JP3119051B2 - Print information conversion method and apparatus - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a print information conversion method and apparatus for converting a print language for a line printer into a high-level print control language for DTP (desktop publishing).

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional printer, a control code is uniquely determined depending on a printer model, and a computer or an application creates and prints data in accordance with the control code of the printer. Conventionally, the printer cannot be changed arbitrarily, and when changing the printer, it is necessary to change the application software. Therefore, in order to be able to change only the printer without changing the application software, a print information conversion device for converting data is provided between the application software and the printer. For example, JP
A printer switching device proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 177419 is one of them.

[0003]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-177 is disclosed.
The printer switching device proposed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 419 simply converts input print data into output print data based on a code conversion table. Was converted to data.

FIG. 9 shows an example of a print output result. Numerical values in the X and Y directions represent coordinate values. This document is composed of three types of characters and straight lines. For a straight line (1)
There are three types: a thick solid line, (2) a thin solid line, and (3) a thin broken line. In order to change the type of line, it is necessary to issue a line type change command. FIG. 10 shows the drawing order of the document shown in FIG. 9, and particularly shows the drawing order by application software in which the printing efficiency is not considered. In this example, since one long line is also drawn by a plurality of short lines, the number of line drawing commands is 29. When such inefficient input print data is converted as it is, FIG.
Output print data having a large data amount as shown in FIG. In particular, when converting to a high-level print control language compatible with DTP, the amount of output print data that frequently changes the type of line will significantly increase, and this will hinder the effective use of storage devices such as memories. Become. Further, when the print information conversion device and a printer using a high-level print control language compatible with DTP are connected by a low-speed communication method, the transfer time increases, and the print speed efficiency decreases. is there.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a print information conversion method and a print information conversion method capable of effectively utilizing a memory by reducing the size of output data.

[0006]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a print information conversion method according to the present invention reads print data described in a first instruction system and converts a line drawing instruction existing in the print data. Once the line drawing commands are held and the interpretation of the print data for one page is completed, the held line drawing commands are taken out, and the output data described in the second command system are grouped for each line drawing command having the same attribute. It is characterized in that it is converted to.

A print information conversion apparatus for executing the above print information conversion method reads input print data described in a first command system, interprets the print request contents, and draws line data. A line information holding unit for holding line information corresponding to the command in the order in which the command is generated; and, when the print request content interpreted by the input data interpreting unit is a line drawing command, the line information corresponding to the line drawing command is stored. At the time when the interpretation of the print request content for one page is completed, the line information having the same attribute is selected from the line information group stored in the line information holding unit, and each line information is stored in the line information holding unit. Grouping, line information control means for outputting a print request content comprising a line drawing command corresponding to each group to the output data creating means, and using the print request content output from the line information control means, Characterized in that comprising an output data generating means for generating an output data described in the second instruction architecture.

[0008]

According to the above-described print information conversion method and apparatus, line information corresponding to a line drawing command included in print data is grouped by the same attribute, for example, line type, at the end of one page. The grouped line information is collectively converted into output data. According to this, the number of issuance of the line type change instruction described in the output data can be minimized, so that the size of the output data is smaller than before, and the memory area is effectively used. It becomes possible.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of a print information conversion method and a print information conversion apparatus to which the present invention is applied will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of the print information conversion apparatus. The print information conversion device 11 includes an input data interpretation unit 12, an output data creation unit 13, a line information holding unit 21, and an internal information holding unit 22.

The input data interpreting means 12 reads the input print data 15 sequentially from the beginning, interprets the contents of the print request, and outputs a corresponding drawing command to the output data creating means 1.
Issue to 3. The print request contents include "move the print position", "draw characters", "draw lines", and the like. If the input print data is character data, the output data creation means 13
Issue a character drawing instruction to If the input print data is control data, the necessary items of the internal information stored in the internal information holding means 22 are updated. If the input print data is a line drawing command, the width, type, start point,
The direction and length are checked and stored in the line information holding means 21 as the line information of the line drawing command. In the first embodiment, the line information is stored in the order in which the line drawing commands are generated. When the input data interpreting means finishes interpreting the print request content for one page, the input data interpreting means selects line information of the same line type from the line information group stored in the line information holding means 21 and groups them. Then, a line drawing command corresponding to each group is output to the output data creating means 13.

