JP3266955B2 - Page description program processor - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a page description program processing apparatus, and more particularly, to an apparatus for creating a page description program (document data image forming program comprising a group of page description language instructions) from document data. The present invention relates to a page description program processing apparatus capable of creating an optimized page description language program by removing various parts.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when the output of document data created by a document data processing device is output by a high-performance printing device such as a laser printer, a high-performance printing device is used to obtain high-quality print output. In the printing apparatus, a print image is formed by executing each command of the page description language program. Such a high-performance printing apparatus is provided with a page description language processing device, and a document image forming program (hereinafter abbreviated as a page description program) described by each command and a group of commands of the page description language. Is performed. That is, the printing device receives and stores a print output program (page description program) sent from the data processing device, translates the program (page description program), and interprets the image forming program interpreted by the translation. Each processing mechanism and control unit for forming an image and controlling a printing operation in accordance with instructions of a program is provided (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-18837).
No. 4).

[0003]

When creating a page description program to be handled by a page description language processing device in such a high-performance printing apparatus, an instruction group is formed by combining several individual instructions of the page description language. And a page description program is created by treating this instruction group in the same way as one new instruction. An instruction group combining individual instructions is called a “procedure” and is frequently used when creating a page description program for one document data. In such a page description program, the fact that the original basic instructions of the page description language are used alone is not rare, but the "procedure" of an instruction group in which several basic instructions are combined.
Are often programmed using these instructions. When a page description program is created using such “procedure” instructions, the “procedure” instructions are defined in advance as a combination of instruction groups, and are added to the head of the program body of the page description program. Thus, it is possible to interpret the order of the “procedure”.

Therefore, the structure of the page description program can be roughly divided into two parts, a procedure definition part that defines a "procedure" instruction used in the page description program, and a page description part which is a program body part. I have. The procedure definition section defines the “procedure” commands used in the page description section, and the page description section includes a program for forming a page image of a target print output document.
It is described using the "procedure" command defined in the procedure definition section.

[0005] In the page description program, each "procedure" command defined by the procedure definition section is processed by an application program (a word processing processor such as a word processor, a drawing tool, a language simulator, etc.) which outputs the page description program. If a unique one is determined in accordance with the contents, each application program can easily execute a unique and high-precision image formation in the application program by a simple command (a “procedure” command of a page description language). it can. For this reason, each definition of a “procedure” instruction that assumes all images that can be created by an application program is created in advance, and a set of definitions of each “procedure” instruction (hereinafter, referred to as “procedure” instructions)
Application programs).

In the processing by such an application program, the page description program of the output data output by execution of the application program includes all the procedure sets as a procedure definition section together with the page description section of the document data main body. It is added as it is and output.

[0007] As described above, when a conventional application program is executed and a page description program is output as an output thereof, the above-described page description section of the main body of the output document data created by the execution contents of the application program is included. Such a procedure set is simply added to all the procedure sets as its procedure definition section regardless of the content of the print output image to be created.

Therefore, a page description program for outputting a print image output from each application program includes, in its procedure definition section, an instruction of a page description language program for performing the print output. This is a form including many redundant procedure instructions up to unnecessary procedure instructions for forming an image. As a result, the page description program output from the application program has a very large data capacity, its transfer time, and
There is a problem that the program interpretation time is unnecessarily long and the overall processing throughput is reduced.

Some application programs have a function of taking in an image created by another application program. In this case, in one page description program output by execution of the application program, , A number of procedure sets of each application program are added as they are as the procedure definition section. For this reason, more redundancy occurs, and the page description program output from the application program further has a very large data capacity.
There is a problem that the transfer time and the program interpretation time are longer than necessary.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to eliminate redundancy in a page description program and to transfer, interpret, etc. the page description program. An object of the present invention is to provide a page description program processing device which can simplify the handling and improve the processing speed as a whole.

[0011]

To achieve the above object, a page description program processing device according to a first aspect of the present invention provides a description unit described by a group of instructions in a page description language from input document data. A page description program processing device (10: FIG. 1) including a generation unit (12: FIG. 1) for generating a page description program including a definition unit in which instructions of the description unit are defined. A determination unit (13: FIG. 1) for determining whether each definition of the definition unit of the page description program is referred to by an instruction of the description unit when the description program is created; And a processing means (15: FIG. 1) for adding only the definition determined to be referred to as a definition part to the description part and outputting it.

