JP2895529B2 - Character generation method and device, and document creation device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an output device such as a display or a printer.
The present invention relates to a character generator for generating high quality characters.

[Prior Art] With the spread of high-definition display and printing devices,
Outline characters have been used as described in JP-A-53-15624.

This outline character is obtained by applying coordinate transformation such as affine transformation to coordinate data representing the outline of the character.
By generating a dot character that is deformed and fills the inside of the outline based on the outline coordinate data, it is output to an output device of a dot display system.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In the above-mentioned conventional technology, since the characteristics of the output device are not considered at all, there is a problem that the result of outputting the same character differs depending on the output device.

Further, when a character enlarged by affine transformation is output, there is a problem that a character smaller in design than the original character is output.

Further, as the printing apparatus becomes more and more fine, the resolution difference from the copying apparatus is considered to increase. As a result, there is a possibility that thin characters may be lost when the print document is copied and the quality may be degraded.

An object of the present invention is to consider the characteristics of each output device,
It is an object of the present invention to provide a character generating method and apparatus capable of outputting high-quality characters even during character scaling, and a writing apparatus.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a document creating apparatus capable of switching between normal printing and printing of a copy document.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to achieve the above object, a character generation method according to the present invention converts outline coordinate data of a character expressed in a vector format into character data expressed in a raster format by coordinate conversion. In the character generation method of providing the converted character data to an output device, when obtaining a character reduced by the coordinate conversion, a size of approximately one pixel of the output device is obtained based on the outline coordinate data of the converted character. In this method, contour coordinate data in which the thickness of a character is reduced is obtained, and the raster character data is obtained from the contour coordinate data.

A character generator according to the present invention is a character generator which converts outline coordinate data of a character represented in a vector format into character data represented in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and provides the converted character data to an output device. Means for storing the size information of one pixel of the output device, and correcting the outline coordinate data so as to reduce the thickness of the converted character by an amount proportional to the size of the stored one pixel. Means.

In this device, the means for correcting the outline coordinate data changes the outline coordinate data so as to move the opposite outline of the character by approximately half a pixel in the interior direction of the character.

Alternatively, the movement direction of the contour coordinate data is limited to the two axes of x and y, and each movement amount is limited. The contour coordinate data is moved by the movement amount in the x or y direction or both directions depending on the inclination of the contour line. Let it. In this case, it is desirable to reduce the amount of movement when moving in both the x and y directions with respect to the amount of movement when moving only one of them. If the characters are rotated by 90 ° for output to output devices having different movement amounts in the x and y directions, the movement amounts are reversed.

When the relative position of the movement result of the contour coordinate data is different from the positional relationship before the movement, a means for returning to the contour coordinate data before the movement may be provided.

Another character generation device according to the present invention converts character outline coordinate data of a character expressed in a vector format into character data expressed in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and supplies the converted character data to an output device. In the apparatus, means for judging a point on the contour line of the contour coordinate data after the coordinate conversion is outside the thickness constituting the character, and creating data in which an area determined to be inside the thickness of the character is filled out Means.

Still another character generator according to the present invention converts character outline coordinate data of a character represented in a vector format into character data represented in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and supplies the converted character data to an output device. In the generator,
Means for determining the point on the contour line of the contour coordinate data after the coordinate conversion is inside the thickness of the character, and means for creating data in which the area determined to be inside the thickness of the character is filled. It is provided.

Further, the document creation apparatus according to the present invention converts character outline coordinate data represented in a vector format into character data represented in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and provides the converted character data to a printing device. A document creation device that includes a device and is connectable to a plurality of printing devices; and a unit that inputs pixel size information unique to the plurality of printing devices;
Means for referring to the table to obtain the pixel size information of the designated printing device; and printing the character thickness to be output to the printing device in accordance with the pixel size information obtained by the means. Means for making the apparatus thinner by approximately one pixel.

