JP2650982B2 - Printer control device - Google Patents

Description

Description: BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a graphic drawing method including a fill pattern of a printer control device, such as a laser beam printer, for transmitting print data through a dot interface. The present invention relates to graphic drawing suitable for controlling printers having different line densities.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, a graphic drawing output device relating to an output device having a different linear density has been discussed in the embodiment of the invention on page 6 of JP-A-59-200339.

The above-mentioned prior art is a terminal device having two modes, an online operation processing mode operating in an online connection state with a host computer and an offline operation processing mode operating locally in a state disconnected from the host computer. When used in the operation processing mode, the online screen data displayed on the display screen of the terminal device is temporarily stored in a floppy disk file, and when used in the offline operation processing mode, the online screen data stored in this floppy disk file is stored. The purpose is to use screen data effectively. In this terminal device, when the display screen format in the online operation processing mode is different from the display screen format in the offline operation processing mode (the size when displaying characters and figures, character spacing, etc.), When used in the processing mode, display display screen data is stored in a floppy disk file in a display display screen format in the offline operation processing mode. In other words, taking graphic data as an example, the display on the display screen in the online operation processing mode is performed by drawing a graphic in accordance with the line density of the display screen or the aspect ratio of the size of the display dot (aspect ratio). . In this case, naturally, a figure including shading is also drawn and displayed. In order to use this display screen data in the off-line operation processing mode, graphic data once dot-developed in a full dot memory is stored as image data in a floppy disk file. In the offline operation processing mode, data stored in the floppy disk file is used as image data. That is, in order to copy this image data to, for example, an empty area on the display screen in the offline operation processing mode, the image data is arbitrarily enlarged or reduced according to the empty space. That is, in the above prior art, since graphic data is expanded into an image and then linear density conversion such as enlargement or reduction is performed, image quality deterioration accompanying the linear density conversion is not taken into consideration, and the image is created as described above. When the off-line screen data is printed out, there is a problem that the image quality of the graphic is deteriorated.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a printer control device capable of drawing and outputting graphic data to any printer without deteriorating image quality in controlling a plurality of printers having different line densities. .

[Means for solving the problem]

In order to achieve the above object, the printer control device has a line density conversion parameter generation mechanism, and based on the graphic drawing command received from the host device, the line density conversion parameter generation mechanism according to the line density of the printer control device. Vector data is generated in the full dot memory so as to obtain a graphic output of a specified size from the host device, and further shading is performed using a registered shading pattern, thereby printing out a high quality graphic drawing. It is like that.

[Action]

The vector generation mechanism according to the present invention interprets the graphic drawing command received from the higher-level device, and when developing a graphic into dots in the full dot memory, always generates a linear density conversion parameter generation mechanism corresponding to the linear density of the printer device. Dot data to be developed into a full dot memory via In this way, after drawing and developing the graphic data in the full dot memory, shading is performed on the full dot memory using the shading pattern to obtain a high quality graphic print output.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS.

1 to 3 show examples of graphic output to a printer device. FIG. 1 is a graphic output realized by the prior art,
In general, a printer control device has a fixed line density of a printer connected to the control device, and the printer control device performs graphic drawing development optimal for the line density of the corresponding printer. Therefore, there is no image quality deterioration or distortion in the print output result. However, using such a printer control device,
When outputting graphics drawn and developed on printers with different line densities, it is necessary to print the data once subjected to graphic drawing and development with standard line density as image data after performing line density conversion as in the prior art. There is. For example, if 240DPi (line density of 240 dots per inch) is the standard line density,
Assume that a pie chart is drawn and developed at a line density of 40 DPi.
When this pie chart is output to a 200 DPi printer, if the data obtained by rendering is output as it is, the size of the pie chart is enlarged to 240/200, that is, 6/5. 200D for this
Even when output to a Pi printer, to obtain a pie chart of the same size as when output to a printer with a standard line density of 240 DPi, it is necessary to multiply the rendered data by 5/6. Occurs. Focusing on the shading pattern at this time, when drawing and developing at 240DPi, for example, if shading is performed with 24 straight lines per inch, 24 shadings are performed on 240 dots, that is, one shading is performed every 10 dots. Become. In order to output the pie chart with shading to the printer having a line density of 200 DPi, it is necessary to reduce the rendered data by 5/6 times. However, in order to make one shading figure every 10 dots 5/6 times, 10 × 5/6, that is, 1 every 7 dots
The book will be shaded. At this time, the shading interval is shifted by 4 dots every 200/7 = 28 lines. In the case of the graphic data drawn and developed at the standard line density in this manner, even linear shading figures that were completely equally spaced will not be equally spaced by performing the line density conversion, as shown in FIG. This leads to deterioration of image quality.

