JP4390141B2 - Print processing system - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a print processing system capable of speeding up print processing.

A technique for performing printing based on electronic data of an image is required to have a high print processing speed, and an apparatus that meets this requirement has been proposed (for example, see Patent Document 1). In this apparatus, the band is further divided into subbands to reduce the memory and increase the speed.
In addition, a method of deleting a part of the command drawing range for each command in the overlap determination process is also conceivable. When printing an image, the image data is received from, for example, GDI of MS-Windows (registered trademark), then converted to a page description language such as RPCS or PCL, transferred to the printer, and printed. Objects may overlap, and there may be graphics and graphic parts that do not appear in the print result. Even in this case, a drawing command that constitutes a drawing object that does not appear in the print result is transferred and converted into raster data, so that extra processing is performed.
JP 2001-249774 A (page 3, FIG. 1)

It may be possible to shorten the printing time without affecting the print result by deleting all or part of the commands that make up the non-drawn object as described above. In many cases, complex figures remain after the effective overlap determination and deletion processing, and even if the drawing area is reduced, the complexity of the figure can be used to develop raster data. It may take some time or increase the required memory in the system, so effective speedup may not be achieved.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in consideration of the above-described circumstances, and when the ellipse drawing commands are sent in succession, the shapes are almost the same but the sizes are different, and the centers of the drawing figures are almost the same. Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a print processing system that can perform overlap determination in a short time even when determination is complicated and it is difficult to perform determination processing.

In order to solve the above problems, the invention according to claim 1, the determination unit overlap performs overlap determination by dividing the ellipse consecutive ellipse drawing command, the print processing system provided in the printer driver or printer The overlap determining means divides the overlapping ellipses while reducing toward the center by a straight line perpendicular to the major axis or minor axis, and further divides the figure once divided by a straight line passing through the center of the original ellipse. It is characterized in that overlapping judgment between figures is performed .
Invention according to claim 2, in the print processing system according to claim 1, wherein the overlap determining means, when choosing a straight line dividing the ellipse, dividing one line or every few lines of the drawing unit It is characterized by.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the print processing system according to the first or second aspect , the overlap determination unit converts the figure after the overlap determination process into a Scanline data format and performs subsequent processing. Features.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the print processing system according to the third aspect , if the overlap determining means determines that the processing speed is not improved , the overlap is not converted to the scanline data format. The processing is performed as it is.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the print processing system according to any one of the first to fourth aspects, the overlap determining means is provided in a printer driver and a printer, and the ellipse drawing command dividing process is included in the overlap determining process. The overlap determination process can be performed separately on the printer driver side and the printer side .

According to the present invention, in the case where ellipse drawing commands having substantially the same shape but different sizes and substantially the same center of the drawing figure are continuously sent, the ellipse drawing commands are not directly determined to overlap, By performing overlap determination under simpler conditions by dividing it into several parts, it is possible to perform overlap determination in a short time even if the determination is complicated as it is and determination processing is impossible or takes processing time Can do. Further , by performing load distribution processing, the entire system can be processed at high speed.

Hereinafter, a print processing system that is the best mode for carrying out the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.
[First Embodiment]
The printing system according to the first embodiment of the present invention will be described below, but before that, the basic printing system will be described.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a basic printing system configuration when the overlap determination processing is performed on the printer side, and FIG. 2 shows a basic printing system configuration when the overlap determination processing is performed on the driver side. It is a block diagram.
Basically, in the overlap determination process, the graphic handled in the overlap determination is directly subjected to the deletion process.
The printing system shown in FIG. 1 includes a host PC 1, a printer controller 2, and a printer engine 4. The printer controller 2 includes a graphic overlap processing unit 3 including a graphic overlap determination unit 11 and a previous graphic data memory 21, an interpreter 10, an intermediate data memory 20, a graphic drawing processing unit 12, a CPU 14, and a page memory 23. .
The printing system shown in FIG. 2 includes an application 1a, a printer driver 2a, and a printing apparatus 3a. The printer driver 2a includes a graphic overlap determining unit 11 and a graphic overlap processing unit 3 including a previous graphic data memory 21, a PDL language generating unit 10a, a PDL language output unit 12a, and a CPU.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the basic operation of basic overlap determination and deletion processing performed in the printing system having the configuration shown in FIGS.
In this case, as shown in FIG. 3, it is checked in step S0 whether or not the figure is finished. If finished, the process proceeds to step S7, whether or not there is a figure immediately before, and if there is a figure, proceeds to step S8. Thereafter, the process ends. If there is no figure in step S7, the process ends. If it is determined in step S0 that the process is not finished, the process proceeds to step S1 to check whether the figure is an overlap determination target graphic. If it is not the overlap determination target graphic, the process proceeds to step S9 to check whether there is a graphic immediately before. If there is a figure in step S10, the process proceeds to step S10 to draw the previous figure, and the process proceeds to step S11. If it is determined in step S9 that there is no figure immediately before, the process proceeds to step S11, the current figure drawing process is performed, and the process is terminated.
If it is determined in step S1 that the figure is an overlap determination target graphic, the process proceeds to step S2, and it is determined whether the immediately preceding graphic is also an overlap determination target graphic. If the immediately preceding graphic is also an overlap determination target graphic, the process proceeds to step S3, where it is determined whether there is an overlapping of the graphic. If it is determined that there is an overlapping, the process proceeds to step S4, where the overlapping part of the previous graphic is determined. Then, the process proceeds to step S5 to perform the previous graphic drawing. In the subsequent step S6, the current graphic is stored in the previous graphic data memory, and the process is completed.
On the other hand, if it is determined in step S2 that the immediately preceding graphic is not an overlap determination target graphic, the process skips to step S6, stores the current graphic in the previous graphic data memory, and ends the process. If it is determined in step S3 that there is no overlapping of figures, the process proceeds to step S5, where the immediately preceding figure is drawn, and in the subsequent step S6, the current figure is stored in the immediately preceding figure data memory, and the process ends.