Another document creation device according to the present invention converts character outline coordinate data of a character represented in a vector format into character data represented in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and provides the converted character data to a printing device. A document creation device that is connected to a plurality of printing devices, comprising: a table for holding the plurality of printing device-specific pixel size information corresponding to each printing device; Means for referring to the table in order to obtain size information of the character, and the thickness of a character to be output to the printing apparatus according to the size information of the pixel obtained by the means is reduced by approximately one pixel of the printing apparatus. Means for performing the operation.

In these document creation apparatuses, the means for reducing the width by one pixel is, for example, for moving the opposite contour lines of the character by approximately half a pixel in the inward direction of the character.

[Operation] With characters processed by affine transformation, it has been empirically confirmed that the smaller the character size, the larger the output character is about 1 dot, which is larger than the expected character thickness. I have. On the other hand, output devices such as printers originally have different pixel sizes and shapes for each output device due to differences in ink bleeding and the like. Therefore,
In the present invention, the quality of a character is improved by correcting the thickness of the character according to the pixel size of a specific output device to be used. In particular, when a character is reduced, by reducing the thickness of the character by one pixel corresponding to the output device, it is possible to solve the problem that when a small character is output, the character looks thicker than the original character.

Also, by providing a means for moving the outline coordinate data by half a pixel as a specific realization method, two outlines constituting the thickness of the character move inside (in the normal direction) each of the character. As a result, thinning by one pixel can be realized.

Furthermore, by fixing the amount of movement in the x and y directions,
Characters of one pixel can be virtually thinned, and high-speed processing can be realized by fixing.

Also, by changing the amount of movement according to the direction of movement,
The movement closer to the actual value can be performed.

If the above movement is performed uniquely, a coordinate value reversal phenomenon may appear. The reversal phenomenon refers to the occurrence of crossing or overlapping of outlines when a character is narrowed by moving a coordinate point in a thin portion of the character. In order to solve this inversion phenomenon, when the relative positional relationship between the contour coordinates before the movement and the relative positional relationship between the coordinates after the movement are different, the inconvenience can be avoided by returning to the coordinate data before the movement.

Also, in the output device output by the character generator, when outputting 90-degree rotation data when outputting portrait and landscape documents, and when the movement amounts in the x and y directions are different, x, By reversing the amount of movement of y, the same character can be output regardless of whether it is output vertically or horizontally.

Also, when the character generator has a plurality of output devices that output characters, and one of them is selected and output,
By changing the movement amount for each output device, the output results of each output device can be made the same.

Furthermore, a point on the contour determined by the contour coordinate data after the coordinate conversion at the time of filling is determined as the inside or outside of the character, and the character is virtually fattened or thinned by one pixel by filling the inside. be able to.

By performing the thickening / thinning processing for each character output size, a character that is faithful to the original character can be generated even for a small character or a large character.

[Examples] Hereinafter, examples of the present invention will be described in detail.

FIG. 2 shows a configuration example of a character output device used for carrying out the present invention. 1 is a central processing unit that executes processing control of a character output device, 2 is a font ROM that stores character outline coordinate data, 3 is a character generation device that employs the character generation method of the present invention, and 4 is the pixel size of the output device. An input device 5 for inputting characters and the like is an output device for outputting characters and the like.

First, the central processing unit 1 transfers the information in the font ROM 2 to the character generator 3. The character generator 3 generates a dot character based on the outline coordinate information of the character input from the font ROM 2 and various information input from the input device 4. The generated dot character data is transferred to the output device 5 and the character is output.

First, a means for inputting the size of one pixel of the output device in this device will be described.

As a first method of inputting the size of one pixel, there is a method of inputting information possessed by a user from the input device 4. A user of the character generation device recognizes the characteristics of the output device 5 and inputs a pixel size from the input device 4.

As a second method, a method of inputting from a pixel information table held inside the character generator 3 can be considered. FIG. 3 shows an example of the pixel information table. In FIG.
The pixel size data 33 indicates the size of one pixel for each output device with respect to one mathematical coordinate. That is, pixel size data increases as ink bleeding increases. If you want to output characters to one of several types of output devices,
The output device number 31 of each output device and the corresponding pixel size data 32 are set in the pixel information table 33 in advance. The character generator 3 acquires the pixel size from the pixel information table 33 according to the selected output device.

