JP3176352B2 - Printer control device and control method thereof - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer control device, and more particularly, stores a font pattern transferred from a terminal or the like connected via a network in a nonvolatile storage device, and transfers the font pattern to the printer as required. The present invention relates to a printer control device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A conventional printer control apparatus aims to effectively use system resources by simultaneously sharing a font when a plurality of terminals on a network share a printer. As an example,
A font data transfer method for transferring a font that does not exist in a printer to which a printer control device is connected based on print information received from the terminal from an auxiliary storage device mounted in the printer control device is disclosed in JP-A-9-2686.
No. 4 discloses this. This technique is to improve the printing efficiency by transferring a font pattern to a printer without imposing a burden on a printer server.
FIG. 4 is a block diagram schematically showing a font data transfer method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-26864. As shown in FIG. 4, the font data transfer method is as follows.
CP to determine whether print information has a font designation
U51 and an auxiliary storage device 14 for storing font data
And a LAN control unit 52 for transferring the data from the auxiliary storage device 14 to a printer (not shown). When the CPU 51 determines that the received print information includes a font designation, it checks the font resources of the printer.
The control unit 52 has transferred the designated font from the auxiliary storage device 14 to the printer.

[0003]

However, the conventional printer control apparatus has the following problems.
In the conventional printer control device, if the printer cannot process multiple fonts even if multiple fonts are specified in the print information, it is necessary to register multiple fonts and print using only specific characters such as forms. There has been a problem that unexpected print results occur in the work.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems in the prior art, and prints as expected even if a plurality of font designations exist in print information and the printer does not support the plurality of fonts. It is an object of the present invention to provide a printer control device capable of improving printing efficiency by minimizing the registration of font patterns in a printer.

[0005]

Means for Solving the Problems A printer control device according to the first invention of the present application, which is provided to solve the above-mentioned problems, comprises:
Used in the specified font included in the print data
Get the usage frequency of the characters used, and use
Generate synthetic fonts based on frequently used fonts
Data analysis device, and the data generated by the data analysis device.
Convert multiple fonts into one font based on the font synthesis information
A font synthesizing device configured as
Print data based on the font synthesis information generated by
Data transformation for font specification and character code replacement
And a conversion device is provided in the data processing device .

[0006] The designated file included in the print data of the print information
Get the usage frequency of the characters used in the
Generate a composite font based on the most common font
A data analyzer and a file generated by the data analyzer.
Multiple fonts as one font based on font synthesis information
The data processing device
To be transferred to the printer
Reduce the number of fonts and eliminate unnecessary font transfers
You. Therefore, it is possible to improve the printing efficiency of the printer.
Noh. In addition, the data processing device is provided with a data conversion device that performs font designation and character code replacement of print data based on the generated font synthesis information. It is possible to reduce the burden on the font switching routine that has been created, and as a result, it is possible to improve the printing efficiency.

A printer control device according to a second aspect of the present invention, which is provided to solve the above-described problem, monitors fonts registered in a printer and configures one font.
Whether to transfer from the character pattern assignment status
The data processing device is characterized in that a printer control unit for determining and stopping the transfer when a font having the same configuration exists at the time of transferring the font pattern is provided in the data processing device.

[0008] Fonts registered in the printer are monitored, and character patterns constituting one font are divided.
A printer control unit is provided in the data processing device to determine whether to perform transfer from the assigned state and to stop the transfer when a font having the same configuration exists during the transfer of the font pattern. It is possible to minimize the memory for fonts built in the.

[0009] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a control method of a printer control device according to a third invention of the present application is provided. The data processing device stores the specific print information data in the auxiliary storage device, and then outputs the print information data to the printer. After identifying the font data or the print data, the font data of the print information is converted into a printer-specific registration format and stored in the auxiliary storage device, while the font data in the designated font included in the print data of the print information is stored. Obtains the frequency of use of the characters used in, generates a composite font based on the most common font, and combines the generated fonts. Together constitute information a plurality of fonts as 1 font based on the generated font
Specify font and character code of print data based on synthesis information
It is characterized in that the replacement of the code is performed .

