JP7480612B2 - Image processing device, image forming device and program - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to an image processing device, an image forming device, and a program.

Patent document 1 discloses a character obscuring processing device that allows a user to specify a secret information portion in an application, sets a character obscuring attribute for the specified target range, and allows the characters in the range for which the character obscuring attribute is set to be printed only when authentication is performed by inputting a PIN or the like.

Patent document 2 discloses a print control method that prevents confidential information from leaking by performing concealed printing, and aims to prevent information leaks during test printing while allowing the test printed document to be reused.

Patent document 3 discloses an image output device that, if a printing error occurs when printing print data, processes the print data based on processing condition information corresponding to the data type of the data contained in the print data to generate alternative print data, and if the printing error is reproduced with the alternative print data, outputs the alternative print data as error data, thereby generating and outputting error data in which confidential information is concealed so as to reproduce the printing error.

JP 2005-173720 A JP 2007-313662 A JP 2010-269498 A

The object of the present invention is to provide an image processing device, an image forming device, and a program that can generate fault analysis data based on document data that is less likely to leak confidential information, compared to generating fault analysis data by simply replacing character codes included in document data with other character codes.

[Image Processing Device]
The present invention according to claim 1 comprises a memory and a processor,
The processor is an image processing device that, when an image output process based on document data in which the character code of a character to be displayed and the character shape data of the character are described in a page description language are not executed normally, replaces the character code described in the document data with another character code and deletes the described character shape data to generate data for fault analysis.

The present invention according to claim 2 is the image processing device according to claim 1, in which the processor generates fault analysis data by replacing multiple character codes contained in the document data with different character codes.

The present invention according to claim 3 is the image processing device according to claim 1 or 2, in which the processor deletes font designation data that designates the character shape of a font from the document data when generating the fault analysis data.

The present invention according to claim 4 is the image processing device according to claim 3, in which the processor changes the name information of the font of the characters used when generating the fault analysis data to a generic font name.

The present invention according to claim 5 is an image processing device according to any one of claims 1 to 4, in which the processor deletes character map information indicating the correspondence between character codes and character shape identification information from the document data when generating the fault analysis data.

The present invention according to claim 6 is the image processing device according to claim 1, in which, if the document data contains image data, the processor replaces the image data with an image that displays information indicating attributes of the image data.

The present invention according to claim 7 is the image processing device according to claim 6, in which the image in which the processor displays information indicating attributes of image data is an image including identification information of the image data.

The present invention according to claim 8 is the image processing device according to claim 6, in which the image in which the processor displays information indicating attributes of image data is an image indicating information regarding the position where the image data is arranged.

[Image forming apparatus]
The present invention according to claim 9 provides an image output unit that executes image output processing based on document data;
It has memory and a processor.
The processor is an image forming device that, when an image output process based on document data in which the character code of a character to be displayed and the character shape data of the character are described in a page description language is not executed normally in the image output unit, replaces the character code described in the document data with another character code and deletes the described character shape data to generate data for fault analysis.

[program]
According to a tenth aspect of the present invention, when an image output process based on document data in which character code of a character to be displayed and character shape data of the character are described in a page description language is not normally executed, the character code described in the document data is replaced with another character code, and the described character shape data is deleted to generate data for fault analysis,
It is a program for causing a computer to execute it.

According to the present invention as defined in claim 1, it is possible to provide an image processing device capable of generating fault analysis data that is less likely to leak confidential information when generating fault analysis data based on document data, compared to generating fault analysis data by simply replacing character codes contained in document data with other character codes.

According to claim 2 of the present invention, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can improve the reproducibility of faults compared to a case where multiple character codes are replaced with the same character code.

According to claim 3 of the present invention, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can prevent errors from occurring due to the deletion of character shape data.

According to claim 4 of the present invention, it is possible to provide an image processing device capable of generating fault analysis data that can be displayed using general-purpose display software.

According to claim 5 of the present invention, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can prevent confidential information from being inferred from character map information.

According to claim 6 of the present invention, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can prevent confidential information from being leaked from image data contained in document data.

According to the present invention as set forth in claim 7, when the cause of a fault is due to image data, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can easily identify the cause during fault analysis, compared to a case where the image data is simply replaced with other image data.

According to the present invention as set forth in claim 8, when the cause of a fault is due to image data, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can easily identify the cause during fault analysis, compared to a case where the image data is simply replaced with other image data.

According to the present invention as set forth in claim 9, when fault analysis data is generated based on document data, an image forming device can be provided that is capable of generating fault analysis data that is less likely to leak confidential information, compared to a case in which fault analysis data is generated by simply replacing character codes contained in document data with other character codes.