As a means for selecting an output device, a method in which a user of the character generation device inputs an output device number using the input device 4 or a device for outputting a signal corresponding to the output device number to the output device 5 is provided. A method of acquiring this signal by a character generator or the like can be considered. In this manner, the pixel size data corresponding to the obtained output device number is stored in the pixel information table.
Obtain from 33.

FIG. 4 shows an example of the configuration of the character generator 3 for creating thin character data corresponding to the output device 5 based on the acquired pixel size data.

In FIG. 4, reference numeral 41 denotes a coordinate data conversion unit which performs coordinate data conversion based on character outline coordinate data of the character input from the input device and the pixel size data of the output device described above. , An affine transformation unit 42 and a coordinate movement unit 43 which is one of the features of the present invention. 44
Is an internal RAM for storing coordinate data generated by the coordinate data conversion unit. Reference numeral 45 denotes a raster conversion unit (raster data generation unit) that converts the outline coordinate data into dot characters, and includes a contour generation unit 46 and a fill data generation unit 47. Reference numeral 48 denotes an internal RAM in which contour dot information is stored.

 The character generator 3 shown in FIG. 4 operates as follows.

First, the outline coordinate data of the character transferred from the font ROM 2 is received, and the affine transformation unit 42 performs character shape conversion such as enlargement / reduction of the character according to the character modification information.
The coordinate data having undergone the shape conversion is coordinate-converted by the coordinate moving unit 43 so that the characters become thinner, and the converted coordinate data is temporarily stored in the internal data RAM 44. The contour generation unit 46 creates dot information indicating a contour on the internal RAM 48 based on the data stored in the internal data RAM 44.
Further, the filling data generation unit 47 creates filling data based on the information in the internal RAM 48. This data is output to an output device 5
Outputs characters by transferring to.

Among them, the operation of the coordinate moving unit 43 performing the characteristic operation in the present invention will be described in detail. The coordinate movement operation of the coordinate data movement unit 43 may be performed in the following two operation flows. First, a method of inputting the size of one pixel of the output device and moving the outline by half a pixel in the normal direction of the outline according to this size, thereby outputting a thin character. Is a method of generating thin characters by moving coordinate data in one or both directions of x and y depending on the inclination of a contour line.

First, the method of FIG. 1 will be described with reference to FIG.
The coordinates of a point 52 where one pixel of the output device is a perfect circle having a radius p and the outline coordinates 51 (x1, y1) constituting the character are moved by a half pixel in the normal direction of the outline are (x1 ', y1'). Let us consider a method for creating new character outline information. At this time, as shown in FIG. 5, the coordinates of the point 53 before the contour point to be moved are (x0, y0),
The coordinates of the subsequent point 54 are (x2, y2). Further, hereinafter, the direction indicating the thickness of the character with respect to the direction of the outline of the character is always on the left side. The "left side" itself does not have any particular meaning, but it is significant to fix it to either the left side or the right side.

FIG. 6 shows an operation flow for obtaining the coordinates (x1 ′, y1 ′) of the point after the movement.

First, an equation of a straight line 55 which is shifted by a half pixel in the normal direction with respect to a straight line defined by (x0, y0)-(x1, y1) is obtained (block 61). The equation for this straight line is It is.

Next, 56 equations of a straight line which is shifted by a half pixel in the normal direction with respect to the straight line defined by (x1, y1)-(x2, y2) are obtained (block 62).

Similarly, It is.

Further, the coordinates of the intersection of the two straight lines obtained in the blocks 61 and 62 are obtained (block 63), and the coordinates of the intersection are set as the moving point (x1 ', y1') (block 64). Intersection coordinates are 2
It is obtained as the solution of two simultaneous equations.

