JP3225891B2 - Printer with error detection function - 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,
In particular, the present invention relates to a printer having a built-in page description language interpreter and having an error detection function.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a processing flow of a conventional page printer. In the figure, a print command, each command, and data sent from a PC (host computer) 402 are processed by a printer controller 401. In the printer controller 401,
Data and the like sent from the PC 402 are received by the receiving unit 403.
After receiving the command, the command is analyzed by the analysis unit / editing unit 404, and the analyzed commands are classified into character drawing, image drawing, and graphic drawing. The classified character drawing is processed using an outline font data unit 405 for storing outline font data and a character drawing unit 406 for transmitting and receiving data using a bitmap font data unit 407.
The image drawing is processed by the image drawing unit 408, and the graphic drawing is processed by the graphic drawing unit 409. The processed command is converted into video data, each data is composed by the frame buffer 410, a print image for one page is generated, and then sent to the printer engine 411 for printing.

In such a page printer, when a language error occurs, data being executed is discarded, and the page printer simply returns to an idle state. In order to solve this problem, a printer that detects an error during processing of a print command and displays the occurrence of the error has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2-3-3.
No. 07762 is proposed.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the printer disclosed in this publication. This printer 501
Incorporates a page description language interpreter 502 and a display means 503 for displaying a language error.

Data written in a page description language input from an interface 504 is interpreted and executed by a page description language interpreter 502.

When the page description language interpreter 502 recognizes a language error in the data input from the interface 504, it sends a signal to a display means 503 attached to the surface of the printer 501 to display the language error.
The user can know the language error from this display. According to the present invention, instead of providing the display means 503, the recognition of the language error may be indicated by voice using a voice output device or printed out.

As described above, the printer proposed in the above publication displays an error occurrence when a language error is detected.

[0008]

However, the instruction to print an image is replaced by the instruction to print characters because, for example, the user has selected and printed an incorrect printer driver on the host computer. If sent, the image data will be interpreted as a character code, and a meaningless character string will be printed. In this case, the character string is often printed in a large amount, so that a large amount of paper is wasted, and a user wastes time until the printing is stopped.

In the printer proposed in the above publication,
This type of error cannot be detected.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and has as its object to provide a printer with an error detection function capable of preventing a large amount of meaningless character strings from being printed.

[0011]

To achieve the above object, according to an aspect of the error detection function printer of claim 1, wherein the pair
Printer that can recognize language errors in the page description language.
An error detecting means for detecting an error by checking a ratio of a target language in a character code to be printed in the page description language and a language other than the target language.

A pudding with an error detection function according to claim 2.
Is a printer that can recognize page description language language errors.
Data to be printed in the page description language
More than a certain number of languages other than the target language in the code
Error, it detects this and treats it as an error
The configuration includes a detection unit.

According to the invention having such a configuration, printing is performed.
Check the character code.
If you select a large number of strings that do not make sense
Can be detected and treated as an error,
It is possible to prevent a large amount of character strings from being printed.

In particular, according to the first aspect of the invention, as a method of detecting an error, a large number of meaningless characters can be detected by checking a ratio of a target language in characters to be printed. Printing can be prevented.

[0015]

In particular, according to the second aspect of the present invention, as a method of detecting an error, the meaning is detected by detecting that a certain number of languages other than the target language in the characters to be printed continue for a certain number or more. A large number of characters not to be detected can be detected and this printing can be prevented.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a printer having an error detection function, comprising an error detection function control means capable of controlling the error detection means and switching whether or not to check a character code to be printed.

According to the invention having such a configuration, since the means for turning off the error check function is provided, a character string which originally has no meaning is printed, for example, when a dump list is printed. It can respond to the purpose.

[0019]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, an embodiment of a printer with an error detection function according to the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings, but the present invention is not limited to the following embodiment.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a processing flow of the printer controller according to the present embodiment. In FIG. 1, a printer controller 10 according to the present embodiment
1 is connected between a PC (host computer) 102 and the printer engine 112, exchanges data with the PC 102, processes print data from the PC 102, sends dot data to the printer engine 112, and performs printing. It is connected to the.