In FIG. 4, a printer control device 2 is connected to a host device 1 such as a host computer or a workstation. Further, the printer control device 2 connects the printer devices 3 and 4, and prints out the data obtained by developing the graphic drawing. In this case, the printer devices 3 and 4 have different linear densities. For example, the printer device 3 is 240 DPi (Dot Per Inc.).
h) has an output performance of 10 sheets / min.
This is a low-priced printer device of 5 sheets / minute at 00DPi.

The printer control device 2 is connected to the host device 1 via the interface control circuit 21, and the shading pattern data received from the host device 1 is stored in the shading pattern registration memory 24. The graphic drawing command is received by the vector generation mechanism 22, and the command analysis is performed. The vector generation mechanism 22 sequentially interprets the figure drawing command instructed by the host device 1 and executes drawing dot development in the full dot memory 25. At this time, the vector generation mechanism 22 determines whether to print out to the printer device 3 or the printer device 4 connected to the printer controller 2 by a printer transmitted from the upper device 1 prior to the graphic drawing command. Judge based on the device number. At the same time, the line density corresponding to the printer device 3 or 4 is read from the line density conversion parameter generation mechanism 23 with parameters necessary for graphic drawing, and the desired dot drawing for graphic drawing is executed in the full dot memory 25 using these parameters. .

When execution of all dot development is completed by the vector generation mechanism 22, the printer interface control circuit 26 or 27 is activated for print output. When the printer interface control circuit 26 or 27 receives the print output activation, the printer interface control circuit 26 or 27 executes pre-control necessary for print output on the printer device 3 or 4. Here, the pre-control includes a selection of a paper cassette and an instruction to rotate the photosensitive drum. Thereafter, the dot data is sequentially read from the full dot memory 25 by the interface operation of the printer device 3 or 4, and the print data is transmitted in synchronization with the operation of the printer device 3 or 4.

The linear density conversion parameter generating mechanism 23 is a printer
Alternatively, the parameter to be dot-developed is generated in the vector generating mechanism 22 in correspondence with (4). For example, from the host device 1, 80 mm width and 1 height of A4 size paper of the printer device 3
When drawing a circle with a center at 20 mm and a radius of 50 mm, if the linear density of the printer device 3 is 240 DPi, the full dot memory 25 is regarded as a 240 DPi A4 size buffer memory, and 756 dots horizontally from the upper left corner of the origin. , And instructs the vector generation mechanism 22 to draw a circle with a radius of 472 dots, centered at the position of 1138 dots vertically. Similarly, an instruction is given to the vector generation mechanism 22 as a parameter for the line width of the circle. The line density conversion parameter generation mechanism 23 may determine the parameters to be generated by performing necessary calculations each time a graphic drawing command is received. However, the results calculated in advance are stored in a table format, and the necessary parameters are stored. May be extracted from the table and passed to the vector generation mechanism 22.

When drawing a circle having a center at a position of 80 mm wide and 120 mm long of A4 size paper of the printer device 4 and a radius of 50 mm from the upper device 1, if the linear density of the printer device 4 is 200 DPi, a full dot Assuming that the memory 25 is a buffer memory of 200DPiA4 size, the vector generation mechanism 22 is instructed to draw a circle having a radius of 394 dots centered at a position of 630 dots horizontally and 945 dots vertically from the upper left corner of the origin.

Similarly to the above, an instruction is issued to the vector generation mechanism 22 as a parameter for the line width of the circle. In other words, if the line width is 1 mm, the printer 3 has 9 dots, and the printer 4 has 8 dots.

The line density conversion parameter generating mechanism 23 may determine the parameters to be generated by performing necessary calculations each time a graphic drawing command is received.However, the results calculated in advance are stored in a table format, and the necessary parameters are stored. A method of drawing out from the table and passing it to the vector generating mechanism 22 may be adopted.

In FIG. 4, the vector generation mechanism 22, the linear density conversion parameter generation mechanism 23, and the like are generally realized by a microcomputer in many cases. For this reason, these two mechanisms may be realized by dividing a program to be executed by one microcomputer.