By applying the above operation to all the outline coordinate data constituting the character, the coordinate point can be moved inside the character.

 Next, the second method will be described with reference to FIG.

In this method, the moving direction is determined from the inclination of the contour line. In FIG. 7, the deviations in the x and y directions of the end points that determine the slopes of the two line segments 71 and 72 each composed of three points are represented by Δx0 = x1−x0 Δy0 = y1−y0 Δx1 = x2− x1 Δy1 = y2−y1 and one pixel of the output device is a 2px × 2py rectangle. At this time, the coordinate movement position 7 of the coordinates (x1, y1) of the outline point 73 of the character
FIG. 8 shows an operation flow for obtaining the coordinates (x1 ′, y1 ′) of No. 4. If both x-direction deviations Δx0 and Δx1 of the two line segments are in the positive direction (block 81), y1 is shifted in the positive direction.
Move only py (block 82). Otherwise, if the deviations of the two segments are both negative (block 8
3) Move y1 in the negative direction by py (Block 8)
Four).

Further, when both the deviations Δy0 and Δy1 in the y direction of the two line segments are positive (block 85), x1 is moved in the negative direction by px (block 86). Otherwise,
If the deviations of the two line segments are both negative (block 87), x1 is moved in the positive direction by px (block 8).
8). By this operation, the coordinate point can be virtually moved inward by the pixel size of the output device.

In the output device having rectangular pixels as described above, when outputting characters by rotating them by 90 °, px and py
Is exchanged in advance, and the same operation is performed.

Further, if one pixel of the output device is circular,
A method of changing the moving amount based on the inclination of the contour line can be considered. FIG. 9 shows an operation flow when one pixel of the output device is a perfect circle having a radius p.

The amount of movement of the horizontal and vertical lines used as the constituent lines of the character is p, which is equivalent to half a pixel, and the hatched portion is the average.
45 ゜ This is the operation flow in the case where.

If it is determined that any of the line segments 71 and 72 is a horizontal line (block 91), the movement amount in the y direction is set to p (block 92). (Block 93). If it is determined that one of the line segments 71 and 72 is a vertical line (block 9
4), let p be the amount of movement in the x direction (block 95); (Block 96).

In this way, the movement of the outline coordinates can be realized by performing the operation shown in FIG. 8 first according to the set movement value.

When performing the coordinate movement as described above, if the relative positional relationship from the contour front and rear coordinates of the coordinates before movement and the relative positional relationship from the contour front and rear coordinates of the moved coordinates are not equal,
The coordinates before the movement are output as the coordinates after the movement.

As described above, the generated coordinate data is stored in the internal RAM 4
And dot characters are output by the method described above.

Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

FIG. 10 shows the configuration of the character generator 3 according to the second embodiment. In the figure, 101 is a coordinate conversion unit, and 102 is a raster conversion unit. The coordinate conversion unit 101 performs shape conversion based on information indicating outline coordinates of a character input from the font ROM and character modification information input from the input device 4 or the like. The raster conversion unit 102 receives the converted coordinate data and converts it into dot characters based on the coordinate data. When converting to a dot character, a thin character is generated by determining a point on the outline as outside the character.

FIG. 11 shows an example of occurrence of a contour. In the conventional straight line generation method, a point at which the contour passes is generated as the contour by rounding off the decimal part, but in this embodiment,
As shown in FIG. 11 (a), when the left side (inside of the line segment) in the traveling direction of the contour line is the negative side in the filling direction (the y direction in the example of the figure), x, An operation of truncating the decimal portion of the y data is performed to generate a contour line 111. Conversely, if the left side of the line segment in the traveling direction is the positive side in the filling direction, the operation of rounding up the decimal point is performed. As a result, the opposed contour lines that determine the thickness of the character come closer to each other. By filling the inside of this contour line, a thin character is generated.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 3B, when the left side of the line segment in the traveling direction is the negative side in the filling direction, the operation of rounding up the decimal point of the coordinate data is performed (in the case of the positive side, Perform a truncation operation), which can generate thicker characters.