A page description program processing device according to a second feature of the present invention is a page description program processing apparatus comprising: a description section described by a group of instructions in a page description language; and a definition section in which the instructions of the description section are defined. Interpreting the description part and the definition part, and judging means (63: FIG. 6) for judging whether or not the definition of the definition part is referred to by the instruction of the description part; And a processing means (65: FIG. 6) for adding only the definition determined to be referred to by the instruction as a definition part to the description part for output.

[0013]

In the page description program processing apparatus according to the first aspect of the present invention, the creating means (12) includes a description part described in a group of instructions of a page description language from input document data and an instruction of the description part. A page description program including a definition section in which is defined. In this case, when the creation means creates the page description program, the determination means (1
3) determines whether each definition of the definition section of the page description program is referred to by the instruction of the description section, and the processing means (15) is referred to by the instruction of the description section by the determination means. Only the definition determined to be is added as a definition part to the description part and output.

As a result, in the output page description program, only the definition referenced in the description section is added as a necessary definition in the definition section.
An optimized page description program without redundancy. The page description program has a small data capacity, a short transfer time and a short program interpretation time, and a storage process, a transfer process,
The throughput of the entire processing when the page description program is handled, such as the execution processing, is improved.

In the page description program processing device according to the second aspect of the present invention, the determination means (61)
Interprets a page description program consisting of a description part described by a group of instructions in a page description language and a definition part in which the instructions of the description part are defined, recognizes the description part and the definition part, and recognizes the definition part and the definition part. It is determined whether or not each definition is referenced by an instruction in the description section. Based on the result of this determination, the processing means (62)
Outputs only the definitions determined to be referred to by the instructions in the description section as the definition sections to the description section. As a result, in the output page description language program, only the definition referenced in the description section is added as a necessary definition here in the definition section, and the page description language program is optimized without redundancy. Page description program.

[0016]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiments of the present invention will be specifically described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a page description program processing device according to a first embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, the page description program processing device 10 includes a flow control unit 11, a page description program generation processing unit 12, and a page description program management unit 1.
3. It comprises a procedure set management unit 14 and an output processing unit 15.

The flow control unit 11 controls the flow of a process for creating a page description program. The page description program generation processing unit 12 generates a page description program based on each command of a page description language from input document data. The page description program management unit 13 manages the page description program generated by the page description program generation processing unit 12, and provides a procedure management instruction to add a flag to a procedure of an instruction referred to in the description unit of the page description program. To the part 14. It also holds a page description program. The procedure set management unit 14 includes a procedure set management table 14a.
Using 4a, a flag is set for the procedure of the instruction referred to in the description section of the page description program, and the procedure definition required by the page description program is managed. The output processing unit 15 adds all the flagged procedures among the procedures managed by the procedure set management unit 14 to the page description unit of the page description program held by the page description program management unit 13. Output.

When the input document data 1 created by executing an application program or the like is specified to the page description program processing device 10 and the storage device 2 or the printing device 3 is specified as its output destination, the flow control unit 11
, The page description program generation processing unit 12 is started, and the page description program generation processing unit 12 performs a process of generating a page description program from the input document data 1. In this program generation processing, when the “procedure” instruction defined in the procedure set is used in the page description section of the generated page description program,
In the procedure set management table 14a managed by the procedure set management unit 14, all of the procedure definitions referenced in the page description unit (all of the procedure definitions including the procedure definition to be recursively referenced) A flag indicating the reference is set, and the generated instruction (page description section) of the page description program is stored in the page description program management section 13.

In the processing for generating each instruction of such a page description program, each instruction of the procedure set is generated from the target input document data 1 for each instruction generated to form the page image. The reference to the "procedure" command is checked, and the process is repeated until the page description program of the page image for the target input document data 1 is generated.

When all the page description programs have been generated for all the data of the input document data 1, the output processing unit 15 sends out all the flagged procedures from the procedures managed by the procedure set management unit 14. Is extracted as a definition of the procedure definition section 4a, and is combined with the page description section 4b including the generated page description instructions to create and output the page description program 4. The page description program 4 output from the output processing unit 15 is
The data is transferred to the storage device 2 or the printing device 3 of the output device previously specified as the output destination. By such processing, each definition of the procedure definition part 4a of the page description program 4 formed is only the procedure referred to by the page description part 4b, and does not include the definition of unnecessary procedures.
It is an optimized page description program that is not redundant.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart for explaining a series of flows of a process of creating a page description program in the page description program processing device. The process of creating the page description program will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. In this process, first, in step 21, a command input of a print image formation such as a print instruction is received, and then, in step 22, a program generation process for generating a command of a page description program from the input document data is performed. In the next step 23, it is determined whether or not the instruction of the generated page description program refers to the “procedure” instruction of the procedure set. If the generated instruction does not refer to the “procedure” instruction in the procedure set, the process returns to step 22 to perform processing for generating an instruction for the next page description program.

