JP2643885B2 - Facsimile machine - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to recording by driving a recording head on the basis of an image signal obtained by demodulating and decoding an input signal received via a communication line, or a screen on a liquid crystal panel or the like. The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus for displaying, and more particularly to a facsimile apparatus capable of requesting retransmission or correcting a character when an input signal or an image signal has an error and a character which cannot be read on a document screen is received.

[0002]

[0003]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in this type of facsimile machine,
It has an error detection means for detecting an error in the input signal, and when detecting an error in the input signal, requests the transmission side to retransmit data. In this case, it is not determined at all whether the image as the input signal is a document.

A technique for requesting retransmission is disclosed in, for example,
No. 4-13867. In this method, an input image signal is decoded and decompressed,
The data is decompressed and stored in the storage unit in page units. On the other hand, the error detection means checks the presence or absence of a data error when decoding the input signal. If there is no data error, when decoding is completed for each page, the stored image signal of the corresponding page is cleared. On the other hand, when a data error is detected, the image signal of the page where the error is detected is left in the storage means, and when the receiving operation is completed, the image signal of the page containing the data error is read out from the storage means and returned to the transmission side. ing.

[0005]

In the conventional facsimile apparatus described above, when a data error is detected during decoding, the data is transmitted by returning the entire image signal of the page in which the data error was detected to the transmission side. A retransmission request with a limited data amount is realized.

With this configuration, if the screen recorded by the printing operation is, for example, a large character and contains a data error, but is sufficiently readable, it is determined that a retransmission request has been made due to the occurrence of a data error despite the fact that the image is readable. As a result, the corresponding page data is returned, and as a result, there is a problem that the communication time may be prolonged. On the other hand, a character image may be difficult to read in spite of the absence of a data error, so that it takes time and effort to read the character image, and there is a problem that a retransmission request is required manually.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to identify and determine a character-based document screen from an image signal and request retransmission only when the character cannot be read regardless of the document screen. An object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus capable of printing.

[0008]

A facsimile apparatus according to the present invention comprises: a character string recognizing section for recognizing a character string from an image signal obtained by demodulating and decoding an input signal received via a communication line; A character recognition unit that recognizes a character from the character string recognized by the column recognition unit; and a decoding error is detected when a decoding error is detected in the image signal even though the character recognition unit recognizes the character. A character data correction unit for easily correcting the character, and a retransmission message sending unit for returning a retransmission message to the transmission side when the character recognition unit cannot recognize the character.

[0009]

[0010]

[0011]

Next, the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention. The facsimile apparatus shown in FIG.
U (network control unit) 1, modem (modulator / demodulator) 2, decoding unit 3, memory 4, character string recognition unit 5, character recognition unit 6, data error detection unit 7, character data correction unit 8, retransmission message editing unit 9 , A communication control unit 11, an encoding unit 12, and
A recording head 13 is provided.

The NCU 1 is connected to the communication line 10 and receives a modulated input signal from the communication line 10 and sends out a modulated output signal to the communication line 10. The modem 2 demodulates an input signal received from the NCU 1 and
And modulates the coded signal from the coding unit 12 to N
It is sent to CU1. The decoding unit 3 decodes the input signal that has been compression-encoded, decompresses and decompresses the input signal to obtain an image signal. The encoding unit 12 extracts an image signal to be transmitted to the communication line 10 from the memory 4, compresses and encodes the image signal by a predetermined method, and outputs the image signal to the modem 2.

The memory 4 records an image signal output from the decoding unit 3 and also records a decoding error generated in the decoding unit 3 and, as described later, a character recorded under the control of the communication control unit 11. Receiving the data correction and receiving and recording the retransmission request message. In addition, memory 4
Is used for character recognition, hiragana, kanji parts, katakana,
English data and the like are stored and stored in advance.

The character string recognizing unit 5 is decoded by the decoding unit 3,
It is determined whether or not the image signal recorded in the memory 4 after being decompressed and decompressed is a character string by a character string recognition method described later with reference to FIGS. The image signal determined as a character string by the character string recognizing unit 5 is transmitted to the character recognizing unit 6.
Is determined as to whether or not the character can be recognized.