It should be noted that the round-up and round-down processing may be applied to only one of the opposed contours that determine the thickness of the character, and the other contour may be rounded off as before.

Next, a specific method in which a point on the outline is set as the outside of the character and the point is not set as a filling target will be described with reference to FIG.

First, a point on the contour is accurately calculated, and its position coordinates are stored as decimal point coordinates. The position coordinates are coordinates in a certain direction with respect to the filling method, for example, when the filling direction is x
Direction if it is the direction, x if the filling direction is the y direction
The other coordinate (decimal point coordinate) is calculated with the decimal point of the coordinate in the direction set to 0. In the example of the figure, the calculation is performed such that one x coordinate corresponds to the y coordinate whose decimal part is 0. For example, when the x coordinate when the y coordinate is yn is stored as the decimal point coordinate, outline information for one character is calculated, and the x coordinate is stored for each corresponding y coordinate.

Consider a case where the outline information for one character is the information indicated by “•” in FIG. 12 and the yn line is filled. The yn line is searched from the smaller x, and the contour point found first is set as the filling start point. The search is further continued, and the next found contour point is set as the filling end point. At this time, the start point of the filling is rounded up to the decimal point of the stored coordinate data, and the end point is rounded down. In this way, after the contour points are converted into integers, the points existing between them are output as the inside of the character.

On the other hand, when outputting a bold character, conversely, the start point coordinates may be discarded and the end point coordinates may be rounded up so that points on the contour line may be filled.

According to the present embodiment, high-quality characters and characters whose thickness is emphasized can be easily output by simply judging and executing rounding down or rounding up to the decimal point, and the software scale can be reduced.

Also, for high quality characters, laser beam printer (LB
P) etc., but when copying a document containing characters output in this way, the characters are thin,
Although there is a problem that the printing quality is deteriorated, this embodiment can solve this problem. That is, it is possible to easily generate high-quality characters for LBP and characters for copying.

Next, as a third embodiment, an example of a document printing apparatus employing the above-described character correction method will be described.

FIG. 13 shows an example of a document printing apparatus for realizing this embodiment. In the figure, 131 is an input device for the user to input whether to select either normal printing or copy printing, 132 is a page memory for storing printing data, and 133 is a page memory. A printing device 134 for printing document data is a character generation device according to the present invention.

When using the document printing apparatus, first, the user uses the input device 131 to select “normal printing” or “copy printing”. When “normal printing” is selected, the character generator 134 recognizes a point on the outline as outside the character, and generates the generated character on the page memory 132. If “print for copy” is selected, the point on the outline is recognized as the inside of the character, and the generated thick character is generated on the page memory 132. The document data generated in this way is transferred to the printing device 133 and printed.

According to the present embodiment, it is possible to solve the problem that thin characters are lost when a print document is copied and the quality is degraded with the increase in the definition of the printing apparatus.

[Effects of the Invention] According to the present invention, a character having a thickness corresponding to the characteristics of a specific output device can be output, so that the character quality can be improved.

By having means for inputting the pixel size of the output device, it is possible to support various output devices.

By holding the pixel size of the output device and having means for limiting the output device, it is possible to support various output devices without the user performing complicated processing.

By limiting the direction of coordinate movement to only the x and y directions by inclination, higher-speed movement processing can be performed.

In addition, for circular pixels, when the outline is oblique, the movement accuracy of x and y can be changed to improve the movement accuracy.

