JP2559920B2 - Printing control method for journal / receipt printer - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to ECR, P which records a journal at the same time as making a receipt for each transaction processing.
The present invention relates to a journal / receipt printer used in a system such as an OS and a SWS (Store Work Station), and particularly, noise reduction and printing time when the same transaction data is printed out in parallel on journal paper and receipt paper. The present invention provides a print control method for shortening the print speed.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art FIG. 9 shows a printing mechanism of a conventional journal / receipt printer. FIG. 9A shows an example of a serial dot impact type mechanism. Receipt paper 6
And the journal paper 7 are arranged in parallel, and the single print head 22 moves the entire print range in the horizontal direction row by row to dot-print the same data on the receipt paper 6 and the journal paper 7, respectively.

FIG. 9B shows an example of a shuttle type mechanism. Equipped with multiple print heads on a single carrier,
Each print head divides and prints lines. In the illustrated example, 3 for each of the receipt paper 6 and the journal paper 7.
Individual print heads are assigned. And each 3
The same data is supplied to each print head for each row, and dots are printed in parallel.

Dot data of a character font is supplied to the print head on the receipt side and the print head on the journal side from separate print buffers. For example, the data requested by the ECR to be printed by the printer device, generally transaction processing data, consists of character code strings. The printer device accesses the character font memory (ROM) for each line by using each character code, reads the corresponding character font (dot pattern), and sequentially fills the print buffers on the receipt side and the journal side. Edit control. The flow is shown in FIG.

When one line of character font is set in each print buffer, the printing operation is performed. FIG.
The relation between the carrier speed and the printing time in the case of the printer device of the serial dot impact printer system of (a) is shown. After the carrier is driven and the constant speed state is reached, first the printing on the receipt paper 6 is executed by the contents of the receipt side print buffer, then the journal paper 7 is moved and the printing is executed by the contents of the journal side print buffer. To do. In this case, the carrier speed is set so that the print head can continuously record all black dots.

FIG. 12 shows the structure of a motor drive control mechanism for driving a carrier in a conventional apparatus. The carrier driving motor 21 is ON / OFF controlled by the CPU 18 via the motor ON / OFF control circuit 19. FIG.
Is a control flow of the CPU 18, which turns on the carrier driving motor 21 for each line and turns off the motor when printing of one line is completed.

[0007]

In the conventional journal / receipt printer device, the printing mechanism on the journal side and the printing mechanism on the receipt side are made exactly the same. Since receipts are generally issued to customers, high-density fonts (character patterns) that are clean and easy to see are used. Therefore, the journal record is similarly printed using the same high-density and high-density font.

For this reason, there is a problem that the noise accompanying the printing operation becomes large and the printing time is required to be twice as long as the printing time on the receipt side. The present invention is a journal
It is an object of the present invention to improve the efficiency of print control of a receipt printer, reduce noise, and reduce print time.

[0009]

According to the present invention, a journal record is created as management data of a user of a journal / receipt printer device (individual / store or company), and can be read as needed. Well, focusing on the fact that cleanliness and legibility are not as important as receipts, the black dots of the font used for printing on the journal recording side are thinned to reduce the amount of black dots printed, resulting in less noise. At the same time, the moving speed of the carrier is increased to shorten the printing time.

FIG. 1 illustrates the principle of the present invention. FIG.
In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 denotes a data buffer in which print data for one line output from a processing unit such as an ECR (not shown) is stored in a character code format.

A character font memory 2 stores dot pattern data of a standard character font in correspondence with a character code. It is usually made of ROM.
Reference numeral 3 denotes a receipt side print buffer, in which font font data for one line to be printed out on receipt paper is set.

Reference numeral 4 is a journal-side print buffer,
The character font data for one line to be printed out on the journal paper is set. A draft font conversion processing unit 5 thins out redundant black dots in a standard character font read from the character font memory 2 to generate a draft font having a simplified dot pattern.

Reference numeral 6 is a receipt paper. 7 is a journal paper. The printing operation is performed as follows.

Character codes, for example, "Kan", are taken out one by one from the data buffer 1 and the corresponding standard character font data is read from the character font memory 2.
First, the print buffer 3 is set on the receipt side. Next, use the same standard character font as the draft font conversion processing unit 5.
Is converted to a draft font and set in the journal side print buffer 4. Draft fonts are represented as'Kan 'in the figure.

All the character codes in the data buffer 1 are converted into character fonts, set in the print buffers, and then printed.

[0016]

The operation of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. 2A is an example of a standard font for the character "Kan", and FIG.
(B) is an example of a draft font. As shown in the figure, the standard font is made thick in a normal font for easy viewing, and the stroke lines are also represented by high density of continuous black dots. Therefore, in the serial dot impact type printer, the frequency of driving the pins of the print head becomes high and the noise also becomes large. Also, the movement of the print head carrier is limited to a speed at which the pins can be continuously operated.