After the data processing device identifies whether the transferred print information is font data or print data, the data processing device converts the font data of the print information into a printer-specific registration format and stores it in an auxiliary storage device. On the other hand, the frequency of use of the character used in the designated font included in the print data of the print information is obtained, a synthetic font is generated based on the most frequently used font, and the generated font is synthesized. By configuring a plurality of fonts as one font based on the information, the number of fonts to be transferred to the printer can be reduced, and unnecessary font transfer can be omitted. Therefore, it is possible to improve the printing efficiency of the printer even with print information in a complicated font form. Ma
Also, based on the generated font synthesis information,
By specifying fonts and replacing character codes
Therefore, a printer and a printer
The negative of the font switching routine that has been performed on the control device
Burden can be reduced, and as a result, printing efficiency can be improved.
It can be improved.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for controlling a printer control apparatus, which monitors fonts registered in a printer, and monitors one font.
From the assignment status of the character pattern that constitutes the event
It is characterized in that it is determined whether or not to perform the transfer, and if a font having the same configuration exists during the transfer of the font pattern, the transfer is stopped.

[0012] The fonts registered in the printer are monitored, and character patterns constituting one font are divided.
Judgment as to whether or not to transfer from the assigned state, and if there is a font with the same configuration at the time of transferring the font pattern, stop the transfer, thereby minimizing the font memory built in the printer and the printer controller. It is possible to stop.

[0013]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of a printer control device according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a structure of a printer control device according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, a printer control device 2 according to the present invention is connected between a terminal 1 that sends print information via a network or the like and a printer 3 that outputs print information input from the terminal 1. Is done. Further, the printer control device 2 according to the present invention
An input port 12 for receiving the print information sent by the terminal 1, a data processing device 11 for processing the received print information, an auxiliary storage device 14 for storing data or font patterns being processed, a printer 3 And an output port 13 for performing bidirectional communication with the device. Further, the data processing device 11 is connected to the data identification device 21 connected to the input port 12, and is connected to the data identification device 21 and converts the font data of the input print information into a printer registration format. A font registration device 101 for transferring font data to the auxiliary storage device 14 is provided. Also, a data analysis device 102 connected to the data identification device 21 and connected to the font synthesis device 103 and the data conversion device 104, and a connection to the output port 13 connected to the font synthesis device 103 and the data conversion device 104. And a printer control unit 105 that performs the operation.

Next, a control method in an embodiment of the printer control apparatus according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a control method in the printer control apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the print information transferred from the terminal 1 via the network is input port 1
2 and stored in the printer control device 2. In the received print information, font data or print data is identified by the data identification device 21. If the print information is font data, the font registration device 101 converts the print information as font data into a transfer format to a printer. The converted font data is stored in the auxiliary storage device 14 and the process ends.

If the print information is print data, the data analyzer 102 extracts font information for which the print data is used. Also, the usage frequency of the used character is acquired. Based on the acquired information, in the case of print data composed of a plurality of fonts, the font using the most various characters is set as the basic font. Furthermore, character information of a font that is not frequently used is assigned to a vacant code of the basic font to create composite information.

Next, based on the synthesis information created by the data analyzer 102, the basic font is converted into a synthesized font using a font pattern existing in the auxiliary storage device 14. The font synthesizing device 103 instructs the printer control unit 105 to transfer the data to the printer 3 after the conversion. The print control unit 105 acquires the status of the printer 3 according to the transfer instruction. If the composite font has not been registered, the transfer is performed to the printer 3.

Next, the data conversion device 104 converts all the designated fonts of the print data and the assigned character codes based on the synthesis information created by the data analysis device 102. The data conversion device 104 determines whether or not the data is being transferred by the printer control unit 105 after the conversion. If the data is being transferred, the data conversion device 104 issues a transfer instruction to the printer 3. The printer control unit 105 sends the converted print data unconditionally to the printer 3.
Transfer to

(Embodiment) FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an embodiment of a printer control device according to the present invention. As shown in FIG. 3A, in one embodiment of the printer control device according to the present invention, it is assumed that a form created only in the Mincho style and print data created only in the Gothic style are printed. I do. Here, Mincho and Gothic character patterns are already supported as font data.
It is assumed that it is stored in the storage device 14 .

