JP3066931B2 - Output method and device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an output method and apparatus for receiving data from an external device such as a host computer, developing the data into bitmap data or the like in page units, and printing the data.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, this type of device uses input, development,
If an error occurs in each processing step of printing, interrupt each processing, warn the user of the occurrence of the error using a display device or the like, and use a user's manual operation such as pressing an error skip switch. Error release processing,
Continue inputting, developing and printing. Further, the error release processing at this time differs depending on the type of error.

[0003]

Therefore, in the above-described conventional example, when an error occurs, the user must always intervene to perform the error skip, and the output device does not continue the processing unless the error skip is performed. Therefore, if an error occurs while the user is not at the output device, there is a disadvantage that the output intended by the user is not permanently made.

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention provides a fault detecting means for detecting the occurrence of a fault in an output device for analyzing and expanding input print control data and printing the data. And a timing means for measuring the elapsed time;
After the occurrence of the predetermined fault is detected by the fault detecting means, a fault canceling means for canceling the fault that has occurred in response to the predetermined elapsed time being measured by the timing means.
In the failure detecting step, the occurrence of a plurality of types of failures
Can be detected.
And an output device for determining an elapsed time for each type of failure . In order to solve the above-described problems, the present invention provides an output method for analyzing and expanding input print control data and performing printing, wherein a fault detecting step for detecting occurrence of a fault, and And a failure clearing step for clearing a fault that has occurred in response to the measurement of a predetermined elapsed time after the detection.
Can detect the occurrence of multiple types of faults.
In the failure release step, when each failure type has been detected
Provide an output method for determining the interval .

[0005] In order to solve the above-mentioned problem, the present invention preferably notifies an error state to the outside during the execution of the fault clearing process. In order to solve the above problems, the present invention preferably performs the notification by display.

[0006] In order to solve the above problems, the present invention is capable of detecting the occurrence of a double Several types of failures, to determine the elapsed time for each type of the fault detected.

[0007] In order to solve the above-mentioned problem, the present invention preferably suspends processes other than the failure clearing process while executing the fault clearing process. In order to solve the above problem, the present invention preferably continues the interrupted processing after the end of the failure clearing processing.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment according to the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of a color output device according to the present invention, and is a block diagram showing a data flow.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the output device in the present embodiment, which will be described below with reference to FIGS. In the figure, 1 is an output device, and 2 is an external device such as a host computer or a terminal device. Also one
An input unit 1 receives data transferred from the host computer 2. Reference numeral 12 analyzes the input data under the control of the CPU 21, performs various color processing, and converts bitmap data for one page into Y (yellow), M
This is a developing unit that creates four colors (magenta), C (cyan) and K (black), and the developed data is stored in the RAM 27. A printing unit 13 prints the bitmap data in color on printing paper. The print control unit controls these prints. This color printing is, for example, a bubble jet printing having a print head for sequentially printing four colors of YMCK from a plurality of nozzles to print on printing paper. Reference numeral 14 denotes an error processing unit which controls various processes relating to errors occurring in the input unit 11, the developing unit 12, and the printing unit 13. The CPU 14 controls the processing shown in a flowchart described below according to a control program stored in the ROM 26. It is performed under. Reference numeral 15 denotes a display unit for notifying the error to the outside. Reference numeral 16 denotes a clock generation unit that generates an internal clock that is referred to particularly in time processing in the internal processing of the output device. A clock storage unit 17 for storing the clock value indicating the time of occurrence of the error for each type of error;
27.

The processing procedure of the control circuit according to this embodiment having the above configuration will be described below with reference to the flowcharts shown in FIGS. Control programs for the processes shown in the flowcharts of FIGS. 3 to 5 are stored in the ROM 26,
It is executed under the control of the CPU 21. FIG. 3 is a flowchart when the output apparatus outputs one page. First, in step 30, transmission data from the host computer is input to the input unit 1.
Enter by 1. The input method is, for example, 8-bit parallel communication based on Centronics, and is RS232C of a bidirectional start-stop synchronization method. The input data at this time is character data or a command for performing various print controls for forming a print page. The command types include, for example, print position designation, color designation, character size,
There are line spacing specification, page break, etc. The input data is stored in a reception buffer (not shown) having a finite capacity in the input unit 11.