The output data creating means 13 converts the input print data 15 into a high-level print control language compatible with DTP using the line drawing command interpreted by the input data interpreting means 12 and creates output print data 16. I do.

The line information holding means 21 stores line information corresponding to a line drawing command. FIG. 2 shows a configuration example of the line information holding unit 21. FIG. 2 shows line information constituting the document example of FIG. In FIG. 2, the line width column contains the width of each line. Here, there are two types, thick and thin. In the line type column, the type of each line is a solid line or a broken line. The X and Y coordinates of the drawing start position enter the start point. The direction includes upper (U), lower (D), left (L), and right (R). The length is the length of each line. The line information items are stored for the same number of 29 lines as the line drawing command. When a line drawing command existing in the input print data is specified by relative coordinates, the data is converted into absolute coordinates when writing to the line information holding unit 21.

The internal information holding means 22 stores state information such as a print position, character attributes, and layout attributes when the input data interpretation means 12 interprets the input print data.

Next, the processing procedure of the input data interpreting means 12 when input print data is input will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

First, the input data interpretation means 12 performs initialization at the start of execution (step 101). The contents of the initialization include clearing the data in the line information holding unit 21, changing the internal information holding unit memory 22 to the initial value, and issuing a job start request to the output data creating unit 13. After the completion of the initialization, an interpretation process is performed. The first step in the interpretation process is to confirm the input data (step 102). Here, when the existence of the input data is confirmed, 1 is counted from the head of the data.
The bytes are obtained (step 103), the meaning of the one byte is checked, and the processing is performed for each byte.

First, it is checked whether the read input data is a page break command (step 104). If not, it is checked whether the input data is line drawing data (step 105). If the input data is line drawing data, the width, type, start point, direction, and length of the target line are obtained (step 106) and stored in the line information holding unit 21 (step 107). If the input data is not line drawing data in step 105, it is checked whether the data is control data (step 108). If the input data is control data, the internal information item stored in the internal information holding means 22 is updated (step 10).
9). If the input data is character data, a character drawing command is issued to the output data creating means 13 (step 11).
0).

When the input data interpretation processing is completed for one page and a page break command is received in step 104, the input data interpretation means 12 checks all the items stored in the line information holding means 22. Line information of the same line type is selected and grouped, and a line drawing instruction corresponding to each group is issued to the output data creating means 13 (steps 111 to 113).

If there is no input data in step 102, the input data interpreting means 12 checks all items stored in the line information holding means 22, selects line information of the same line type, and The groups are grouped, and a line drawing instruction corresponding to each group is issued to the output data creating unit 13 (steps 114 to 116). continue,
A job end request is issued to the output data creating means 13 and all operations in the input data interpreting means 12 are ended (step 117).

Next, the processing procedure of the output data creating means 13 when the print request content is received from the input data interpreting means 12 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

First, a print request is received from the input data interpreting means 12 (step 201), and it is checked whether the print request is a job start (step 202). If the print request is to start a job, a job start command is output. The job start command in this embodiment is “sttjob”. This command requires an argument t, and selects a sheet based on t (step 203).

If the print request is not a job start in step 202, it is checked whether the print request is for drawing characters (step 204). If the print request is for drawing a character, a character drawing command is output. In this embodiment, the character drawing command is "show", and the argument is stored as a character string in parentheses (step 20).
5). If the print request is not for drawing a character at step 204, it is checked whether the print request is a movement of the position (step 206). If the print request is to move the position, a command to change the current position is output. The command to change the current position in this embodiment is "setcp", and adds position information in the X and Y directions from the origin (step 20).
7).