In the determination process of step 23,
If it is determined that the generated instruction refers to the procedure set, the process proceeds to step 24, where a flag is set for the corresponding “procedure” instruction in the procedure management table. Save the program ("procedure" command) of the page description program. Then, in the next step 26, it is determined whether or not the process of generating the page description program has been completed for the input document data. If the page description program generation processing has not been completed, the process returns to step 22 to perform processing for creating the next page description program instruction.

If it is determined in step 26 that the process of generating the page description program has been completed, then in step 27, a procedure set output process is performed. In this procedure set output processing, only the "procedure" instruction for which a flag has been set by the processing in step 24 is output, and the procedure definition section (procedure set) in the page description program created here is output. Next, in step 28, the page description program and the procedure definition section of the stored page description program are combined to form a page description program, and the formed page description program is output in step 28. Then, in step 29, the data is stored in the storage device of the output destination or supplied to the printing device of the output destination to perform a printing process, and a series of processes ends.

Next, as a second embodiment of the present invention, a certain kind of page description will be described by using the basic principle of a page description program processing apparatus for performing processing for generating an optimal page description program without redundancy as described above. A page description language conversion device that enables a page description language program created using a language instruction set to be interpreted by another type of page description language will be described. In this page description language conversion apparatus, an instruction group (procedure set) of an interpretation definition for enabling a specific type of page description language program to be interpreted by a processor of another type of page description language. Is added to the head of the page description language program.

In this page description language conversion process, a set of conversion definition procedures that can be interpreted by the language processing system to be converted is added to the head of the page description language program to be converted. For this purpose, usually, the procedure set of all conversion definitions is simply added to the head of the page description language program to be converted. However, if such processing is performed, unnecessary Even the conversion definition is added. For this reason, it is converted into a redundant page description language program. Therefore, here, using the basic principle of the present invention as described above, for a procedure of a conversion definition that is not referred to, processing excluding the procedure set of the corresponding conversion definition is performed.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a main part of a page description language conversion apparatus according to a second embodiment of the present invention in a processing flow. As shown in FIG. 3, the page description language conversion device has a configuration including a program definition addition processing unit 33 and a program interpretation unit 35 as main processing elements. The program definition addition processing unit 33 determines the type of the page description language (for example, Interpress language) of the input page description language source program 31, and based on the determination result, adds the page description language program definition (procedure set). ) 32, and at the beginning of the input page description language source program, a processor of a specific page description language (for example, PostScript language) can interpret the page description language source program (Interpress). A process for adding a page description language program definition (procedure set) 32 is performed. In addition, when the program definition addition processing unit 33 adds a program definition (procedure set), according to the basic principle of the present invention, of the page description language program definition to be added, the definition which is not referred to is removed. An optimized page description language source program 34 without redundancy is used.

As described above, the page description language source program 34 to which only the referred procedure set is added.
Is supplied to the program interpretation unit 35. The program interpreting unit 35 interprets the page description language source program for the page description language program 34 with the procedure set of the interpretation system program definition by referring to the procedure set definition added to the head of the program body. I do. As a result, the postscript compatible printer 36
Also, the document image created by the page description language source program 31 described in the Interpress language can be printed.

In the description of the page description language conversion apparatus of the second embodiment, a case is described in which a program conversion is performed so that a page description language source program of Interpress language can be interpreted by a page description language processing system of PostScript language. In this case, the part that performs the process using the principle of the present invention is a program definition addition processing unit 33 in which a page description language source program of an Interpress language is converted into a page description language program of a postscript language. Is applied in the part that adds a procedure set to convert to

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of a data processing system using a page description language conversion device according to a second embodiment of the present invention. In this data processing system, as shown in FIG. 4, each of a page description language conversion device 41, a storage device 42, a central processing unit 43, and an input / output device 44 is interconnected by a system bus 45 to form an entire system. Make up. Storage device 42
Is a file server, for example, and stores an image forming program described by each command of a page description language. The central processing unit 43 is, for example, a workstation, has an operating system and a UNIX system program mounted thereon, and performs data processing. The input / output device 44 includes a printing device, a display device, a keyboard, and the like, and is an input unit that gives an instruction to output an image created by a page description language image forming program. And an output display unit for outputting the output image. Specifically, it is, for example, a printer server, and is equipped with a PostScript printer as its printing device. In that case, the printer server is equipped with a PostScript interpreter.