According to the present invention as set forth in claim 10, when fault analysis data is generated based on document data, a program can be provided that can generate fault analysis data that is less likely to leak confidential information, compared to generating fault analysis data by simply replacing character codes contained in document data with other character codes.

1 is a diagram illustrating a system configuration of a printing system according to an embodiment of the present invention. 1 is a block diagram showing a hardware configuration of an image forming apparatus 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention. 1 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of an image forming apparatus 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention. 5 is a flowchart showing the overall operation of a processing process for deleting confidential information contained in a print job and generating failure analysis data, which is executed in the image forming apparatus 10 of an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of PDF data before conversion and before processing is performed. 6 is a diagram showing an example of form data used when generating the document data shown in FIG. 5 . 6 is a diagram showing an example of a PDL structure describing the document data shown in FIG. 5 . 5 is a flow chart showing the overall operation of the character processing performed by the RIP unit 44 on document data having such a structure, as shown in step S103 of FIG. FIG. 11 is a diagram showing an example of font data to be deleted. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing a specific example of changing a font name. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of CMap data to be deleted. 13A and 13B are diagrams illustrating an example of changing a character code in a character description section. 5 is a flowchart showing the overall operation of the image processing by the RIP processing unit 44 shown in step S105 of FIG. 4. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of image data in an image designation section before processing. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of image data in an image designation section after processing. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of the structure of PDF data after processing. FIG. 17 is a diagram showing an example of a case where an image is displayed or printed based on the PDF data of the degree of change shown in FIG. 16 .

Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

Figure 1 shows the configuration of a printing system according to one embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 1, a printing system according to one embodiment of the present invention is composed of an image forming device 10 and a client terminal 20, which are interconnected by a network 30. The image forming device 10 is, for example, a commercial printer, which accepts document data sent from the client terminal 20 as a print job and outputs an image on paper according to the accepted print job. The client terminal 20 generates a print job and sends it to the image forming device 10 via the network 30.

The document data sent from the client terminal 20 to the image forming device 10 is written in a page description language (hereinafter abbreviated as PDL (Page Description Language)). By describing the document data in PDL, it is possible to generate document data with a complex structure and configure it as a print job.

However, when a print job described in such PDL is executed by the image forming device 10 to print, problems may occur due to the PDL structure, depending on the complexity of the print job and the increased processing speed.

In such cases, in order to analyze the cause of the failure, an engineer from the manufacturer of the image forming device 10 may want to take the print job in which the failure occurred externally to analyze it or perform a reproduction test.

However, when the image forming device 10 is performing printing processing for business purposes, the print job may contain various confidential information such as personal information, and it is often not permitted to take the print job outside as it is to prevent the confidential information from being leaked.

Therefore, if a print job is to be taken outside, it is necessary to delete any confidential information contained in the print job and generate data for fault analysis.

However, PDL data such as PDF (short for Portable Document Format) uses a technology called font embedding to display and print characters in the original font without being affected by the type of font available on the display device or printer.

PDF data with embedded fonts can display and print Japanese even on devices that do not have Japanese fonts.

However, in document data such as PDFs with embedded fonts, glyph data, which is data on the character shapes of the characters used, is embedded in addition to other information embedded inside, so even if data for fault analysis is generated simply by replacing the character codes included in the document data with other character codes, it may be possible to infer the confidential information contained therein.

Therefore, in the image forming device 10 of this embodiment, fault analysis data is generated by the method described below, so that when fault analysis data is generated based on document data described in PDL, fault analysis data that is less likely to leak confidential information is generated.

Next, the hardware configuration of the image forming device 10 in the printing system of this embodiment is shown in Figure 2.

As shown in FIG. 2, the image forming device 10 has a CPU 11, a memory 12, a storage device 13 such as a hard disk drive, a communication interface (abbreviated as IF) 14 that transmits and receives data to and from external devices via a network 30, a display device 15 such as a touch panel or liquid crystal display, an operation input device 16, and a print engine 17. These components are connected to each other via a control bus 18.

The print engine 17 prints an image on a recording medium such as printing paper through processes such as charging, exposure, development, transfer, and fixing.

The CPU 11 is a processor that executes predetermined processing based on a control program stored in the memory 12 or the storage device 13, and controls the operation of the image forming device 10. Note that in this embodiment, the CPU 11 is described as reading and executing a control program stored in the memory 12 or the storage device 13, but it is also possible to store the program on a storage medium such as a CD-ROM and provide it to the CPU 11.

Figure 3 is a block diagram showing the functional configuration of the image forming device 10 that is realized by executing the above control program.