If it is determined in step 206 that the print request is not a movement of the position, it is checked whether the print request is for drawing a line (step 208). If the print request is for drawing a line, a line drawing command is output (step 209). The line drawing command in this embodiment is a combination of "moveto", "lineto", and "stroke", and the arguments are the start point and end point of the line.

If it is determined in step 208 that the print request is not for drawing a line, it is checked whether the job has been completed (step 21).
0). If the print request is for a job end, a job end command is output. The job end command in this embodiment is "endjob" and has no argument (step 211). After the output of the job end command, the output data creating means 13 ends the process of creating the output print data.

Actually, there are many print requests other than the five print requests described here. However, these can be dealt with by performing output processing in the same manner. In addition, when a print information conversion device using a high-level print control language for DTP other than this embodiment is created, it can be easily implemented by changing the data in the item of the output data creation means 13. Further, the input data interpreting means 12 according to the host-side application.
By rewriting the functions described above, it is possible to flexibly cope with various applications.

FIG. 5 shows a specific example in which data conversion is performed by the above-described print information conversion apparatus. FIG. 5 shows the contents of output print data in which line drawing commands are grouped for each line type. In this example, the output print data that can provide a print result equivalent to 1506 bytes of the output print data (FIG. 9) when the data is simply converted can be reduced to 1242 bytes.

Embodiment 2 In the line information holding means 21 of the above embodiment, as shown in FIG. 2, all the line information is stored in one table in the order of instructions, but is stored in the line information holding means 21. At this time, it is also possible to group in advance for each line type and store them in separate tables. In this way, by having a table grouped for each line type, it is not necessary to extract a line drawing instruction having the same line information from the table when issuing a line drawing instruction to be performed collectively before the end of a page. Therefore, the data conversion time can be reduced.

Third Embodiment In the first embodiment, all the line information corresponding to the line drawing command is stored as it is. However, the line information to be stored next and the line information already stored satisfy a specific condition. If they are satisfied, they can be described collectively. In the input data interpretation means 12 of the third embodiment,
When the content of the print request is a line drawing command, the line information already stored in the line information holding means 21 is sequentially inspected, and has the same specific attribute as the line information of the next line to be stored, and is extended. It is determined whether or not line information having continuity exists on the line. Then, when there is line information that satisfies this condition, the line information is rewritten, and a process of combining the line information of two lines as the line information of one line is performed.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of the input data interpreting means 12 when input print data is input. The basic processing flow is the same as in FIG.
The method of storing line information in the line information holding means 21 is different.

In step 106 of FIG. 6, when the width, type, start point, direction, and length of the target line are obtained, the line information in the line information holding means 21 is inspected in order and stored next. It is checked whether or not there is line information having the same specific attribute as the line information and having continuity on the extended line (step 120). When the corresponding line information is found, the target line information in the line information holding means 21 is rewritten based on the line information to be stored next (step 121). If such line information is not found in step 120, the width, type, start point, direction, and length of the target line are stored in the line information holding means 21 (step 122). Other processing (steps 101 to 105, steps 108 to 117) is shown in FIG.
Therefore, the description is omitted here.

When making the determination in step 120, first, line information having the same attributes as the line width, line type, and direction of the line information to be stored next is searched for. When a match with these specific attributes is found, it is next determined whether or not the line information has continuity on an extension of the line information to be stored next. This is done by examining the coordinates and direction of the start points of the two pieces of line information and determining whether or not one line is formed when the two lines are connected. Therefore, even if the directions of the two lines are the same, those that are cut in the middle are excluded. When the found line information satisfies these conditions, the line information is rewritten based on the line information to be stored next.

