JP2686339B2 - Printing control device - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to a print control device that recognizes the bottom edge of a page when data is printed and manages the page, and the printer driver side can appropriately respond to print requests from applications having different page management modes. In order to improve the versatility by supporting in the printer driver, the printer driver recognizes and manages the bottom edge of the page based on the number of page output lines, and the bottom dimension of the page based on the output dimensions within the page. Two page management means are provided and the page management means responds to the designation of the management mode from the application.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a print control device that recognizes a bottom edge of a page when printing data and manages the page.

Printing using a serial printer in a workstation is not limited to the support of dedicated applications, but it can also be used with conventional general-purpose computer systems and personal computers.
It is strongly desired to realize printing that inherits the application assets of office computers.

[Prior Art] Conventionally, as a method of creating a print format such as a document or a form application using a printer, a page management method of designating a vertical print range for one page by the number of lines; There is a page management method that is specified by various dimensions. Normally, depending on the system, only one of the page management methods is adopted.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in a conventional printer that employs a single page management method, depending on the content of an application, a line pitch (per line) may be generated during printing of a page. The vertical dimension of) may be changed, and in this case, if you want to end the page with a fixed number of lines,
Divide when you want to fix the print size and finish.

For example, if an application wants to print according to the paper size and the print service program of the lower printer driver that supports it manages pages only by the number of lines, the application will When the line pitch is changed, the print size in one page changes, so the application itself must control the output size in one page to adjust the paper discharge timing.

Also, if another application wants to print with the number of lines fixed at each page, and the lower printer driver manages the page only by the paper size, if the application changes the line pitch in the middle of the page, Since the number of print lines in one page changes, the application itself must control the number of output lines in one page to adjust the paper discharge timing. Furthermore, in this case, regarding the problem of which line becomes the first line of the next page by the application itself managing the print page,
It becomes necessary for the application itself to be aware of the restrictions on the vertically expanded characters, upper ruled lines, etc. in the first line of the next page.

In any case, if the lower printer driver does not support both methods, the page management by the application itself will be forced.

Specifically, general-purpose machine applications have been created mainly with the expectation of page management based on the number of lines, whereas PC-based applications have been created mainly with expectation of page management based on dimensions. There is a problem that the print control that effectively inherits the application assets of both systems cannot be performed because the side can support only one of the page management.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional problems, and provides a highly versatile print control device capable of appropriately supporting a print request from an application having a different page management mode on the printer driver side. The purpose is to provide.

[Means for Solving the Problems] FIG. 1 is an explanatory view of the principle of the present invention.

First, the present invention is directed to a print control apparatus that recognizes the bottom edge of a page when printing data and manages the page.

According to the present invention regarding the page management system of such a printer, in the printer driver 10, the first page management means 12 for recognizing and managing the lower end of the page based on the number of output lines within the page, and the page according to the output size within the page. A second page management unit 14 for recognizing and managing the lower end is provided, and page management by the corresponding page management unit is performed in response to a print request in which a management mode (line number management mode or page length management mode) is designated from an application. Configure to do.

[Operation] According to the print control apparatus of the present invention having such a configuration, the printer driver appropriately performs page management for each application that expects different page management in the line number management mode or the page length management mode. Can be realized.

That is, for application A, which expects line number management, cut sheets are ejected at the timing when a specified number of lines in a page are printed, and the characteristics of the first line of a page (upper ruled line and extension of vertical extension characters) Can be logically avoided (by inserting a blank line break as the first line of the page).

Further, for the application B that expects page length management, it is possible to discharge the cut sheet paper at the timing when the specified sheet size is reached.

[Embodiment] Fig. 2 is an embodiment configuration diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 2, 100 is a serial printer, which is connected to a host system 200 such as a workstation.

A CPU 18 is provided in the host system 200, a frame memory 22 is connected to a bus line 20 from the CPU 18, and a transfer / interruption LSI 24 and a printer for performing various print controls for making a print request to the serial printer 100. A memory 26 storing a driver and a spool control program, and a direct memory access controller (DMAC) 28 are provided.

On the other hand, the printer driver 10 is provided with a line number management unit 12 as a first page management unit and a page length management unit 14 as a second page management unit as shown in FIG.