In the data processing system, a page description program described in an Interpress language, a kind of page description language, is created at the workstation of the central processing unit 41 or created by another system. After being stored in the file server of the storage device 42 in this system via a communication line or a recording medium such as a floppy, the postscript of the printing device is subsequently transmitted by the printer server of the input / output device 44.・
A page image is formed using a printer, and printed out. In this case, the page description language conversion device 41 determines the type of the page description language for the page description program instructed to print out, and converts the page description program to be printed into a page description language compatible with the printer of the own system. A process for converting into a program that can be interpreted by.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the contents of a procedure set management table and a page description program table for explaining the operation of converting the Interpress language page description program into the PostScript language page description program. FIG. 5A shows an example of a procedure set management table, and FIG. 5B shows a page description program table. As shown in FIG. 5A, the procedure set management table 51 stores a name field 51a for storing a procedure name, a content field 51b for storing the procedure contents, and a reference flag indicating whether or not the procedure has been referred to. Lookup field 5
1c. As shown in FIG. 5B, the page description program table 52 includes an index field 52a indicating the order of the program instructions and a program field 52b for storing the contents of the instructions.

The operation of converting a page description program in the Interpress language into a page description program in the PostScript language will be described in detail below.
The page description language conversion device 41 is activated from the command, and the process is started. At this time, the procedure description management table 51 for managing the procedure set is read from the storage device 42 at the time of startup. Note that the procedure set management table 51 here is
It may be incorporated in the page description language conversion device 41.

The page description language converter 41 is activated,
When the page description language is specified, a conversion program for converting the page description language into a page description language compatible with the own system is activated by initial setting of the system. This conversion program is a conversion program for performing a process of converting into a page description program in a format that can be handled by the interpretation system of the printer of the self system. In the second embodiment, the conversion program is converted so that it can be interpreted by a printer that handles PostScript language. Perform processing.
Since the PostScript language handles ASCII (ASCII) character programs, it first converts the encoded Interpress into an ASCII character representation. For example,
Hexadecimal "A0D1" is "MOD" in ASCII expression
Therefore, it is converted to be interpretable as the procedure “MOD”.

In this case, since the procedure "MOD" is referred to, first, a reference flag is set in the reference field 51c of the procedure "MOD" in the procedure set management table 51 which manages the procedure set, and the procedure "MOD" is referred to. Register that it was referenced. Next, in the definition of the referenced procedure content, a process of setting a reference flag for another procedure that is further referred to is performed. To explain in this example, the definition content of the procedure “MOD” is the content field 51b.
Refer to “｛2 copy DIVFLOOR mul sub
｝ Def ”, in which the procedure“ DIVF
"LOOR" is the procedure content of the definition to be referred to.
The reference flag is also set in the reference field of R ". The process of setting the reference flag is also applied recursively to the procedures in the procedure. If the procedure that tried to set the reference flag was previously referenced Has already been set a reference flag, and in this case, it does not proceed to the process of setting the reference flag recursively.

For example, as shown in FIG. 5 (A), the procedure set management table 51 defines each procedure definition in which an Interpress command is defined by a PostScript command as the procedure set, "/ ADD @ add @ def". / MOD {2 copy DIVFLOOR mul sub {def / DIVFLOOR} div floor {def} "will be described. The meaning of this first procedure definition is that the Interpress instruction “ADD” corresponds to the PostScript addition instruction “add”. In the second procedure definition, an Interpress instruction “MOD” is defined. The definition content of the command "MOD" is that two data of the first data and the second data are copied by a postscript transfer command "copy", and an Interpress command "DIVFLOOR" is used between the two copied data. The fractional part truncation division is performed, the result is multiplied by the postscript multiplication instruction “mul”, and the result is subtracted from the first data by the postscript subtraction instruction “sub”. It is a procedure definition of an arithmetic expression for finding the remainder. Further, in the third procedure definition, the Interpress instruction “DIVFL”
OOR "is defined. The instruction “DIVFLOOR” divides by the postscript division instruction “div”, and the decimal part of the operation result is a postscript truncation instruction “floor”
Defines the procedure for truncation.