In step 31, the input data is analyzed in accordance with a grammar specific to the output device, and known color processing such as density conversion, masking, and gamma conversion necessary for color reproduction by subtractive color mixing of four colors of YMCK is performed. Of the bit map data is created. At this time, four types of bitmap data are created according to YMCK. The bitmap data is developed on a development memory (not shown) having a finite capacity in the development unit 12.

In step 32, color printing is performed using the four bit map data of YMCK. That is, the bitmap data created in step 21 is converted by the printing unit 13 into a form suitable for printing by the print head on a conversion memory (not shown), and the data is transmitted to the print head. In addition, the print head is driven to sequentially eject four colors of YMCK ink from a plurality of nozzles to perform printing on printing paper.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart of a process when an error occurs in each of the input, development, and printing process steps described with reference to FIG. This processing is performed in each processing unit where an error has occurred. Here, the error in each processing unit is specifically, for example, “input buffer over” and “line error” at the input unit, and “expanded memory over” and “work memory over” at the expansion unit.
In the printing unit, “conversion memory over” is described, but for the sake of convenience in the description of the present embodiment, errors that occur at each stage of input, expansion, and printing are referred to as “input error”, “expansion error”, and “print error” respectively. I will call it. In step 40, the flag and clock related to the occurrence of the error are set and stored. That is, first, as shown in FIG. 6, the current clock value is obtained from the clock
The latest error clock value in 7 is updated. Here, the latest error clock value is cleared when the output device is not in an error state. This is effective as a flag when determining whether or not the output device is in an error state in error processing described later. The clock generated by the clock generation unit 16 is, specifically, a small internal clock of the order of several tens of nanometers generated using a crystal oscillator or the like, thereby generating a timer interrupt. This is a value on the order of seconds obtained by counting the number of times of occurrence of the interrupt and reaching a certain number of times and incrementing the current counter value in the clock generator 16 by one. Next, the error clock value in the clock storage unit 17 is updated to the same value as the latest error clock value according to the type of the error that has occurred. In the case of FIG. 6, an input error has occurred,
Therefore, the input error clock value is updated. Step 4
In step 1, the process waits until the error is canceled by an error process described later. That is, the processing of each processing unit is suspended until the error is cleared.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of the processing in the error processing unit 14. The error processing unit 14 operates asynchronously with other processing units constituting the output device. That is, for example, even when an error occurs in the input unit 11 and the processing of the input unit 11 is interrupted, the error processing unit 14 can operate. First, in step 50, it is determined whether an error has occurred in the output device. As described above, if the latest error clock value shown in FIG. 6 is 0, it is not an error state, and if not, it is an error state. If there is no error, the flow returns to step 50 again to determine the error state. If an error has occurred, an error is displayed in step 51. This is performed by the display unit 15 and notifies an error state to the outside by a liquid crystal display or the like as shown in FIG. Next, at step 52, it is determined whether or not the latest error clock value has exceeded a specific time. The specific time here is the time from when an error occurs until automatic error skip is performed,
It may be a fixed value or a settable variable value. This determination is made using the following equation.

Current clock> Latest error clock + Specific value If the time is not up, the error state is determined again in step 50. If the time is up, the latest error clock value is cleared in step 53. Next, at step 54, it is determined whether or not the input error clock value has expired. This determination is made using the following equation.

Current clock> input error clock + specific value If the time has not elapsed, the process proceeds to step 56. If the time is up, an input error is cleared in step 55. Specifically, the clearing of the input error is the clearing of the input error clock value, the initialization of the hardware device related to the input, and the clearing of the receiving buffer. Next, at step 56, it is determined whether or not the developed error clock value has timed up. This determination is made using the following equation.

Current clock> expanded error clock + specific value If the time has not elapsed, the process proceeds to step 58. If the time is up, the development error is cleared in step 57. Specifically, the clearing of the expansion error is a clearing of the expansion error clock value and a clearing of the expansion memory. Next, in step 58, it is determined whether or not the print error clock value has expired. This determination is made using the following equation.

Current clock> Print error clock + Specific value If the time is not up, return to Step 50. If the time is up, a print error is cleared in step 59. Specifically, the clearing of the printing error is the clearing of the printing error clock value and the clearing of the conversion memory.