FIG. 5 shows a block diagram in the case where the vector generation mechanism 22 and the linear density conversion parameter generation mechanism 23 are realized by one microcomputer. 5, a microprocessor 28, a memory 29, a full dot memory 25, and printer interface control circuits 26 and 27 are connected to a microprocessor bus 31. Activation from the interface control circuit 21 in FIG. 4 to the vector generation mechanism 22 and the linear density conversion parameter generation mechanism 23 is instructed by the interrupt signal line 30 in FIG. In the memory 29, a program to be executed by the microprocessor 28, a numerical table required for generating parameters, and a work area required for generating vectors are secured.
When a drawing instruction for print output to the printer devices 3 and 4 is given through the interrupt signal line 30, the microprocessor 28 reads out the program and the numerical value table stored in the memory 29 and sequentially executes the program. As a result, data to be printed and output to the full dot memory 25 is drawn and developed via the microprocessor bus 31.

If a shading instruction is given by a shading pattern registered in advance in the shading pattern registration memory 24 for the specified closed figure in the figure drawing command, the vector once expanded to the full dot memory The generating mechanism 22 reads the corresponding shading pattern from the shading pattern registration memory 24 and performs a superposition writing operation to the full dot memory 25 for shading.

FIG. 3 shows a print output example when the printer device 3 or 4 is a high definition printer. A comparison between FIG. 1 and FIG. 3 shows that the shading density is high, but the shading pattern does not deteriorate as shown in FIG.

When printing from the higher-level device 1 to the printer device 3 or 4, not only graphic data but also characters, ruled lines, image data, and the like are generally output at the same time. As for characters, there are a plurality of types of character fonts corresponding to the line densities of the printers 3 and 4 connected to the printer controller 2, and the character fonts corresponding to the printers 3 and 4 are selected and stored in the full dot memory. Be expanded. For example, if two character fonts of 20 × 20 and 40 × 40 are prepared for a 200DPi pudding device, 24 × 24, 48 × 48 character fonts are prepared for a 240DPi printer device. In response to the designation of the character size from the host device 1, the printer device
Character fonts corresponding to the line densities of 3 and 4 are selected and developed in the full dot memory 25. The image data is converted into optimal image data by an enlargement / reduction circuit and written into the full dot memory 25. The development of these characters and image data can be realized by a conventional technique and is out of the scope of the present invention.

According to the present embodiment, even if the line densities of the printers 3 and 4 are different, the position, size, or line width of the figure in response to the figure drawing instruction from the host apparatus 1 is not changed by the printer. Since the graphic drawing is performed in accordance with the line density and then the shading pattern is superimposed and written, an effect of preventing the image quality from being deteriorated in the print output as shown in FIG. 2 can be obtained.

〔The invention's effect〕

According to the present invention, it is possible to perform graphic drawing development with optimal parameters according to the line density of the printer device,
Moreover, for the shading pattern, there is no need to process the pre-registered shading pattern.
Since the image is superimposed on the drawn figure as it is, a print output of a figure of the same quality can be obtained for printer apparatuses having different linear densities, and a printer control apparatus can be provided.

Further, even when the printer control device and the printer device are configured in a one-to-one manner, a printer control device developed with exactly the same concept can be used without preparing a printer control device individually corresponding to the printer device. It can be realized.

[Brief description of the drawings]

1 is an example of a graphic drawing output according to the prior art, FIG. 2 is an example of a graphic drawing output by linear density conversion, FIG. 3 is an example of a graphic drawing output according to the present invention, and FIG. FIG. 5 shows a microcomputer control block diagram. 1 Host device, 2 Printer control device, 21 Interface control circuit, 22 Vector generation mechanism, 23 Linear density conversion parameter generation mechanism, 24 Shading pattern registration memory, 25 Full dot Memory, 26, 27 ... Printer interface control circuit, 3, 4 ... Printer device, 28 ... Microprocessor, 29 ... Memory, 30 ... Interrupt signal line, 31 ... Microprocessor bus.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] A memory for holding a graphic drawing command to be printed; a dot memory for storing dot-developed print data; and a vector generating means for converting the graphic drawing command into drawing data and storing the drawing data in the dot memory. A printer control device for outputting the drawing data from the dot memory to a printer, a line density conversion parameter generating means for generating a line density parameter corresponding to a printer to which the drawing data is to be output, and a shading pattern for storing a shading pattern A registration memory, wherein the vector generation means draws a figure in the dot memory at a line density corresponding to a printer to be output, based on the line density parameter generated by the line density parameter generation means, and then executes the shading pattern. Predetermined shade from registration memory It reads the ring pattern, the printer control unit, characterized in that performing a shading process on the drawing data developed in the dot memory.