When outputting print data in a page, the line number management unit 12 has a function of recognizing the bottom edge of the page after outputting a specified number of lines. Further, the page length management unit 14 has a function of recognizing the lower end of the page when the print data is output in the page when the print data is output by the designated size. Here, the page management mode by the line number management unit 12 is set to the line number management mode,
Further, the page management mode by the page length management unit 14 is set to the physical page length mode.

FIG. 3 shows the program configuration of the printer driver 10 and the spool control program 30 on the host system 200 side in the embodiment of FIG.
The processing content of 30 is a function that stores print data and designated format data in a save file in response to a print request from application A or application B, and manages the usage status of the designated printer of application A or B, and is in an empty state. It has the function of issuing processing requests (acquiring devices) to the printer driver.

Here, the application A is, for example, a general-purpose machine system, and specifies line number management. On the other hand, the application B is, for example, a personal computer system and specifies dimension management.

Next, the print control according to the present invention will be described with reference to the processing flow chart of FIG.

In step S1 of FIG. 4 (hereinafter, “step” is omitted), it is assumed that the application A first makes a print request. This print request is made by storing print data and print format designation data in the spool file. Subsequently, in S2, when the application A acquires a device, that is, acquires a serial printer, the print data and the print format designation data stored in the spool file are transferred to the serial printer. On the other hand, before the application A acquires the printer device in S2, the application B is acquired as shown in SO1.
Suppose that a print request has been issued by application A, the application A in S2 waits for a printer device to be acquired. When application A acquires the printer device in S2 and transfer of the spool file ends, application B requests a print request. Transfer the data associated with to a spool file.

Subsequently, in S3, the driver printer side receives the designation of the page management mode, and the printer driver 10 recognizes the line number management mode or the physical page length mode. Further, when the process proceeds to S4 and the page format designation is received, the line feed pitch and the number of lines in the page are known. Therefore, if the line number management mode is selected, the process proceeds from S5 to S6 to recognize the end of the page during page printing. Set page length to page length = number of page lines. On the other hand, in the case of the physical page length mode, the process proceeds from S5 to S7, and the page length for recognizing the end of page during printing is set as page length = (line feed pitch) × (number of page lines).

After setting the control conditions for page management in S5 to S7, the process proceeds to the data receiving process in S8.

In the data receiving process of S8, it is judged whether the received data is a line feed type, a page break type, or a vertical tab every time the data is received,
The output position and the number of output lines that have been reset at the time of page break are recorded.

Then, in S9, it is determined whether or not the line number management mode is set. If it is in the line number management mode, the process proceeds to S10, and whether the number of output lines recorded in S8 exceeds the number of specified page lines set in S6. Judge whether or not. If the number of specified page lines is not exceeded, the process returns to S8 to receive the next data. On the other hand, if the number of output lines exceeds the number of specified page lines, the process proceeds to S12 and page end processing is performed.

On the other hand, if the physical page length mode is determined in S9,
In S11, it is determined whether or not the output position recorded in S8 exceeds the designated page size set in S7. If it does not exceed the specified page size, the process returns to S8 to receive the next data, while if the output position exceeds the specified page size, the process proceeds to page end processing in S12.

In the page end processing of S12, if it exceeds the bottom edge of the page, after printing the last line in the page, perform page end processing such as paper ejection, and perform the processing of S8 to S12 until the end of printing is determined in S13. repeat.

Next, the page management control according to the present invention will be described by taking a concrete print document shown in FIG. 5 as an example.

FIG. 5 (a) is a normal document in which the line feed pitch is not changed during the printing of a page, and the first to fifth lines all have the same line feed pitch. On the other hand, the document of FIG. 5 (b) is a document in which the line feed pitch is changed in the middle of the page,
For example, the line feed pitch of 3 LPI in the first line is changed to the line feed pitch of 6 LPI in the second line, and the original line feed pitch of 3 LPI is restored in the fourth line.

FIG. 6 shows the process of print control by the page management method of the present invention shown in FIG. 5 (b) for changing the line feed pitch in a page, in the line number management mode and the physical page length mode. It is shown together with the difference in operation in the page management mode.

In FIG. 6, application A, which acquired the device in the process, specifies the row number management mode as the page management mode, while application B in the acquisition wait status specifies the physical page length mode.

Next, in the process, both the applications A and B specify a line feed pitch of 3 LPI, specify the number of lines in a page of 31 lines, and specify that printing is performed on a single-cut sheet.