Here, the storage area for the error clock for the number of types of error in the clock storage unit 17 is secured, for example, when an error occurs in the expansion unit 12 during the processing of the error processing unit 14 in step 55 of FIG. At this time, the development error should be skipped after a specific time. If only a flag indicating whether or not an expansion error has occurred is referred to here, it is determined in step 56 that the expansion error has occurred, and is skipped in step 57. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare an error clock storage area for the number of errors and determine the time-up immediately before the skip processing.

The processing in steps 54 to 59 increases or decreases according to the number of errors in the output device. That is, when the number of errors increases, a judgment statement for time-up of the error and a process of clearing the error may be added after step 59.

When the error is cleared by the above error processing, it is determined in step 41 in FIG. 4 that the error has been cleared, and the processing of the processing unit interrupted by the occurrence of the error is continued.

The present invention may be applied to a system including a plurality of devices, may be applied to an apparatus including a single device, or may be achieved by supplying a program to the system or the device. Needless to say, the present invention can be applied to such cases.

[0024]

As described above, according to the present invention, when an error occurs in each of the steps of inputting, developing, and printing, error skipping is automatically performed after a specific time and processing is continued. It is possible to reduce the work load of the user without requiring the intervention of the user for the skip.

Here, when an error has occurred, it has been shown that the subsequent processing is continued by error skipping. However, it goes without saying that a normal print result cannot be obtained by this. It is an error skip to continue the process even if a normal print result is not obtained, and the present invention proposes a control method for performing the error skip without user intervention.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a functional configuration diagram according to an embodiment;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a printing apparatus according to the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the flow of a one-page output process according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of processing when an error occurs in each processing unit.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of processing in an error processing unit.

FIG. 6 is a conceptual diagram illustrating setting of each clock value when an error occurs.

FIG. 7 is an example of a display unit.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 1 output device 2 host computer 11 input unit 12 developing unit 13 printing unit 14 error processing unit 15 display unit 16 clock generation unit 17 clock storage unit

Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-3-187773 (JP, A) JP-A-4-348979 (JP, A) JP-A-63-59622 (JP, A) JP-A-3-65370 (JP) JP-A-5-104823 (JP, A) JP-A-64-87287 (JP, A) JP-A-3-251774 (JP, A) (58) Fields investigated (Int. Cl. ⁷ , DB Name) B41J 29/46 B41J 29/38 G06F 3/12

Claims (10)

(57) [Claims] 1. An output device for analyzing, expanding, and printing input print control data, comprising: a fault detecting means for detecting occurrence of a fault; a time measuring means for measuring an elapsed time; and the fault detecting means. after occurrence of a predetermined failure is detected, the predetermined elapsed time possess a fault release means for releasing the failures in response to being clocked by the clock means, the fault detecting means is a plurality of types Can detect the occurrence of a fault
The fault canceling means is provided for each type of detected fault.
An output device for determining overtime . 2. The output device according to claim 1, further comprising a notifying unit for notifying an error state to the outside while the fault canceling unit is executing the fault canceling process. 3. The output device according to claim 2, wherein said notification means is a display means. 4. The output device according to claim 1, wherein processing other than the failure cancellation processing is interrupted while the failure cancellation processing is being executed by the failure cancellation means. 5. The output device according to claim 4, wherein the interrupted processing is continued after the failure cancellation processing by the failure cancellation means is completed. 6. An output method for analyzing, expanding, and printing input print control data, comprising: a failure detection step of detecting occurrence of a failure; and a predetermined detection method after the failure is detected in the failure detection step. A failure release step of releasing a failure that has occurred in response to the elapsed time being measured , wherein the failure detection step detects the occurrence of a plurality of types of failures
It is possible that the fault is detected in the fault clearing step.
An output method characterized in that an elapsed time is determined for each of the types . 7. The output method according to claim 6, wherein an error state is notified to the outside during the execution of the failure clearing process. 8. The output method according to claim 7, wherein the notification of the error state is performed by displaying a character string. 9. The output method according to claim 6, wherein processing other than the failure cancellation processing is interrupted while the failure cancellation processing is being executed. 10. The output method according to claim 9, wherein the interrupted processing is continued after the end of the failure clearing processing.