediate data from a print intermediate file 106, and delivers it to a display data producing module 117. The module 117 converts the received print intermediate data into image data previewable every page, and delivers it to a thumbnail producing module 118. A print setting module 115 performs print setting of double print, intensive print, or the like. The module 115 provides a print setting command for the print intermediate data obtained from the print intermediate data managing module 116, and inputs it into the module 118. The module 118 produces preview image data for displaying thumbnail including the print setting command and stores it in a folder. The preview image data in the folder is displayed by thumbnail. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a document management method for managing a document with a preview image according to print settings.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in a document management system including a document server and a printer, when displaying a thumbnail of a document being managed, only one page of a print preview screen is displayed. FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a relationship between applications for creating preview image data in a document server of such a document management system. In the figure, a document management application 901
Sends a document created by a general-purpose document creating application to the graphic engine 902 and causes the graphic engine 902 to draw it. Graphic engine 90
2 outputs the drawing data to the printer driver 903,
The printer driver 903 is the graphic engine 90.
2 receives the data received from PDL (Page Description L
anguage) and other print intermediate data. The converted print intermediate data is stored in the print intermediate file 906.

The document management application 901 displays a print setting GUI 905, and the user creates print settings for this print setting GUI 905 from an input means such as a keyboard. The printer was printing according to the created print settings.

In such a document management system, (1) the preview image is displayed on the preview screen only on the print preview screen. Therefore, the document is not managed by the preview image. Further, (2) when managing a document with a preview image, if it is desired to check in advance what the print settings are, conventionally, a print setting dialog is opened and displayed on that screen, for example. I read the letters such as aggregate and double-sided and checked. Therefore, the confirmation work was troublesome. (3) Further, when managing a document with a preview image, a preview image including a print setting is not known as a thumbnail display.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above situation, and its first object is to:
The document management is performed by the image when output on paper, the second purpose is to perform the document management by the image according to the print setting, and the third purpose is the image according to the print setting. Is to display a thumbnail.

[0006]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, in a document management method for managing a document by storing print data converted into printable in a document file, a preview image is created based on the print data. A document management method comprising: a step, a step of assigning a print setting command to the created preview image, and a step of storing the preview image to which the print setting command is attached in association with print data.

The invention according to claim 2 is the document management method according to claim 1, further comprising a step of displaying a preview image as a thumbnail.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a program for causing a computer to execute processing for storing print data converted to be printable in a document file and managing a document, and displaying a preview image based on the print data. A process of creating, a process of adding a print setting command to the created preview image, a process of storing the preview image to which the print setting command is added in association with print data,
It is a program for causing a computer to execute each process of calling a stored preview image and displaying a thumbnail.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in a document server that manages a document by storing print data converted into printable in a document file, means for creating a preview image based on the print data, and the created preview image. And a means for adding a print setting command and a means for storing the preview image to which the print setting command is added in a document file in association with print data.

A fifth aspect of the present invention is a document management system including the document server according to the fourth aspect.