As shown in FIG. 3, the image forming device 10 of this embodiment includes a job receiving unit 31, a display unit 32, an operation input unit 33, a controller unit 34, and an image output unit 35. The controller unit 34 is also made up of a job management unit 41, a RIP (short for Raster Image Processing) control unit 42, a RIP processing unit 43, a RIP processing unit 44, and a print data management unit 45.

The controller unit 34 is a unit for controlling the printing process of a print job sent from the client terminal 20.

The display unit 32 is controlled by the UI control unit 46 and displays various information to the user. The operation input unit 33 is also controlled by the UI control unit 46 and inputs various operations performed by the user.

The job receiving unit 31 receives print jobs from the client terminal 20 via the network 30. The print jobs received by the job receiving unit 31 are managed by the job management unit 41.

The RIP control unit 42 controls the operation of the RIP processing unit 43 and the RIP processing unit 44. When the job management unit 41 requests the execution of print processing for a certain print job, it selects the RIP processing unit 43 according to the PDL type of the print job, starts the RIP module, and passes the PDL file path and RIP specified page information to the selected RIP processing unit 43 to execute the RIP processing.

In FIG. 3, for simplicity, only one RIP processor 43 is shown, but in reality, multiple RIP processors 43 exist and are selected depending on the content of the RIP process to be performed.

The RIP processing unit 43 performs RIP processing on the PDL print job to convert it into raster data and output it to the print data management unit 45.

The print data management unit 45 converts the raster data converted by the RIP processing unit 43 into print data and sends it to the image output unit 35 in accordance with the printing speed.

The image output unit 35 executes image output processing to output an image onto a recording medium such as printing paper based on the print data sent from the print data management unit 45.

In addition, the RIP processing unit 43 can also convert the PDL print job into an intermediate data format first and then process it, rather than directly converting it into raster data.

As described above, when there are multiple RIP processors 43, the RIP control unit 42 manages the multiple RIP processors 42. Each of the multiple RIP processors 43 is equipped with a RIP processing module that corresponds to the type of PDL, such as a CPSI (short for Configurable PostScript Interpreter) module or an APPE (short for Adobe PDF Print Engine) module, and the module to be used is selected according to the type of print job to be printed to perform the RIP processing.

The RIP processing unit 44 has the same functions as the RIP processing unit 43, and performs RIP processing on the print job for which confidential information has been requested to be deleted based on instructions from the RIP control unit 42, and generates fault analysis data from which the contained confidential information has been deleted.

The fault analysis data generated by the RIP processing unit 44 is transferred to the job management 41 and transmitted to the client terminal 20 via the data transmission/reception unit 47. The data transmission/reception unit 47 can also output the generated fault analysis data to an external storage medium such as a USB (short for Universal Serial Bus) memory, or to a connected external device.

The PDL processing unit 44 is also configured to be able to perform RIP processing in parallel at the same time as the RIP processing unit 43 performs RIP processing for a normal print job.

The process of generating fault analysis data using the RIP processing unit 44 is described in more detail below.

When executing a print job based on certain document data, if the image output process is not performed normally, a user who wishes to delete confidential information contained in the document data and generate data for fault analysis issues an instruction to generate data for fault analysis via the operation input unit 33.

Then, an instruction to generate the fault analysis data is sent from the UI control unit 46 to the job management unit 41, and the job management unit 41 instructs the RIP processing unit 44 via the RIP control unit 42 to generate the fault analysis data based on the document data.

If the range in which confidential information is included can be identified, the user can limit the range in which the confidential information deletion process is performed on a page-by-page basis when instructing the generation of fault analysis data.

The RIP processing unit 44 then executes a process to delete confidential information from the specified document data, and generates data for fault analysis.

Specifically, when image output processing based on document data such as PDF data in which the character code of the character to be displayed and glyph data, which is the character shape data of the character, are not performed normally, the RIP processing unit 44 replaces the character code described in the document data with another character code and deletes the described glyph data to generate data for fault analysis.

The RIP processing unit 44 does not replace multiple character codes contained in the document data with the same character code, but rather replaces each with a different character code to generate fault analysis data.

Furthermore, when generating fault analysis data, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes typeface designation data that specifies the character shape of the typeface, i.e., data that specifies font data, from the document data.

When taking out the fault analysis data generated by the RIP processing unit 44, the user of the image forming device 10 may be required to prove that confidential information such as personal information has been deleted. For this reason, it is necessary to make the fault analysis data displayable on a general-purpose personal computer, etc.

Therefore, when generating fault analysis data, the RIP processing unit 44 changes the name information of the font used to a generic font name.