A character recognizing section 6 extracts characters from the image signal determined as a character string by the character string recognizing section 5 with a line interval and a character interval therebetween, and stores the characters and the hiragana and kanji stored in the memory 4 in advance. Are compared with the part, katakana, English sentence data, etc. by performing processing such as thickness and inclination, and if the character can be recognized, the character data of the part where the character can be recognized and the decoding error generated by the decoding unit 3 are determined. The data is read from the memory 4 and sent to the data error detector 7. On the other hand, if the character cannot be recognized, the retransmission message editing unit 9 is notified.

The data error detecting section 7 checks the data received from the character recognizing section 6 for errors, and sends the recognized character information to the character data correcting section 8 when an error is detected. The character data correction unit 8 reads character data stored in advance in the memory 4 based on the received recognized character information,
Based on the read character data, the data in which the error is detected is replaced with a legible character and corrected.

The retransmission message editing unit 9 includes a character recognition unit 6
, And based on this information, edits a retransmission request message requesting retransmission, for example, "There was one line that could not be recognized as a character on the second page." At the same time, the communication control unit 11 is notified that there is a retransmission request.

The communication control unit 11 controls communication such as call connection and data transmission / reception, and retrieves a retransmission message from the memory 4 at the end of data reception, and via the encoding unit 12, the modem 2 and the NCU 1 Then, after all the transmission and reception are completed, the recording head 13 is driven to print the image signal recorded in the memory 4.

Next, referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, an operation procedure relating to correction of character data and transmission of a retransmission request message will be described.

First, when a call is received from a transmitting device (not shown) via the communication line 10, the NCU 1 returns a receivable signal according to a predetermined call connection procedure under the control of the communication control unit 11 to perform communication. The line 10 is connected to the modem 2. As a result, the NCU 1 receives an input signal via the communication line 10 (procedure 101), and sends the received input signal to the modem 2. The input signal is demodulated by modem 2 and then
It is sent to the decoding unit 3 and decoded (procedure 102), decompressed and decompressed to become an image signal. The decoding unit 3 records and stores the image signal and the decoding error at the time of decoding in the memory 4 (procedure 1).
03).

The character string recognizing section 5 reads out the image signal stored in the memory 4 (step 104), recognizes the character string from the black and white information forming the line (YES in step 105), and sends it to the character recognizing section 6. . The character recognizing unit 6 extracts a character from the image signal determined to be a character string by the character string recognizing unit 5 as described above, and determines whether or not the character can be read (step 10).
6) Yes.

If the step 106 is "YES" and the character can be recognized, the character recognizing unit 6 reads out the character data of the part where the character can be recognized and the decoding error generated in the decoding unit 3 from the memory 4, and The error is sent to the error detection unit 7.

The data error detecting section 7 determines whether or not the detected data portion has a detected decoding error (step 107). If the step 107 is “YES” and an error is detected, the data error detecting section 7 sends the recognized character information to the character data correcting section 8. The character data correction unit 8 reads out character data stored in advance in the memory 4 based on the received recognized character information, and replaces the error detected data with easy-to-read characters by using the read character data. Then, the corresponding portion of the memory 4 is corrected (procedure 108).

If the procedure 106 is "NO" and the character cannot be recognized in spite of the character string, the character recognizing unit 6 sets a retransmission request flag in a corresponding portion of the memory 4 (procedure 109). I do.

If step 105 is "NO" and no character string is recognized, or if step 107 is "NO" and no data error is detected, or step 108
After the character data is corrected, or in step 109
After the retransmission request flag is set, the communication control unit 1
1 judges whether or not the image signal stored in the memory 4 has not been read (step 110).

If the procedure 110 is "YES" and an unread signal remains in the image signal to be recognized, the operation returns to the procedure 104 and repeats the procedure. Step 110 is "N
O "does not input the image signal, and the reading of the image signal ends.
If there is no unread signal, the communication control unit 11 checks the retransmission request flag recorded in the memory 4 (step 111).

When the procedure 111 is “YES” and the retransmission request flag is set, the retransmission message editing section 9 controls the retransmission message Edit to
The editing result is stored in the memory 4. On the other hand, the communication control unit 11
Converts the reception mode to the transmission mode when the input of the image signal is completed, and notifies the transmission side to convert the transmission mode to the reception mode, and stores the retransmission request message edited by the retransmission message editing unit 9 in the memory 4. And sends it out to the communication line via the encoding unit 12, the modem 2 and the NCU 1 (procedure 112).