[0011]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below. FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a document management system to which the present invention is applied. The document management system includes a document server 10 and a printer 20. The document server 10
A document management application 101 that manages documents stored in files or manages creation of document data
Further, the printer driver 103 is provided for converting a document created by an application such as a document creation application (for example, Word: registered trademark) or a spreadsheet application (for example, Excel: registered trademark) into a printer language. Therefore, when the document stored in the file is called and passed to the printer driver 103, it is decoded into the printer language, output to the printer 20, and printed. Here, the printer 20 is configured to be directly connected to the document server 10, but it may be configured to connect a plurality of printers via a network.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a hardware configuration of a document server as an embodiment of the present invention. The document server is an interface (I / F) 51, CPU 52, R
It has an OM 53, a RAM 54, a display device 55, a hard disk 56, a keyboard 57, and a storage medium drive 58. When a control signal is input from an input device via the I / F 51 and a thumbnail display command for a document is input from the keyboard 57, the CPU 52 stores a necessary application from the ROM 53 to the RAM 54 and print intermediate data and print data to be described later. Document data including a setting command and thumbnail image data of the document is created, and thumbnail display is performed on the display device 55.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of a process of creating print data and thumbnail image data by an application installed in the document server. A process of creating print data and thumbnail image data will be described with reference to FIG. First, the creation of print data will be described. The document management application 101 and the graphic engine 10 are described.
2. The printer driver 103 and the spooler 104 exist as files stored in the ROM 53 of the document server 10 and, when executed, are loaded into the RAM 54 by the OS or a module using the module and operate. When the print data is output from the document server 10 to the printer 20, the graphic engine 102 first draws the document created by the document creating application. Here, on the document server 10, for example, Micros
oft Windows (registered trademark) It is assumed that a commercially available OS such as Microsoft Corporation is running. Microsoft Windows
In a system equipped with (registered trademark) Microsoft Corporation, the graphic engine is a GDI (Graphic Depth).
vice interface) and outputs the document or the like to the graphic engine 102 as drawing data called a GDI function. Further, the graphic engine 102 causes the printer driver 103 prepared for each printer to store the GDI
The function is converted into a DDI function (Device Driver Interface) and output. The printer driver 103 can print on the printer 20, for example, PDL (Page Descrip) based on the DDI function received from the graphic engine 102.
conversion language) to print intermediate data. The converted print intermediate data is accumulated in the spooler 104, and is output from the spooler 104 to the printer 20 to execute printing. The spooler 104 is also supplied by the OS. Further, the print intermediate data is stored in the print intermediate file 106 to create a thumbnail image described later.

The printer driver 103 is an intermediate PD described in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-298564.
It is possible to use a type in which an intermediate PDL is created by the L creation processing unit and a final PDL is created by the final PDL creation processing unit via the PDL processing unit.

Next, the process of creating a preview image will be described. In FIG. 3, the print intermediate data management module 116 acquires print intermediate data from the print intermediate file 106 and passes it to the drawing data creation module 117. The drawing data creation module 117 uses, for example, a DIB.
It has a function to convert to (Device Independent Bitmap), etc., and converts the received print intermediate data into image data that can be previewed for each page. This image data is passed to the thumbnail creation module 118. On the other hand, the user sets print settings such as double-sided printing, aggregate printing (two-page printing for one page), punch holes, etc. on the print setting module 115 from the keyboard 57. This setting is performed by displaying a print setting GUI (not shown), and setting is performed based on the setting contents to create a print command. The print setting module 115 adds a print setting command to the print intermediate data acquired from the print intermediate data management module 116 and inputs the print intermediate command to the thumbnail creation module 118. The thumbnail creation module 118 creates preview image data for thumbnail display including a print setting command added to the print intermediate data. The created preview image is subjected to processing such as reduction to obtain document thumbnail image data. The document management application 101 uses the thumbnail image data,
Document data including print intermediate data, print setting command, document bibliographic data, and document content data is configured and stored in a document file (folder).

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the structure of the above-mentioned document data. In the figure, the document data is the document bibliographic data 31,
An example of the print intermediate data 32, the print command 34, and the thumbnail image data 35 is shown.

Further, the document server 10 adds the print intermediate data among the document data to each section data 33 of the content data divided into a plurality of (n) automatically or intentionally by the user's input operation. It may be configured as additional data 33a of section data together with keywords, important sentences, full-text search data, etc. (FIG. 5).

The file for storing the document data corresponds to one of the files formed in a tree structure managed by general-purpose document management software, and the document data is read from this file according to an instruction and displayed as an image. It is displayed on the display device 55 by software.