The configuration of the printer controller 101 will be described. The printer controller 101 is connected to the PC 10
2 has a receiving unit 103 for receiving a print command and data sent from the receiving unit 2. The receiving unit 103 sends the received data to the analyzing unit / editing unit 104, and the analyzing unit / editing unit 104 analyzes the data. Classify into character data, image data and graphic data. Then, the analyzing / editing unit 104 sends the character data to the character drawing unit 106 via the error detecting unit 120.
Then, the image data is sent to the image drawing unit 107, and the graphic data is sent to the graphic drawing unit 108.

Character drawing section 106 exchanges data with outline font data section 109 containing outline font data, and receives data from bitmap font data section 110 containing bitmap font data. , Character video data from the character data. The image drawing unit 107 forms video data of an image from the image data, and the figure drawing unit 108 forms video data of a figure from the figure data.

The character drawing unit 106, the image drawing unit 107, and the graphic drawing unit 108 send the video data composed of characters, images, and graphics, respectively, to the frame buffer 111, and
The printer engine 11 forms video data of a page to be printed from the video data.
Store it temporarily before sending to 2. Frame buffer 111
Transmits one page of video data to the printer engine 112.
And printing is performed.

The error detection unit 120 switches whether or not to detect an error, and exchanges data with an error detection function control unit 121 that controls a criterion for detecting the error. Further, the error detection unit 120 sends the data of the detected error to the operator panel 122 for displaying an error, and sends the error data to the PC 102.

Next, the function of such a printer controller will be described. A print command, image data, and the like described in a page description language input from the PC 102 are received by the receiving unit 103, and the received data is sent to the analyzing / editing unit 104, where the data is interpreted, and character data, It is classified into image data and graphic data. The character data is sent to the error detection unit 120, and based on the criteria set by the error detection function control unit 121, the error detection unit 120 determines whether the command is correctly interpreted and processed. The character data whose character code has been checked by the error detection unit 120 is stored in the character drawing unit 10.
Sent to 6. The character drawing section 106 forms video data which is dot data from the character data based on the outline font which is the shape of the outline of each type of character stored in the outline font data section. Video data which is dot data is formed from character data based on the bitmap font stored in the unit 110.

On the other hand, the image data classified by the analyzing / editing unit 104 is sent to the image drawing unit 107, where the image data is subjected to gradation processing for expressing an intermediate color of the image data, and converted into dot data. Certain video data is configured. In the analysis unit / editing unit 104,
The classified figure data is sent to the figure drawing unit 108, where a figure such as a circle is drawn or painted to form video data as dot data from the figure data. The video data of each of these characters, images, and graphics is sent to the frame buffer 111 and the frame buffer 1
At 11, the video data of the image information of one page to be printed composed of these is formed, and the video data of this page is temporarily stored. Then, the video data stored in the frame buffer 111 is sequentially transferred to the printer engine 112 and printed.

The error detecting section 120 detects an error by checking the character codes classified by the analyzing section / editing section. For example, if the user selects the wrong printer driver on the PC, the command to print the image is replaced by the command to command the characters, the image data is interpreted as character data, and a large number of meaningless characters are used. The code is sent to the error detection unit 120. Conventionally, a large amount of character codes that do not make sense are printed as they are.

In the printer according to the present invention, the error detection unit 120 checks the character code and determines whether the character code is meaningful as a sentence, thereby checking the error.

An example of a criterion for determining whether an error has occurred will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. In this example, a method of detecting a ratio between a target language (Japanese in FIG. 2) and other languages is used.

First, in step 201, character code strings in one page are sequentially read, and then, in step 202, it is determined whether Japanese is included. When Japanese is detected in the character string, the number of Japanese characters is counted up in step 203, and the number of Japanese characters is added to the total number of characters in step 204. On the other hand, if the character code is not Japanese, in step 204, the number of non-Japanese characters is added to the total number of characters. This operation is performed until the character string ends (step 205). When the character string included in one page ends, it is determined in step 206 whether or not the percentage of Japanese is, for example, 50% or less based on the setting of the error detection function control unit 121. If the percentage of Japanese is 50% or less, it is determined that an error has occurred because it is regarded as meaningless as a sentence, and step 20 is performed.
At step 7, error processing is performed.