In the process, the applications A and B request printing of the same print data, that is, print data of, for example, 62 lines including the change of the line feed pitch.

After the processing process, the line number management mode and the physical page length management mode are shown separately.

In the process, the printer driver outputs each line while being aware of the page management mode designation. When the output process proceeds and the 31st line, which is the number of lines in the page, is output, the bottom edge of the page is recognized when controlling the application A with the line number management mode specified, the 31st line is output, and then the paper is ejected. Do.

On the other hand, since the application B side specifies the physical page length mode, the print data for the specified physical page length has not yet been output because the line with the line feed pitch of 6 LPI is included in the middle. Continue printing. When the 33rd line is output by continuing the printing, the printing over the dimension of 3LPI × 31 lines as the designated physical page length is completed, so the lower end of the page is recognized at this point and the paper is ejected.

Subsequently, in the process, the application A side sucks the second page of paper at the stage of outputting the 32nd line in total, and starts printing of the second page. On the other hand, the application B side prints the second line at the stage of printing the 34th line from the first page.
Absorb the page paper and start printing the second page.

In the process, application A side is total
Two sheets of paper are ejected for 62 lines of print data. On the other hand, on the side of application B, the data of 62 lines does not become the data of 2 pages, so the printing is ended in the middle of the paper of the 2nd page, or the paper is ejected in response to the page break data or the ejection designation. Will be done.

Next, processing in the physical page length management mode when the lower end of the page does not coincide with the boundary of the line feed pitch of the last line will be described. This processing is divided into a single-cut processing and a continuous-cut processing.

(B) Processing for single-cut form In the case of single-cut form, the last line of data at the bottom of the page is printed with 0 line feed (printing one line and then not performing line feed for the specified pitch) up to the bottom dot. Then, after ejecting the paper, the next page always starts from the beginning of the paper. That is,
In the case of FIG. 6, the last line of the page corresponds to the 33rd line of the first page, and in the case of a single-cut form, the 33rd line is printed with 0 line feed, and then the paper is ejected and the first page of the 2nd page is printed. Printing of the data of the line starts from the beginning of the paper.

(B) Processing in case of consecutive forms In the case of consecutive forms, if the bottom of the page is line feed printed with a line feed pitch less than the specified line feed pitch such as 0 line feed, the print data of the last print line becomes the data of the first line of the next page. Since they cannot be printed because they overlap each other, the line feed pitch of the last line is not changed even if it does not match the bottom of the page. Then, the error amount that protrudes from the bottom of the page is stored as the line feed protrusion of the previous page when printing the second page, and corrections such as reducing the total line feed amount of the second page by this protrusion are performed. Prevents printing abnormalities due to the accumulation of.

In the case of Fig. 6, even if the boundary of the line feed pitch on the 33rd line of the first page and the bottom of the page do not match, a line feed is performed normally as a line feed pitch of 3LPI, and the size of 3LPI x 31 lines that specifies the bottom of the page is specified. The amount of line feed on the second page is reduced by the amount exceeding the above, and the error of the previous page on the second page is corrected. The errors on the second and subsequent pages will be similarly corrected on the next page.

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to appropriately implement page management on the drive side of a printer for each application that expects different page management. It is possible to reduce the load on the application side due to having only a specific page management mode, and to perform the printing operation while inheriting the application assets of the conventional general-purpose machine system and the personal computer system that have performed different page management as they are.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory view of the principle of the present invention; FIG. 2 is an embodiment configuration diagram of the present invention; FIG. 3 is a program configuration diagram of the present invention; FIG. 4 is a process flow diagram of the present invention; FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of an example of a document printed by the invention; FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a printing process of the invention. In the figure, 10: printer driver 12: first page management means (row number management section) 14: second page management means (page length management section) 18: CPU 20; data bus 22: frame memory 24: transfer / interrupt LSI 26: Memory 28: Direct memory access controller (DMA
C) 30: Spool control program 100: Serial printer 200: Host system

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A first control for recognizing and managing a lower end of a page based on the number of output lines in a page in a print control device for receiving data in response to a print request and controlling printing of the data by a printing device. A page management unit, a second page management unit that recognizes and manages the lower end of the page based on the output dimension within the page, and a print request that specifies a management mode, and the first page management based on the management mode. And a second page management unit, and the selected management unit controls printing of received data in response to the print request.