By the way, in the basic overlap determination and deletion process as shown in FIG. 3, for example, a gradation in which the color changes toward the center of a circle (ellipse) as shown in FIG. If the ellipse whose color is slightly changed and the size is slightly overlapped with the large ellipse in FIG. 4 and such drawing commands overlap, the deletion process itself shown in step S4 is not only complicated, but also on the ground side. The figure remaining for drawing becomes an ellipse with a little width like a frame.
If the printer language does not have a command for representing an ellipse having this width, a plurality of commands must be combined to represent the figure after the overlap determination. For this reason, in a printing system in which the graphic after deletion of the overlapping portion is held in a drawing command or an intermediate data format, the data after deletion becomes complicated (see FIG. 5), and the data is held and developed into a raster image. Memory and time are required, and even if the drawing area is reduced, it may not be possible to achieve an ideal speedup.
Therefore, for example, if a graphic is divided by a horizontal line and a vertical line passing through the center of a circle and the deletion process is performed, the deleted polygon graphic can be replaced with a relatively simple set of arcs (FIG. 6).
Hereinafter, the hardware configuration of the printing system according to the first embodiment will be described.
FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a printing system when the overlap determination process is performed on the printer side, and FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of the printing system when the overlap determination process is performed on the driver side.
The printing system according to the present embodiment shown in FIG. 7 includes a host PC 1 and a printer controller 2b as main parts. The printer controller 2b includes a graphic overlap processing unit 3b including a graphic overlap determination 11 and a previous graphic data memory 21, an interpreter. 10, an intermediate data memory 20, a graphic drawing process 12, a CPU 14, a page memory 23, and a printer engine 4.
The printing system according to the present embodiment shown in FIG. 8 is mainly composed of an application 1a and a printer driver 2c. The printer driver 2c has a graphic overlap determination 11, a previous graphic data memory 21, an overlapping part deletion process 15a, and a graphic division. The figure overlap processing unit 3c including the processing 16a, the PDL language generation unit 10a, the PDL language output unit 12a, the CPU 14, and the printing apparatus 3a are included.

Next, the processing operation of the graphic overlap processing unit of the printing system according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. Since the basic processing operation is the same as the processing operation shown in FIG. 3, the deletion processing portion in step S4 of FIG. 3 which is a characteristic processing operation will be described in detail here.
As shown in FIG. 9, in step S21, it is confirmed whether or not they overlap while being reduced toward the center. If it is determined that they do not overlap, the process proceeds to step S22 to perform a normal deletion process, and the process proceeds to step S28. If it is determined in step S21 that they are overlapped while being reduced toward the center, the process proceeds to step S23, where it is determined whether the axis of the ellipse is vertical or not. A deletion process is performed for each of the short axes and then the division in step S25, and the process proceeds to step S17.
If it is determined in step S23 that the image is vertical, the process proceeds to step S26 to perform a process of dividing by a vertical line and horizontal line passing through the center. Then, the process proceeds to step S27, the deletion process is performed for each divided, and the process proceeds to step S28. In step S28, it is confirmed that the data is handled as arc data, the process proceeds to step S29, where it is confirmed that the scanline data format can be processed faster, and in step S30, the scanline data format is converted to finish the processing. Become.
In this way, since the original oval figure is used for overlap determination, accurate determination can be made while maintaining more information, and in order to handle a relatively simple arc in the deletion process and subsequent drawing, Memory saving and high speed can be realized. In particular, the amount of calculation required for the deletion process can be greatly reduced. Further, when the data transfer speed is high and the memory area has a margin, it is possible to further increase the speed by converting to the Scanline data format here.

As described above, in the print processing system according to the first embodiment, when an ellipse drawing command is continuously sent in which the shape is almost the same but the size is different and the center of the drawing figure is substantially the same, Rather than determining the overlap of the command as it is, dividing it into several parts and performing the overlap determination under simpler conditions makes it difficult to determine whether the determination process is impossible and the determination process is impossible. Even in this case, the overlap determination can be performed in a short time. Although the basic overlap judgment alone could not effectively speed up the gradation toward the center, this method can be used to speed up the image sufficiently.
Note that overlap determination is performed only for drawing commands that have the same type, the same conditions, and the same attributes, and even if the overlapped part is deleted without affecting the drawing result. It can be done at high speed.
Further, by dividing the ellipse drawing command in the horizontal direction of printing, it is possible to perform simple overlap determination by performing overlap determination between shapes that are approximately trapezoidal. Furthermore, by dividing the center of a figure close to a trapezoid with a straight line passing vertically, it is possible to perform simpler overlap determination where two right angles overlap.
Further, by dividing the ellipse by a straight line perpendicular to the long axis or the short axis, it is possible to make the original figure a simpler shape and perform the overlap determination.
Also, when selecting a straight line to divide an ellipse, perform overlapping judgment by dividing the drawing unit by one line or several lines, or divide a figure once divided by a straight line passing through the center of the original ellipse Thus, it is also possible to perform simpler overlapping determination between figures.
In addition, in the overlap judgment between figures that are also divided in the vertical direction, considering that there is no deviation from the center of the original ellipse, only the difference between the outside is distinguished, thereby simplifying the processing and increasing the speed. Can be achieved.
Further, it is possible to convert the figure after the overlap determination process to the Scanline data format and perform the subsequent process. Further, if it is determined that the processing speed is not improved, it is possible to perform the processing without changing the arc to the scanline data format.

[Second Embodiment]
In the first embodiment, a horizontal line and a vertical line centered at the time of dividing a figure are used. However, in the second embodiment, when an ellipse is inclined, it is aligned with the axis. . As a result, even if the overlap determination is performed after the division, a plurality of segments are not generated on the same Y line, thereby facilitating the processing.
[Third Embodiment]
The processing described so far can be performed on either the driver side or the printer side as shown in FIG. Therefore, if the PC running the driver has more processing capacity, the overlap determination, division, and deletion processes are all performed on the driver side. Conversely, there is no room on the PC side and the processing capacity on the printer side is higher. All on the printer side. Depending on the situation, the overlap determination may be performed on the driver side, the information may be sent to the printer side, and division and deletion processing may be performed on the printer side. However, the order of overlap determination, division processing, and deletion processing does not change. As a result, in this print processing system, it is possible to perform high-speed processing as a whole system by performing load distribution processing in consideration of the processing capability and load status of the PC and printer.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration when basic overlap determination is performed on a printer side in a printing system. The figure which showed the structure in the case of performing basic overlap determination by the driver side in a printing system. FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a basic processing operation based on the configuration of FIGS. 1 and 2; The top view which shows the example of the gradation which a color changes toward the center of an ellipse. The top view which shows an example in case the data after deletion become complicated. The top view which shows the example replaced with the collection of simple arcs. FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration in a case where overlap determination processing is performed on the printer side in the printing system according to the embodiment of the present invention. The figure which showed the structure in the case of performing an overlap determination process by the driver side in the printing system which concerns on this Embodiment. The flowchart explaining the deletion process part of FIG.3 S4 in detail. The principal part block diagram of the printing system which concerns on 3rd Embodiment.

Explanation of symbols

1 host PC, 1a application, 2, 2b printer controller, 2a, 2c printer driver, 3, 3b, 3c graphic overlap processing unit, 3a printing device, 4 printer engine, 10 interpreter, 10a PDL language generation unit, 11 graphic overlap determination 12 graphic drawing process, 12a PDL language output unit, 14 CPU, 15a overlapped part deletion process, 16a graphic division process, 20 intermediate data memory, 21 immediately previous graphic data memory, 23 page memory

Claims (5)

Continuous ellipse drawn overlapping performing ellipse by dividing overlap judgment of the command judgment means, a print processing system provided in the printer driver or printer,
The overlap judging means divides the overlapping ellipses while shrinking toward the center by a straight line perpendicular to the major axis or minor axis, and further divides the figure once divided by a straight line passing through the center of the original ellipse. A print processing system characterized by performing overlap determination . In print processing system according to claim 1,
The overlap determination unit divides the ellipse into lines for each drawing line or several lines when selecting a straight line for dividing the ellipse . In the print processing system according to claim 1 or 2,
The overlap determination unit converts the figure after the overlap determination process into a Scanline data format and performs the subsequent process. In the print processing system according to claim 3,
If it is determined that the processing speed is not improved , the overlap determination unit performs the process without changing to the Scanline data format, and performs the process as an arc . The print processing system according to any one of claims 1 to 4 ,
The overlap determination unit is provided in a printer driver and a printer, and among the overlap determination processing, the ellipse drawing command division processing and the overlap determination processing can be separately performed on the printer driver side and the printer side. Print processing system.

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