In addition, when outputting to a printing device or the like, when outputting data obtained by rotating the document data by 90 °, the amount of movement in the x and y directions is automatically inverted so that the output result before rotation is equalized. be able to.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of an output example by a character generator embodying the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration example of a character output device for executing the embodiment, and FIG. FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing a configuration example, FIG. 4 is an internal block diagram of a character generator for realizing the first embodiment of the present invention,
FIG. 5 is a first schematic diagram showing the movement position of the outline coordinates of the character, FIG. 6 is a flowchart of a method for obtaining the movement position coordinates of FIG. 5, and FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing the movement position of the outline coordinates of the character. 2, FIG. 8 is a flowchart of a method for obtaining the movement position coordinates of FIG. 7, FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing a method of setting the movement distance, and FIG. 10 is a flowchart of a second embodiment of the present invention. Internal schematic diagram of a character generator for realizing
FIG. 12 is a schematic diagram showing the outline of a character, FIG. 12 is a schematic diagram in which a point on the outline is not included as a character to be filled, and FIG.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the document creation device of the present invention. 3 ... Character generator, 33 ... Pixel information table, 43 ...
Coordinate moving unit, 102: Raster conversion unit.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuing from the front page (72) Naoki Nakamura, Inventor Nagoya Nakamura 1-280, Higashi Koigabo, Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo Inside the Hitachi, Ltd. Design Research Laboratories (72) Inventor Yuichi Horiuchi 1-1-1, Higashitaga-cho, Hitachi City, Ibaraki Stock (56) References JP-A-63-70890 (JP, A) JP-A-1-191192 (JP, A) JP-A-63-303477 (JP, A) JP-A-1-59297 (JP, A) JP-A-1-90491 (JP, A) JP-A-61-145992 (JP, U) (58) Fields investigated (Int. Cl. ⁶ , DB name) G09G 5/26

Claims (10)

(57) [Claims] 1. A character generating method for converting outline coordinate data of a character expressed in a vector format into character data expressed in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and providing the converted character data to an output device. When obtaining a character reduced by the conversion, based on the outline coordinate data of the converted character, outline coordinate data in which the thickness of the character is reduced by approximately one pixel of the output device is obtained. A character generating method, wherein the raster-format character data is obtained. 2. A character generating device for converting outline coordinate data of a character represented in a vector format into character data represented in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and providing the converted character data to an output device. Means for storing size information of one pixel of the apparatus, and means for correcting contour coordinate data so as to reduce the thickness of the converted character by an amount proportional to the size of the stored one pixel. A character generator comprising: 3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the means for correcting the outline coordinate data changes the outline coordinate data so as to move the opposite outline of the character by approximately half a pixel toward the inside of the character. A character generator as described. 4. The means for correcting the contour coordinate data includes: limiting a movement direction of the contour coordinate data to two axial directions of x and y; limiting each movement amount; 3. The character generator according to claim 2, wherein the contour coordinate data is moved in the two directions by the movement amount. 5. The character generating apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the amount of movement when moving in both the x and y directions is made smaller than the amount of movement when only one of them is moved. 6. The character generator according to claim 4, wherein, when the character is rotated by 90 ° and output to an output device having different movement amounts in the x direction and the y direction, the movement amount is reversed. . 7. A character generating apparatus according to claim 4, further comprising means for returning to the outline coordinate data before the movement when the relative position of the movement result of the outline coordinate data is different from the positional relationship before the movement. apparatus. 8. A character generator for converting outline coordinate data of a character expressed in a vector format into character data expressed in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and providing the converted character data to a printing device. Means for inputting pixel size information unique to the plurality of printing devices, and referencing the table to obtain pixel size information for the designated printing device. Document creation characterized by comprising: means for reducing the thickness of a character to be output to the printing apparatus according to the pixel size information obtained by the means by approximately one pixel of the printing apparatus. apparatus. 9. A character generating device for converting outline coordinate data of a character represented in a vector format into character data represented in a raster format by coordinate conversion, and providing the converted character data to a printing device. A document creation device connectable to the printing device, wherein a table holding the plurality of printing device-specific pixel size information corresponding to each printing device; and Means for referring to the table to obtain the information, and means for reducing the thickness of a character to be output to the printing apparatus according to the pixel size information obtained by the means by approximately one pixel of the printing apparatus. A document creation device characterized by the following. 10. A document creating apparatus according to claim 8, wherein said means for thinning by one pixel moves each of the opposite contour lines of the character by approximately half a pixel in the inward direction of the character.