As a content of the page description program, as shown in FIG. 5 (B), a program in the Interpress language is converted into an expression of an Aksi character. It is obtained in table 52. The content is "7.0 2.0
MOD ”(a program that obtains the remainder of dividing 7 by 2), the procedure set management table 51 stores the referenced procedure“ MO ”in the reference field 51c.
A reference flag is set to “D” and “DIVFLOOR” which is further referred to in the procedure “MOD.” As a result, the procedure set management table 51 is set in FIG.
As shown in (A), a reference flag is set in the reference field 51c at the position of the procedure "MOD" and the procedure "DIVFLOOR".

In this way, the data is converted into the ASCII character expression, the reference to the procedure set is checked, and after all the page description programs are created, the reference feed 51c of the procedure set management table 51 is referred to. Then, according to the instruction of the reference flag, only the definition of the procedure used in the page description program is output from the procedure set. The output procedure set is an optimized procedure set for the subsequently output page description program. After the output of the procedure set, the processing program of the page description part stored in the page description program table 52 is output in the order, and the converted page description program is output.

When the output destination specified by the output command is a printer, the page description language converter 42 transfers the converted page description program to the printer, and interprets the page description program by the printer. Then, a target page image is formed and printed. If the output destination is a storage device, the converted program description program is transferred to the storage device and stored. In any case, the converted page description program has only the procedure set necessary for its interpretation added, and its data capacity is reduced.
Therefore, the processing is completed in a short time in the transfer processing time, and the processing is completed in a short time in reading the program data when performing printing. This improves the efficiency of the entire system. In particular, even in the case where an image forming program in another type of page description language is included in the page description program, only the necessary ones in the procedure set of the individual instructions of the page description program should be left. Therefore, transfer time and printing time can be significantly reduced.

Next, still another embodiment of the present invention will be described. The first embodiment described above is an embodiment to which the present invention is applied when a new page description program is created, and the second embodiment converts the type of the page description language of the page description program. In this embodiment, the present invention is applied to a case where a page description program corresponding to another type of page description language system is newly created. The present invention can be applied to a case where the data capacity is reduced by a page description program in the same format without changing the content. Next, another embodiment of the present invention will be described.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a page description program processing device according to a third embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 6, the page description program processing device 60 according to the third embodiment includes a flow control unit 61, a read processing unit 62, an instruction interpretation processing unit 63, a table operation processing unit 64, and an output processing unit 65. It is configured.

The flow control unit 61 controls the flow of the process of reducing the data of the page description program. The read processing unit 62 sequentially cuts out instructions from the page description program 55 to be processed. The command interpretation processing unit 63 interprets each command of the page description language. The table operation unit 64 has a stack and a work table, and performs a stack operation to reconstruct an instruction sequence of a page description program. Also,
Add a reference flag to the procedure of the instruction referenced in the description section of the page description program in the work table,
It manages only the procedure definitions necessary for the page description program. The output processing unit 65 outputs, from the table operation processing unit 64, only the procedure with the flag set in the procedure definition, together with the page description unit.

When a page description program to be processed written in a page description language and an output destination are designated in the page description program processing device 60, the flow control section 61 starts processing. The flow control unit 61 first includes a read processing unit 62
Is activated, and then the instruction interpretation processing unit 63 is activated. When the read processing unit 62 is activated, the read processing unit 62 sequentially extracts commands from the page description program 55 to be processed and supplies the commands to the command interpretation processing unit 63. The instruction interpretation processing unit 63 interprets the cut-out instruction. As a result of the interpretation, if the cut-out instruction is a definition, an instruction is given to the table operation processing unit 64, and the table operation processing unit 64 stores the instruction sequence of the procedure definition and its registration position in the work table. In the case where the result of interpretation in the instruction interpretation processing unit 63 is a reference, the table operation processing unit 64 registers and stores the instruction position of the reference in the work table, and indicates that the definition is referred to. Is performed to set a reference flag indicating “.” This series of processing is performed for each instruction of the page description program to be processed, and is repeated until the interpretation of each instruction is completed. Note that the table operation processing unit 64 performs a stack operation as a process for combining the sequentially extracted instruction sequences into one instruction group.