Here, as a specific example of rewriting the line information, consider the second line in FIG.
The second line is drawn from the coordinates (80, 155) to the right with a length of 25. First, the input data interpretation unit 12 compares the first line information stored in the line information holding unit 21 with the second line to be stored next. Then, the second line has the same line width and line type as the first line, but in a different direction. Therefore, the line information of the second line is stored in the line information holding unit 21 as it is. Since the subsequent line No. 3 has a line width different from No. 1 and No. 2, the line information is stored in the line information holding unit 21.
The line No. 4 has the same line width, line type and direction as the line No. 2 and has continuity on the extension line. Therefore, the line information of the line No. 4 is stored without storing the line information in the line information holding unit 21. Is rewritten. Rewriting is changed from “(80, 155) to R 25” to “(80, 155) to R 50”. Similarly, 6
The line No. 2 has the same attribute as the line No. 2 and has continuity on the extension line, so the line information No. 2 is rewritten. FIG. 7 shows a configuration example of the line information holding means 21 when the line information is stored in this manner. Line information is 2 in the original input print data
Although nine lines are stored, the line information is reduced to 14 when the line information to be collected as one line is rewritten. FIG. 8 shows a specific example when data conversion is performed based on the line information in FIG. In this example, when stored in the line information holding unit 21, line information satisfying a specific condition is combined into one, so that the output print data size is 678 bytes, which is compared with the case of simple conversion. As a result, the data amount was reduced by 55%.

[0033]

As described above, in the print information conversion method and apparatus according to the present invention, a line drawing command for one page is temporarily held, and when the interpretation of one page is completed, a line drawing command having the same attribute is obtained. Since instructions are collectively converted into output data, the number of line type change instructions issued is reduced, and the size of output data can be reduced, so that the memory can be used effectively.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a functional configuration of a print information conversion apparatus.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a configuration example of a line information holding unit.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of an input data interpretation unit.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a processing procedure of an output data creation unit.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing output print data in which line drawing commands are grouped for each line type.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure of an input data interpreting unit according to the third embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a line information holding unit when line information is stored by the method according to the third embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a specific example when data conversion is performed based on the line information of FIG. 7;

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example of a print output result.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a drawing order of documents.

FIG. 11 is a diagram showing output print data when converted in the drawing order of FIG. 9;

[Explanation of symbols]

11 print information converter, 12 input data interpreting means,
13: output data creation means, 15: input print data, 1
6 ... output print data, 21 ... line information holding means, 22 ... internal information holding means

Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-5-221042 (JP, A) JP-A-6-297804 (JP, A) JP-A-6-255198 (JP, A) JP-A-4-127197 (JP) , A) JP-A-2-39972 (JP, A) JP-A-63-245715 (JP, A) (58) Fields investigated (Int. Cl. ⁷ , DB name) B41J 5/30 B41J 21/00 G06F 3/12

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] 1. A print information conversion method for converting print data described in a first command system into print data described in a second command system, wherein the print data described in the first command system includes The existing line drawing commands are held, and when the interpretation of the print data for one page is completed, the held line drawing commands are taken out and grouped for each line drawing command having the same attribute by the second command system. A print information conversion method, wherein the print information is converted into described output data. 2. A print information conversion apparatus for converting print data described in a first command system into print data described in a second command system, comprising reading the print data described in the first command system. Input data interpretation means for interpreting the print request content, line information holding means for holding line information corresponding to the line drawing command, and when the print request content interpreted by the input data interpretation means is a line drawing command. Stores the line information corresponding to the line drawing command in the line information holding unit, and when the interpretation of the content of the print request for one page is completed, the line information group stored in the line information holding unit A line information control means for grouping line information having the same attribute from each other, and outputting a line drawing instruction corresponding to each group; and a second command system using the line drawing instruction output from the line information control means. Written in Print information conversion apparatus characterized by output data creating means, equipped with creating output data. 3. When the print request content interpreted by the input data interpreting means is a line drawing command, the line information control means groups line information corresponding to the line drawing command into specific attributes. When the interpretation of the print request content for one page is completed, each group of the line information held in the line information holding unit is extracted, and the line corresponding to each group is extracted. 3. The print information converter according to claim 2, wherein the print information converter outputs a drawing command. 4. When the print request content interpreted by the input data interpreting means is a line drawing command, the line information control means examines the line information already stored in the line information holding means. When there is line information having the same specific attribute as the line information to be stored in the line and having continuity on the extension line, the line information is rewritten based on the line information to be stored next. 4. The print information conversion device according to claim 2, wherein: