JP3308663B2 - Image forming device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to, for example, an image forming apparatus for processing image data.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional printer, when image data is input, the image is directly output to an output device. Therefore, when high-resolution image data is input, a high-resolution output image is obtained. Conversely, when low-resolution image data is input, a low-resolution output image is obtained.

[0003]

A particular problem here is, for example, the case where image data is map information including characters / symbols and this is represented by low-resolution image data. Recognizing information is important to the user and does not degrade the quality of that part.
Or it was important to improve the quality.

However, a conventional image forming apparatus cannot meet this demand, and when low-resolution image data is printed, the quality of small-sized character symbols generally deteriorates. .

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above conventional example, and has as its object to provide an image forming apparatus capable of obtaining a high quality image output even with low resolution image data.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, an image forming apparatus according to the present invention comprises: a storage unit for storing image data received from a host computer; Converting means for extracting a part and a graphic part and converting them into character font data and an image command sequence expressing a line; determining means for determining whether there is a designation to transfer to a host computer; Transfer means for transferring, to the host computer, the character font data converted by the conversion means, the image command sequence, and the image data remaining after conversion by the conversion means, if it is determined that there is a designation to transfer to the host computer. If the determination means determines that there is no designation to transfer to the host computer, And a forming means for forming an image data by scaling the image data remaining after the conversion by said converting means and data and image command sequence converted character font by means. According to another aspect, the image forming apparatus of the present invention includes a printing unit that performs printing based on the image data formed by the forming unit. According to another aspect, in the image forming apparatus of the present invention, the character font data includes a character code and font attribute data. The image forming method according to the present invention further comprises a storing step of storing the image data received from the host computer in a memory, and extracting a character portion and a graphic portion from the image data stored in the memory by the storing step. A conversion step of converting the image data into an image command sequence expressing a line, a determination step of determining whether or not there is an instruction to transfer to the host computer, and determining that there is an instruction to transfer to the host computer by the determination step Transfer, the character font data and the image command sequence converted in the conversion step and the image data remaining after the conversion in the conversion step are transferred to the host computer, and the determination step is performed to transfer the data to the host computer. If it is determined that there is no specification, And a step of forming image data and scaling the serial data and the image command sequence character font converted by the converting step and the image data remaining after the conversion by the conversion step. According to still another aspect, an image forming method according to the present invention includes a printing step of performing printing based on the image data formed in the forming step. According to another aspect, in the image forming method of the present invention, the character font data includes a character code and font attribute data.

With the above arrangement, the image data received from the host computer is stored, the character portion and the graphic portion are extracted from the stored image data, and converted into character font data and an image command sequence expressing a line. Then, it is determined whether or not there is a designation to transfer to the host computer. If it is determined that there is a designation to transfer to the host computer, the converted character font data, the image command sequence, and the image data remaining after the conversion are determined. Is transferred to the host computer, and when it is determined that there is no designation to transfer to the host computer, the converted character font data, the image command string, and the image data remaining after the conversion are scaled to form image data. .

[0007]

【Example】

(First Embodiment) A printing apparatus which receives data from a host computer and prints out data from a host computer according to a first embodiment of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 schematically shows the configuration of an electrophotographic printing apparatus according to this embodiment.

A printing apparatus 100 according to the present embodiment forms a printing result 200. Reference numeral 300 denotes a host computer that supplies print data to the printing apparatus 100.

The printing apparatus 100 includes the following components including a CPU 101 for controlling the entire printing apparatus.

Reference numeral 108 denotes a receiving buffer for temporarily storing data sent from the host computer 300,
2 is a font memory for storing outline data, 103 is a graphic data determination and extraction information storage memory for storing information for determining and extracting graphic data and character data of image data, and 106 is a font data Font data extraction / conversion information memory storing extraction / conversion information for extracting and converting to attribute data such as character codes and sizes, 104 is a page buffer for storing received data, and 105 is image data for one page And 107, a printer engine unit that actually performs a printing process based on the image data developed in the bitmap memory 105. The printer engine unit 107 is configured by, for example, an engine unit of a laser beam printer (LBP) shown in FIG.

Next, the configuration of the engine unit and the printing apparatus of the laser beam printer shown in FIG. 7 will be described.

In FIG. 7, reference numeral 740 denotes an LBP main body, which forms an image on recording paper as a recording medium based on a supplied character pattern or the like. Reference numeral 700 denotes an operation panel on which switches, LED display devices, and the like are installed for operation. Reference numeral 701 denotes a printer control unit that controls the entire LBP 740 and analyzes character pattern information and the like. FIG.
In the block diagram of FIG. 7, the apparatus main body 100 excluding the engine unit 107 is included in the printer control unit 701.
The laser driver 702 is a circuit for driving the semiconductor laser 703, and switches on / off the laser light 704 emitted from the semiconductor laser 703 according to an input video signal. The laser beam 704 is lowered in the left-right direction by the rotating polygon mirror 705 and operates on the electrostatic drum 706. Thus, an electrostatic latent image of a character pattern is formed on the electrostatic drum 706. This latent image is developed by a developing unit 707 around the electrostatic drum 706 and then transferred to a recording sheet. A cut sheet is used as the recording paper, and the cut sheet recording paper is a paper cassette 708 mounted on the LBP 740.
, And are taken into the apparatus by the paper feed roller 709 and the transport roller 711 and supplied to the electrostatic drum 706.

With the above arrangement, the given print data is recorded on the recording paper.

Next, the processing procedure of the image information data will be described with reference to FIGS.

Here, FIG. 2A shows an example of input image data input from the host computer, and FIG. 3 shows an example of an image to be printed by the printing apparatus 200. An image information data processing procedure in the present embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart in FIG.

Here, the reception of data from the host computer is performed in parallel with the processing of this embodiment by the reception buffer 1.
08, the data is stored in the page buffer memory 104. Similarly, image data from the host computer is stored in the page buffer memory via the reception buffer together with the image data transmission command.

In step S1, one page of data from the page buffer memory 104, for example, (a) of FIG.
The image data as shown in FIG.

In step S2, it is determined whether or not the data read in step 1 is image data. If the data is image data, the flow advances to step S3 to perform processing corresponding to the image data.

In step S3, processing is performed on the image data. FIG. 6 shows the details of this processing.

In step S4, analysis and image formation processing of images and other commands, and processing such as enlargement / reduction and resolution conversion are performed, and developed in the bitmap memory 105. When performing scaling, resolution conversion, or the like, by using a scalable font or a font that matches the size of the scaling as character data, it is possible to obtain an output with less image degradation. FIGS. 3 and 4 show examples of output. When the image data shown in FIG. 2 is input and reduced and output, the image shown in FIG. Are output using a font that matches the size, so that the characters are less liable to be degraded due to reduction and are easy to read. Many of the characters used in FIGS. 3 and 4 are simple characters, but this effect is significant when kanji is used in actual sentences and the like.

In step S5, it is determined whether data processing for one page has been completed. Then, if the processing has not been completed, the process returns to step S1.

In step S6, the generated image data for one page is output to the printer engine unit 107 and printed out. FIG. 3 shows an example of print output.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart for explaining the details of the image data processing in step S3. Hereinafter, description will be made based on this flowchart.

In step S11, the input image data, for example, the image data shown in FIG. 2A is divided into several parts. An example of this division is shown in FIG. In FIG. 2, portions 1 to 11 surrounded by a quadrilateral are one partial region. At this time, if another partial area is included in one partial area, the other partial area is masked to be divided as independent image data partial areas.

In step S12, it is determined whether or not the data of the partial area divided in step S11 is character data by referring to the information in the character data determination extraction information memory 106. If the result of the determination is that the data is character data, the flow proceeds to step S13 for performing font conversion.

In step S13, the character code and font attribute data are converted with reference to the information in the font data extraction conversion information memory 106.

In step S14, an image data transmission command is attached to the image data partial area data as header information.

In step S15, it is determined whether or not the processing has been completed for all the partial area data. If not, the flow returns to step S12. If the processing for all the partial area data has been completed, the processing of the image data is completed.

As described above, by extracting characters from image data and converting them into character font data, it is possible to prevent the character portion from deteriorating due to enlargement or reduction.

In the first embodiment, the printing apparatus of the electrophotographic system is used as the output apparatus. However, the present invention is not limited to the type of the image forming apparatus, and may be, for example, a CRT display. . As described above, according to the present embodiment, the following effects can be obtained. That is, by extracting character elements from the image data and replacing them with font data, it is possible to prevent deterioration of the quality of the character portion due to enlargement / reduction of the image image and resolution conversion, or to further improve the quality. .

(Second Embodiment) In the first embodiment, a case where only character data is extracted from image data has been described. In the second embodiment, graphic data is further determined and extracted. An embodiment in which a graphic font is converted and output will be described. After converting the format of the image data into an image command sequence expressing character data and graphic data extracted from the image data, the image command sequence is transferred to the host computer 300.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart for explaining the processing procedure of image information data in the second embodiment. Hereinafter, each step will be described in order.

In step S21, one data is read from the page buffer memory 104.

In step S22, it is determined whether or not the data is image data.
Proceeding to 23, data processing of the image is performed.

In step S23, character data and graphic data are extracted from the image data. In the case of character data, the font is converted into the corresponding font. In the case of graphic data, for example, a linear / curve / surface equation is used. Approximate The position of the extraction of the character or figure may be input by the user from a keyboard (not shown) of the printing apparatus 100, or may be input from the host computer 300 in advance. . Step S
23 is shown in the flowchart of FIG.

In step S24, it is checked whether or not there is a designation as to whether or not to transfer the drawing command sequence representing the image data processed and converted in step S23 to the host computer 300. The designation is sent in advance from the host computer 300 alone or together with the transfer of the image data. Further, the user may input the designation from a keyboard (not shown) of the printing apparatus 100. Then, if there is a designation, a step S for performing a process of transferring the drawing command sequence to the host computer 300
Proceed to 25. If not specified, step S
Proceed to 26.

In step S25, the format is converted into character or graphic data extracted from the image data and a drawing command string expressing the remaining image data portion, and the format command sequence is transferred to the host computer to terminate the processing.

In step S 26, the generated character, graphic data, and image data are analyzed, and an image is developed in the bitmap memory 105.

In step S27, it is checked whether or not the image data processing for one page has been completed, and if not completed, the flow returns to step S21. If it has been completed, the process proceeds to the printing process in step S28.

In step S28, the image stored in the bitmap memory 105 is printed out using the printer engine unit 107. When the printout is completed, the process returns to step S21 for processing of the next one page.

Next, the details of the processing of the image data in step S23 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

In step S31, as in the first embodiment, the input image data is divided into a plurality of partial areas.

In step S32, it is determined whether or not the divided image data is character data by referring to information in the font data extraction conversion information memory 106. If it is determined that the data is character data, the process proceeds to step S33, where font conversion is performed. If it is determined that the data is not character data, the process proceeds to step S34 to determine whether the data is a partial area of the graphic.

In step S33, the character code and font attribute data are converted with reference to the information in the font data extraction conversion information memory 106.

In step S34, it is determined whether or not the partial area is graphic data by referring to the graphic data determination extraction information memory 103. If it is determined that the data is graphic data, the flow advances to step S35 to calculate a compressed representation of the graphic data. If it is not determined to be graphic data, step S36
Proceed to.

In step S35, the graphic data is converted to a straight line
Convert to an image command sequence that expresses curves and surfaces.

In step S36, the partial area is determined to be image data, and an image command sequence is generated by adding header information indicating the image data to the image data.

In step S37, it is checked whether or not the processing of all the partial areas in the image data has been completed. If an unprocessed partial area still remains, the process returns to step S32 to process the partial area.
When the processing of all the partial areas is completed, the processing of the image data is completed.

As described above, not only characters but also graphic data are extracted from image data.
For example, by converting to a drawing command sequence such as a postscript, it is possible to prevent image deterioration due to enlargement / reduction of character / graphic elements, particularly curved / diagonal portions.

[0051]

Whether to convert graphic and character data in the input image data can be set in advance by, for example, specifying a command from a host computer.

Furthermore, by having a plurality of conversion methods and inputting the specification of the conversion method by a command in advance, it is possible to perform conversion using a conversion method suitable for input image data.

In the first and second embodiments, the extraction of the character and graphic data from the image data is performed by dividing the data into partial areas. However, the extraction method may be another method.

Although the method of converting the extracted data into font data and commands has not been particularly described, for example, it is downloaded from a host computer using a known method or commercially available processing software and executed. May be.

The present invention may be applied to a system composed of a plurality of devices or an apparatus composed of one device. Needless to say, the present invention can be applied to a case where the present invention is achieved by supplying a program to a system or an apparatus.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, the following effects can be obtained. That is, by extracting characters and graphic elements from the image data and replacing them with equations representing font data and graphics, it is possible to prevent deterioration in quality due to enlargement / reduction of image images and resolution conversion. As a result, for example, graphic / character data in a handwritten image can be copied and a high quality image image output can be obtained.

[0058]

As described above, according to the present invention, a high quality image output can be obtained even with low resolution image data.

[0059]

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a printing apparatus according to first and second embodiments.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of input image data in the first and second embodiments.

FIG. 3 is a diagram in which the input image data shown in FIG. 2 is output.

FIG. 4 is a diagram in which the input image data shown in FIG. 2 is output.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing processing contents in the first embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating processing contents in the first embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a sectional view of the laser beam printer.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating an example of input image data according to the second embodiment.

9 is an output diagram of the input image data shown in FIG.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing processing contents in the second embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart illustrating processing contents according to the second embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 101 CPU 102 Font Memory 103 Graphic Data Judgment Extraction Information Storage Memory 104 Page Buffer Memory 105 Bitmap Memory 106 Font Data Extraction Conversion Information Memory 107 Printer Engine 108 Receiving Buffer

Claims (6)

(57) [Claims] A storage means for storing image data received from a host computer, a character portion and a graphic portion are extracted from the image data stored by the storage means , and character font data and lines are drawn. Conversion means for converting to an image command sequence to be expressed, and determination as to whether or not transfer to the host computer is specified
Discriminating means, and a designation to be transferred to the host computer by the discriminating means.
If it is determined that there is a
Character font data, image command sequence and the conversion
The image data remaining after the conversion by the step
Transfer means for transferring to a computer, and designation for transferring to a host computer by the determination means
If it is determined that there is no, the converted manual data and the image command sequence converted character font by the converting means
Forming means for forming image data by enlarging or reducing the image data remaining after the conversion by the stage . 2. An image forming apparatus according to claim 1, characterized in that it comprises a printing means for performing printing based on image data formed by said forming means. Data wherein said character fonts, image forming apparatus according to claim 1 or 2 wherein, characterized in that it comprises a character code and font attribute data. 4. A storing step of storing the Image <br/> Jideta received from the host computer to the memory, extracts the character part and the figure portion from the image data stored in the memory by the storing step, a character font A conversion step for converting the data and image command sequence representing a line, and determining whether or not there is a designation to transfer to the host computer
Determining step, and transferring to the host computer by the determining step
If it is determined that there is a designation, the conversion step
Converted character font data and image command string and before
The image data remaining after conversion by the conversion step
Transferring the data to the host computer, and transferring the data to the host computer by the determining step.
If the specified is not determined to be, before the data and the image command sequence converted character font by the conversion step
Forming an image data by enlarging or reducing the image data remaining after the conversion in the conversion step and the image data. 5. The image forming method according to claim 4, further comprising a printing step of performing printing based on the image data formed by said forming step. 6. The image forming method according to claim 4 , wherein the character font data includes a character code and font attribute data.