Printing on the receipt paper is performed using this standard font in the same manner as in the past. On the other hand, in the draft font of FIG. 2B, black dots in the carrier movement direction (horizontal direction) are thinned out and are roughly represented. Therefore, the frequency of driving the pin is reduced and the noise is reduced. Also, since the carrier speed can be increased, the overall printing time can be shortened.

[0018]

EXAMPLE An example of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 3 shows the configuration of a journal / receipt printer according to an embodiment of the present invention. 3 (a) and 3 (b)
EC for each journal / receipt printer device 9
It is a system configuration when it is externally connected to the R / POS / SWS 8 and a system configuration when it is integrated in the ECR / POS / SWS 8.

FIG. 3C shows a hardware configuration inside the printer, and the control unit 10 includes a CPU 11 and a ROM.
12, a RAM 13, etc., and a receipt printing mechanism 1
4, receipt paper feeding mechanism 15, journal printing mechanism 1
6. The journal paper feed mechanism 17 is controlled to perform the printing operation.

FIG. 4 shows a flow of print character editing control according to the embodiment of the present invention, which corresponds to the flow of the conventional apparatus of FIG. The difference from the flow of the conventional apparatus shown in FIG. 10 is that the character font set in the journal print buffer is converted into a draft font and then executed.

FIG. 5 shows a draft font conversion process according to the embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 5A is a draft font conversion logic, which thins out the dots of two adjacent columns of the standard font that convert the right side to a white dot when the black dots are continuous. In this case, the size of the whole font does not change.

FIG. 5B shows the structure of character font data for one character. Each font is composed of a matrix of j rows and n columns. FIG. 5C shows a data structure for one character in the print buffer, which corresponds to the font matrix of FIG. 5B.

FIG. 5D is a flow of draft font conversion processing. With black as '1' and white as '0', for each row i in rows 1 to j, the elements (i, i,
Paying attention to the value of m), the print buffer (i, m-
The value of the element of 1) is exclusive ORed, and the result is ANDed with the value of the element of self (i, m), and the result is set as the element of the print buffer (i, m). It is a thing.

FIG. 6 shows the relationship between the carrier speed and the printing time in the embodiment of the present invention, which corresponds to that of the conventional apparatus of FIG. As shown in the figure, by increasing the carrier speed in printing on the journal side compared to printing on the receipt side,
Printing time is shortened.

FIG. 7 shows a motor drive control mechanism according to an embodiment of the present invention. Unlike the conventional device of FIG. 12, FIG.
A motor speed control circuit 20 is provided to perform control corresponding to the carrier speed switching.

FIG. 8 shows a control flow of the carrier driving motor in the embodiment of the present invention. This corresponds to the flow of the conventional device in FIG. The difference from the flow in FIG. 13 is that after the motor is turned on, the printing on the receipt side and the printing on the journal side are distinguished, the motor speed is controlled to be low on the receipt side, and the printing is executed on the journal side. Then, printing is executed. The motor is turned off when all printing is completed.

In the above description of the embodiment, the draft font is obtained by converting the standard font. However, the draft font for each character is created in advance and stored in the character font memory together with the standard font. Alternatively, the read access destination may be divided depending on whether the receipt-side printing or the journal-side printing is performed.

[0028]

As described above, according to the present invention, since the print duty of the journal side print is reduced, noise due to pin impact can be reduced. Further, when the carrier speed is increased, the printing time can be shortened. Further, the life of the ribbon and the life of the print head are extended, so that the running cost can be reduced.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of examples of a standard font and a draft font.

FIG. 3 is a configuration diagram of a journal / receipt printer device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart of print character editing control according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of draft font conversion processing according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating the relationship between carrier speed and printing time in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a configuration diagram of a motor drive control mechanism according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a control flow chart of a carrier driving motor in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram of a printing mechanism of the journal / receipt printer device.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of print character editing control in the conventional apparatus.

FIG. 11 is a diagram illustrating the relationship between carrier speed and printing time in a conventional device.

FIG. 12 is a configuration diagram of a motor drive control mechanism in a conventional device.

FIG. 13 is a control flowchart of a carrier driving motor in a conventional device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Data buffer 2 Character font memory 3 Receipt side print buffer 4 Journal side print buffer 5 Draft font conversion processing unit 6 Receipt paper 7 Journal paper

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] 1. A dot-type journal / receipt printer device for printing out the same transaction data in parallel on a journal paper and a receipt paper, wherein the character font of the transaction data printed out on the receipt paper is provided in the device. The journal receipt is characterized by using a standard font that is printed on the journal paper and using a draft font with redundant black dots removed from the standard font as the character font for transaction data to be printed out. A printing control method in a printer device. 2. The draft font according to claim 1, wherein the draft font is created by applying one of the black dots adjacent to the standard font provided in the apparatus for each character of the transaction data requested to be printed. A print control method in a journal / receipt printer. 3. When printing on the receipt side according to claim 2, the carrier speed is set to a first speed such that the print head can continuously record all black dots of the standard font, and printing on the journal side is performed. In a journal / receipt printer apparatus, the carrier speed is set to a second speed higher than the first speed so that the print head can continuously record all black dots of the draft font. Print control method.