When the processing for all the instructions of the page description program is completed, the flow control section 61 activates the output processing section 65 next. The output processing unit 65 examines the definition and reference table stored in the table operation processing unit 64,
The referenced definition and reference instructions are output as a processed page description program 56 in the order in which they appeared in the original page description program. The output destination of the processed page description program 56 is the storage device 57 or the printing device 58 which is the output destination specified when the command is input.
Transfer to

Here, the overall control is performed by the flow control unit 61. The control flow of the overall processing will be described below. FIG. 7 is a flowchart for explaining the process control of the redundancy reduction process of the page description program performed by the flow control unit, and FIG. 8 is a diagram for explaining the stack operation performed by the table operation processing unit. FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an example of a work table in which interpreted instruction groups are stored.

Next, referring to the flowchart shown in FIG. 7 and the stacks and work tables shown in FIGS. 8 and 9, the page description program described in the postscript language is processed, and the program is referred to therein. A description will be given of a process of removing an unnecessary procedure to obtain an optimized page description program without redundancy.

Referring to the flowchart of FIG. In this process, first, in step 70, a command input is accepted and the process is started. In this command, the page description program to be processed and the output destination are specified. Next, in step 71, one instruction element is cut out from the page description program to be processed. Next, in step 72, the extracted instruction elements are stacked on the stack (81: FIG. 8). Next, in step 73, it is determined whether or not the extracted instruction element is a delimiter (;) indicating a break in the instruction group. If it is not a break between the instruction groups, the process returns to step 71, and the processing from step 71 is repeated for the next one instruction element.

In the determination process of step 73, when the break of the instruction group can be determined, the process proceeds to step 74, where the instruction elements stacked on the stack are registered in the work table as one instruction group (see FIG. 8). Next, in step 75, it is determined whether or not the instruction group registered in the work table is a procedure definition. If the instruction group is a procedure definition, the process directly proceeds to step 77. If it is not a procedure definition, the definition referenced by the instruction element of this instruction group is
Step 7 because it is already registered in the work table
In step 6, after setting the reference flag to the corresponding definition in the work table, the process proceeds to step 77. As a result, since the processing for one instruction group has been completed, it is determined in the next step 77 whether or not the processing for all the instruction groups of the page description program has been completed. If the processing for all the instruction groups has not been completed, the process returns to step 71 and the processing from step 71 is repeated.

If it is determined in step 77 that the processing for each instruction group in one page description program has been completed, the flow advances to step 78 to sequentially refer to the procedure definition section from the top of the work table. Only the object is extracted, and the page description section of the page description program body section is subsequently output. Then, in step 79, the page description program is transferred to the storage device or the printing device at the output destination, and the processed page description program is stored or printed, and a series of processes is ended.

The system environment in which such a process of reducing and optimizing the redundancy of the page description program is performed is as follows.
For example, it is realized by a workstation and a PostScript printer. The workstation is equipped with an operating system and a UNIX system program, and the PostScript printer is equipped with a postscript interpreter. The processing example of the page description program here will be described more specifically by exemplifying a page description language. First, when the system is started from a UNIX command, a command processing start instruction is issued.
A page description program written in a page description language PostScript and an output destination are specified. The printer or the storage device is specified as the output destination.

In the page description program based on PostScript, a procedure of a new command is defined by combining several commands. Also, among the defined new instructions, calls are made to the instructions defined elsewhere in the program. For example, the definition of an instruction for obtaining the remainder of a real number will be described as an example. The definition of the instruction in this case is, as described above, "/ MOD {2 copy DIVFLOOR mul sub}
def / DIVFLOOR {div floor {def "", and calls an instruction defined further in the definition.

In the processing of the page description program, the page description program is read from the beginning, one instruction element is cut out, and the cut out instruction element is temporarily placed on the stack. The instruction cutout process is repeated until one instruction group break appears in the instruction sequence. For example, if it is defined in the procedure definition program for finding the remainder of a real number as described above, one instruction group is cut out sequentially from the head portion, with the instruction element “/ MOD” and the instruction element “{ ”, Instruction element“ 2 ”, instruction element“ c
opy ", instruction element" DIVFLOOR ", instruction element"
mul ", the command element" sub ", the command element" @ ", and the command element" def ". These nine instruction elements are cut out as one instruction group, and are temporarily stored on the stack 81 as shown in FIG. The break of each instruction group is interpreted according to the target page description language. When the break of the instruction group is detected, the extracted instruction group is taken out of the stack 81 and stored in the work table 82.