Further, the processing of displaying thumbnails will be described. When the user clicks (points to) the thumbnail display of the menu bar (not shown) on the display screen with a pointing device such as a mouse before printing the document, the document management application 101 displays the document stored in the document file (folder). The data is read and thumbnail images of the document are displayed in a list for each print intermediate data. FIG. 6 is an example of a thumbnail image list display screen. A menu bar for file, edit, display, etc. is provided at the top of the screen, and a column for displaying the document file tree shown in the document management file 1 on the left side below the menu bar. , To the right of it is the document thumbnail display field. A user of the document management system can click (point) the document on the menu bar to display the tree of the document management file 1,
When the file (black square mark) is further clicked, thumbnail images of the documents, for example, documents 1 to 8 included in the file are displayed in a list. At this time, by performing a page turning operation, a thumbnail image can be displayed together with print settings for the page of the document. It should be noted that the display page is not specified by the above operation, and therefore, in FIG. 6, it is assumed that a predetermined page is displayed, and the display of specific patterns and print settings is omitted here.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of thumbnail display, in which a print screen with 2 in 1 aggregation in which two images are aggregated on one page and print settings at the punch position (left) is displayed in thumbnails.

According to this embodiment, the print intermediate data 3
2. Document data including the print command 33, the content data 34, and the thumbnail image data 35 is saved, and when the printing is instructed, the printing is performed by the print intermediate data 32 and the print setting 33, and the thumbnail display is instructed. When this is done, the document data saved in the document file is called regardless of the print preview screen, and thumbnail display is performed by the print command 33 and thumbnail image data 35. Therefore, the user can manage the document by the preview image. Further, when a document is repeatedly printed, it is possible to directly check the print setting of the document to be printed by the thumbnail image in a state where the document is printed on paper.

A series of processes from the creation of the preview image to the thumbnail display described above are described as a computer program in a well-known programming language, and this program is stored in a recording medium 59 such as a CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM. The computer functions as the document server 10 by downloading it to any computer via the storage medium drive 58. In addition to recording on a recording medium, this program is
It is also possible to have the computer read the data via an electric communication line such as AN.

[0023]

Advantageous Effects of the Invention According to Claims 1, 2 and 4, data in which a preview image is created based on print intermediate data and print settings, and print intermediate data and print setting commands are associated with the created preview image Since it is saved as, the preview image of the document stored in the folder can be displayed as a thumbnail regardless of the print preview screen. At this time, the preview image according to the print settings can be displayed as a thumbnail. Therefore, the document can be managed by the image when the document is output on paper. Therefore, it is possible to work intuitively when printing the same document repeatedly. Effect corresponding to invention of claim 3: A process of creating a preview image based on print intermediate data and print settings, and saving the created preview image by associating the print intermediate data and print setting command with each other can be easily performed. It can be carried out. Effect corresponding to the invention of claim 5: It is possible to provide a document management system having the effect corresponding to the inventions of claims 1, 2 and 4.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a main part of a document management system to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a hardware configuration of a document server as an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of a process of creating print data and thumbnail image data by an application of a document server.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a structure of document data according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a structure of document data according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of a thumbnail list display.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of thumbnail display.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a relationship between applications for explaining conventional preview image display.

[Explanation of symbols]

101 ... Document management application, 102 Graphic engine, 103 Printer driver, 10
4 ... Spooler, 106 ... Printing intermediate file, 115
... print setting module, 116 ..., print intermediate data management module, 117 ..., drawing data creation module, 118 ..., thumbnail creation module.

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A document management method for managing a document by storing print data converted into printable in a document file, and a step of creating a preview image based on the print data, and a print setting command for the created preview image. And a step of storing the preview image to which the print setting command is added in association with print data. 2. The document management method according to claim 1, wherein
A document management method comprising a step of displaying a preview image as a thumbnail. 3. A program for causing a computer to execute a process of managing a document by storing print data converted into printable in a document file, and a process of creating a preview image based on the print data, Each process of a process of adding a print setting command to the created preview image, a process of storing the preview image to which the print setting command is added in association with print data, and a process of calling the stored preview image and displaying a thumbnail A program that causes a computer to execute. 4. A document server that manages a document by storing print data converted into printable in a document file, and means for creating a preview image based on the print data, and a print setting command for the created preview image. A document server comprising: a means for giving a preview image and a means for storing a preview image provided with the print setting command in a document file in association with print data. 5. A document management system comprising the document server according to claim 4.