On the other hand, if the percentage of Japanese exceeds 50% of the character string, it is regarded as meaningful as a sentence and printing processing is performed as it is.

In the error processing, for example, an error notification or a print command resend request is sent to the PC 102, and at the same time, an error signal is sent to the operator panel 122 to display the error and notify the user of the occurrence of the error. Alternatively, a warning that an error has occurred may be issued by voice. As a result, it is possible to prevent a large amount of meaningless character strings from being printed, to prevent useless printing, to reduce paper consumption, and to save the user from wasting time. It should be noted that the user can determine whether or not to cancel printing by using a signal from some input means.

In this example, the standard of whether or not a sentence makes sense when the percentage of Japanese is 50% is used as a criterion. The percentage criterion can be changed.
In the case of English text, it is possible to check whether the character is a character code of an alphabet and determine whether the ratio of the alphabet to the whole character exceeds a certain standard.

Next, another example of a criterion for determining whether or not an error has occurred will be described with reference to FIG. This example is a method of performing error processing when a character string other than Japanese continues for a long time, for example. First, in step 301, character strings in one page are sequentially read.
At 2, it is determined whether the character is Japanese. If the character is not Japanese, the number of non-Japanese characters is sequentially counted up in step 303. On the other hand, when a Japanese character code is detected, the count of the number of non-Japanese characters is cleared in step 304, and the number of non-Japanese characters is counted up from the beginning. In step 305, based on the setting of the error detection function control 121, if a non-Japanese character string continues, for example, 80 characters or more, it is determined that it does not make sense as a sentence. I do.

On the other hand, if the non-Japanese character string does not continue for more than 80 characters, the character string is read again in step 307, and the non-Japanese character string is read until the character string included in one page ends. Check if the sequence is more than 80 characters long. If the non-Japanese character string does not continue for more than 80 characters in one page, it is determined that there is no error and printing is performed as it is.

Although the case where the non-Japanese characters are consecutive 80 words is described here as an example, this criterion can be changed by changing the setting of the error detection function control unit 121. Similarly to the above, by targeting alphabets, it is possible to detect an error when a character other than alphabets continues for a long time, and it is possible to correspond to English.

However, when printing a dump list of a binary file, for example, a character string that is not a text is printed.
The error detection function control unit 121 turns off the error check function of the error detection unit.

[0038]

As described above, according to the printer with an error detection function of the present invention, when image data or the like is erroneously interpreted as character data, this can be detected and the user is notified that an error has occurred. By notifying or stopping printing, useless printing can be prevented and useless consumption of paper can be suppressed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a processing flow of a printer controller of a printer according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a flow of an error detection process in an error detection unit of a printer controller of the printer according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating another flow of an error detection process in the error detection unit of the printer controller of the printer according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a printer controller of a conventional printer.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a printer disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-179572.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 101 printer controller 102 host computer 103 reception unit 104 analysis unit / editing unit 106 character drawing unit 107 image drawing unit 108 graphic drawing unit 111 frame buffer 112 printer driver 120 error detection unit 121 error detection function control unit 122 operator panel

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] 1. A method for recognizing a language error of a page description language.
Printer in the character code to be printed in the page description language.
Check the ratio of target language to other language
Error detection means for detecting errors
Printer with error detection function. 2. It is possible to recognize a language error of a page description language.
A printer that, when the language other than the language of interest in the character code to be printed in said page description language are continuously more than a predetermined number, Bei error detection means for processing detects this as an error
Printer with an error detection function. Wherein controlling the error detection means, the error detection function according to claim 1 or 2 was further comprising an error detection function control means capable of switching whether to check a character code to be printed With printer.