If step 111 is “NO” and the retransmission request flag is not set, or if a retransmission request message is sent out in step 112, the communication control unit 11
By driving the recording head 13, the image signal corrected for readability is taken out of the memory 4 and printed (step 113).
I do.

Next, the character string recognition unit 5 shown in FIG. 1 will be described in detail with reference to FIGS.

The character string recognizing section 5 is provided with the image data extracting means 2
1, a reduction processing unit 22 and a character string determination unit 23, which may be configured by software.

The image data extracting means 21 extracts image data 31 corresponding to each character from a facsimile image signal stored in the memory 4 from a paper screen 33 as shown in FIG. I do.

The reduction processing means 22 performs reduction display processing for reducing 9 bits to 1 bit by an OR processing method in units of adjacent (3 × 3 =) 9 bits of the image data 31, and converts the reduced display data 32. Create for each character. In this process, at least one of the 9 bits should be determined to be black if it is a character, so that in the case of a character, the reduced display data 32 is represented by black bits.

The character string judging means 23 calculates the reduced display data 3
In the case where the black bit data is arranged in a row at regular intervals on the paper screen 33 of No. 2, the document screen having the character string 34 is determined, and the relevant information is notified to the character recognition unit 6.
If the character string cannot be determined in the first time, the process returns to the reduction processing means 22 repeatedly a plurality of times, for example, four times, to perform the reduced display processing. The character string 3 is obtained by the predetermined plural times of reduction processing.
4 cannot be determined, the paper screen 33 is determined to be an image screen or a drawing instead of a document screen, and the communication control unit 1
Notify 1.

In the above description, the character size is recognized by the character recognition unit. However, the character string recognition unit may determine the size. Further, the image signal taken out from the memory is described as being printed and displayed by the recording head, but may be displayed on a liquid crystal panel or the like.

In FIG. 1, the functional blocks are connected by the flow of image signals and image information, but the flow of control signals is omitted.

In the above description, for example, the retransmission request message is edited by the retransmission message editing unit and stored in the memory.
It may be extracted from the retransmission message editing unit by the communication control unit.

As described above, the separation and merging of the function allocation to the illustrated blocks, or the parallel operation before and after the procedure is free as long as the above functions are satisfied, and the present invention is not limited by the above description. .

[0039]

As described above, according to the present invention, after a reduced screen is created from an input image signal and a character string is recognized, a character is determined, and when a readable character includes a decoding error, it is easy to read. Only when it is corrected to characters and printed and it is determined that it cannot be read, retransmission is requested from the transmission side. According to this configuration, a document screen using characters is identified and determined from an image signal, and a retransmission request is made only when character reading is not possible despite the document screen. A facsimile machine that can be obtained can be obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing one embodiment of an operation procedure according to FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram showing one embodiment of a character string recognition unit in FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing one embodiment of a reduction process according to FIG. 3;

[Explanation of symbols]

 REFERENCE SIGNS LIST 1 NCU (network control unit) 2 modem (modem / demodulator) 3 decoding unit 4 memory 5 character string recognition unit 6 character recognition unit 7 data error detection unit 8 character data correction unit 9 retransmission message editing unit 10 communication line 11 communication control unit 12 Encoding unit 13 Recording head 21 Image data extraction unit 22 Reduction processing unit 23 Character string determination unit 31 Image data 32 Reduced display data 33 Paper screen 34 Character string

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] 1. A character string recognizing unit for recognizing a character string from an image signal obtained by demodulating and decoding an input signal received via a communication line, and recognizing a character from the character string recognized by the character string recognizing unit. A character recognition unit to be recognized, and a character data correction unit that corrects the recognized character in a legible manner when a decoding error is detected in the image signal despite the fact that the character recognition unit has recognized the character. Facsimile machine characterized by the above-mentioned. 2. A character string recognizing section for recognizing a character string from an image signal obtained by demodulating and decoding an input signal received via a communication line, and recognizing a character from the character string recognized by the character string recognizing section. A character recognition unit for recognizing, and a character data correction unit for correcting the recognized character in a legible manner when a decoding error has been detected in the image signal despite the recognition of the character by the character recognition unit; A facsimile apparatus comprising: a retransmission message sending unit that returns a retransmission message to a transmission side when a recognition unit cannot recognize a character.