Character patterns used in forms are generally specified in many cases. In FIG. 3 (a), characters described as "proposal of invention" and various ruled line characters are targeted. The data analyzer 102 treats frequently used Gothic fonts as basic fonts, and treats "Invention Proposal" and various ruled line characters as Gothic user-defined characters.
Therefore, as shown in FIG. 3B showing the outline of the font conversion, the “origin” specified by the JIS code 482F (hexadecimal) is the Gothic JIS code 7421.
The combined information is generated so as to be replaced with (hexadecimal number). Here, the above-mentioned code 7421 is a character code which is not assigned as a user-defined character in a normal standard. For details, see JISX020 shown in FIG.
Like the eight-character code table, the upper two bytes of the code assigned as a ward may be a numeral such as 28 to 2F in hexadecimal or 74 to 7E . However, since the setting of the extended external character may be assigned to the user-defined character according to the manufacturer's standard, it is necessary to generate the extended character in consideration of the setting condition. Thereafter, a font pattern is assigned by the font synthesizing device 103 based on the synthesizing information, and a new font is created as "font 1". The newly created font is the printer
The control unit 105 downloads the font to the printer.
Output. Further, the conversion device 104 replaces all the specified fonts with “font 1” and converts the character code specified in Mincho into the character code of “font 1”. The data converted in this way is stored in the printer control unit 105.
Outputs to the printer.

[0020]

The effects achieved by the printer control device according to the present invention are listed below. First, even when the number of fonts corresponding to the printer is smaller than the number of fonts specified in the print data, printing can be performed as expected.
This makes it possible to perform printing without violating the reduction of the processing load on the client, which is a feature of the conventional download font. Second, useless font transfer can be omitted by reducing the number of fonts transferred to the printer, and printing efficiency can be improved. This is because, although common to the first effect described above, the number of fonts designated to the printer is reduced by the data analysis device and the font synthesis device for the designated font designated by the print data.

[0021]

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an embodiment of a printer control device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a control method in the printer control device according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing print data and font data in an embodiment of the printer control device according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a configuration of a conventional printer control device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1. Terminal 2. Printer control device 3. Printer 11. Data processing device 12. Input port 13. Output port 14. Auxiliary storage device 21. Data identification device 51. CPU 52. LAN control unit 101. Font registration device 102. Data analysis device 103. Font synthesis device 104. Data conversion device 105. Printer control unit

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (58) Field surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) B41J 5/44 B41J 5/30 G06F 3/12 B41J 2/485 G09G 5/24

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] 1. A data identification device for identifying whether print information transferred via an input port is font data or print data, and the data identification device determines that the data is font data.
After converting to printer-specific registration format in case
Data processing having font registration device for storing in storage device
And management device, an auxiliary memory device data for a particular print information is stored by the data processing device according, connected to said data processing apparatus, the printer control unit consisting of an output port for outputting the data of the print information to the printer Among the designated fonts included in the print data of the print information ,
Get the usage frequency of the character you are using, and find the most
Generate composite fonts based on frequently used fonts
Data analysis device and the data analysis device
Multiple fonts based on the combined font information
A font synthesizing device configured as a
Print data based on font synthesis information generated by the device
For specifying fonts and replacing character codes
A printer control device, wherein a conversion device is provided in the data processing device. 2. A method for monitoring fonts registered in a printer and assigning character patterns constituting one font.
2. The printer according to claim 1, further comprising a printer control unit configured to determine whether to perform the transfer from the assigned state, and to stop the transfer when a font having the same configuration exists at the time of transferring the font pattern. 3. The printer control device according to claim 1. 3. A data processing device provided in a printer control device processes print information data transferred via an input port, and stores specific print information data in an auxiliary storage device. In the method of controlling a printer control device that outputs print information data to the printer, the data processing device identifies whether the transferred print information is font data or print data, and then converts the font information of the print information to a printer-specific data. While converting to the registration format and storing it in the auxiliary storage device, the frequency of use of the character used in the specified font included in the print data of the print information is obtained, and the most frequently used font is basically used. A synthesized font is generated, a plurality of fonts are configured as one font based on the generated font synthesis information , and
The font of the print data
And a character code replacement method. 4. A method for monitoring fonts registered in a printer and assigning character patterns constituting one font.
6. The control method according to claim 5, wherein it is determined whether the transfer is performed from the assigned state, and the transfer is stopped when a font having the same configuration exists at the time of transferring the font pattern.