When the instruction is cut out, if the instruction is an instruction that refers to the instruction, the work table 82 is searched, a reference flag is set in the reference field 83 of the entry referred to by the instruction, and the definition of the entry is defined. In the content
The processing for searching the work table and setting the reference flag is repeated for the instruction referred to in the instruction. As a result, for example, a program description such as a page description program “/ ADD add def / MOD 2 copy DIVFLOOR mul sub def / DIVFLOOR div floor def 7.0 2.0 MOD” is read into the work table 82. The state is as shown in FIG. Here, a reference flag indicated by a circle is set in the reference field 83 of the entry 3 and the entry 5 of the work table 82, indicating that the definition is referred to by the program of the page description portion below the entry 7. ing. Thus, here, the procedure definition MOD referred to and the DIVFL further referred to in the procedure fixed holiday MOD are referred to.
A reference flag is set in OOR, and only this procedure definition is extracted.

When the processing for all the page description programs is completed, the work table 82 is checked from the beginning, and in the case of the instruction of the procedure definition section, only the output destination having the reference flag set in the reference field is designated. To send out. Further, in the case of reference, it is only necessary to unconditionally send to the output destination. If the output destination specified by the command is a printer, the page description program created by the printer is interpreted, and a target page image is created and printed. If the output destination is a storage device, the created program is transferred and stored in the storage device.

[0054]

As described above, according to the page description program processing device of the present invention, the redundancy can be eliminated when the page description program is created, and the size (data capacity) of the page description program can be reduced. Can be reduced. Therefore, the transfer time to the output device can be shortened. In particular, even when a different kind of page description program is included in the page description program, only the necessary procedures are left in each procedure set of each page description program. The degree to which time and printing time can be reduced is great.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a page description program processing device according to a first embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart for explaining a series of flows of a process of creating a page description program in the page description program processing device;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a main part configuration of a page description language conversion apparatus according to a second embodiment of the present invention by a processing flow;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of a configuration of a data processing system using a page description language conversion device according to a second embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing contents of a procedure set management table and a page description program table for explaining an operation of converting an Interpress language page description program into a PostScript language page description program;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of a page description program processing device according to a third embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart for explaining processing control of redundancy reduction processing of a page description program performed by the flow control unit;

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a stack operation performed by a table operation processing unit;

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example of a work table in which an interpreted instruction group is stored.

[Explanation of symbols]

REFERENCE SIGNS LIST 1 input document data 2 storage device 3 printing device 4
... Page description program, 4a ... Procedure definition part, 4b ...
Page description section, 10... Page description program processing device,
11 flow control unit, 12 page description program generation processing unit, 13 page description program management unit, 14 procedure set management unit, 14a procedure set management table, 15 output processing unit, 31 page conversion language before conversion Source program, 32: Page description program definition (procedure set), 33: Program definition addition processing unit, 34
... page description language source program without redundancy, 35
... a program interpreter, 36 ... a printing device, 41 page description language conversion device, 42 ... storage device, 43 ... central processing device,
44: input / output device, 45: system bus, 51: procedure set management table, 52: page description program table, 55: page description program before processing, 56: processed page description program, 57: storage device, 58 ...
Printing device, 60 ... Page description program processing device, 61
... Flow control unit, 62 Read processing unit, 63 Instruction interpretation processing unit, 64 Table operation processing unit, 65 Output processing unit, 81
... Stack, 82 ... Work table, 83 ... Reference field.

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] 1. A page description comprising a page description program for generating, from input document data, a page description program including a description section described by a group of instructions in a page description language and a definition section in which the instructions of the description section are defined. In the program processing device, when creating the page description program by the creating means,
For each definition in the definition section of the page description program,
Determining means for determining whether or not to be referred to by the instruction of the description part; processing for adding only the definition determined to be referred to by the instruction of the description part by the determining means as a definition part to the description part for output And a means for processing a page description program. 2. A page description program comprising a description part described by a group of instructions in a page description language and a definition part in which the instructions of the description part are defined is interpreted, and the description part and the definition part are recognized. A determination unit that determines whether each definition of the definition unit is referred to by an instruction of the description unit, and only the definition determined to be referenced by the instruction of the description unit by the determination unit is described as a definition unit. A page description program processing device, comprising: processing means for adding and outputting to a section.