Furthermore, when generating the fault analysis data, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the CMap data, which is character map information that indicates the correspondence between character codes and character shape identification information, from the document data. Details of this CMap data will be described later.

In addition, document data may contain not only text information but also image information. Generally, confidential information such as personal information is often written as text information. However, image information may also contain confidential information that could be problematic if leaked to the outside, such as a logo that can identify a company or a photograph of an individual's face.

Therefore, when instructing the generation of fault analysis data in the operation input unit 33, it is possible to set whether to delete only the text information or both the text information and image information.

When an instruction is given to delete image information along with text information, if the document data contains image data, the RIP processing unit 44 generates fault analysis data by replacing the image data with an image that displays information indicating the attributes of the image data.

Here, the image that displays information indicating the attributes of the image data to be replaced can be, for example, an image that includes identification information for that image data, or an image that shows information regarding the position where that image data is placed.

In other words, the RIP processing unit 44 replaces the image data contained in the document data with image data that includes identification information for that image data, or image data that indicates information about the position where that image data is placed.

Here, for example, if each image is assigned a different identification number such as an object ID, the object ID corresponds to the identification information of the image data.

In addition, the information regarding the position where the image data was placed may be, for example, information about the page on which each image was placed, or information indicating the position within the page, such as coordinate information within the page or information indicating the approximate position within the page.

The coordinate information within the page can specifically be composed of the coordinates of the top left corner and the coordinates of the bottom right corner, or the coordinates of the top left corner and the width and height of the image. Also, the information indicating the general position within the page can specifically be composed of information such as top/middle/bottom, left/center/right, etc.

Next, the operation of the image forming device 10 in this embodiment will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

Note that the specific processing content differs slightly depending on the type of PDL, but the following explanation will use the case where fault analysis data is generated based on a print job in the most common PDF format.

First, the overall operation of the processing for deleting confidential information contained in a print job and generating data for fault analysis is shown in the flowchart in Figure 4.

First, since PDF data is usually encoded in Flate format, the RIP processing unit 44 performs a decoding process in step S101. If the PDF data is encrypted with a password, the RIP processing unit 44 decodes the PDF data using the password input via the operation input unit 33.

Then, when generating the fault analysis data, the RIP processing unit 44 determines in step S102 whether or not processing of character information has been specified. If the RIP processing unit 44 determines in step S102 that processing of character information has been specified, then in step S103, it executes character processing.

Furthermore, in step S104, the RIP processing unit 44 determines whether or not processing of the image information has been specified. Then, if the RIP processing unit 44 determines in step S104 that processing of the image information has been specified, in step S105, it executes character processing.

The RIP processing unit 44 then executes steps S102 to S105 on a page-by-page basis, and in step S106, determines whether processing of all specified pages has been completed. If the RIP processing unit 44 determines in step S106 that processing of all specified pages has been completed, in step S107, it executes offset table processing on the PDF data.

This offset table processing is necessary to display PDF data after character and image processing has been performed using general-purpose viewer software.

PDF data has a cross-reference section and contains an offset table for referencing offset values that indicate the position of each object in the PDF data. The viewer software references the offset values in this offset table to access each object, so if the offset value shifts due to a change in the contents of the text or image section, each object cannot be accessed correctly and an error will occur when attempting to display it using the viewer software.

Therefore, after character processing and image processing are completed, the RIP processing unit 44 executes offset table processing to re-create the offset table.

Finally, in step S108, the RIP processing unit 44 outputs the processed data as data for fault analysis.

Next, the character processing and image processing described above will be explained in detail using a specific example of document data.

Figure 5 shows an example of PDF data before conversion and processing, which will be used in the following explanation.

Referring to Figure 5, a PDF version of a billing statement issued by a credit card company to each user is shown. This billing statement includes information such as the user's name, address, customer number, billing amount, and bank account number. This information is personal information, and corresponds to confidential information that must not be leaked to the public. The PDF data also includes the company name and logo of "ABC Card Co., Ltd." This type of information, such as company names, which is not personal information, also corresponds to confidential information.

When generating such document data, generally, the parts commonly used by multiple customers are generated in advance as form data, and the final document data is constructed by combining this with personal data for each customer. An example of form data used when generating the document data shown in FIG. 5 is shown in FIG. 6. Referring to FIG. 6, it can be seen that the form data is constructed from various information such as characters, figures, images, etc., which are common parts whose contents do not change depending on the customer. In the form data shown in FIG. 6, the company name "ABC Card Co., Ltd." and logo mark are constructed as image information 50.

Figure 7 shows an example of a PDL structure that describes such document data.

Referring to Figure 7, we can see that the PDL structure of this document data includes a font name, a character description section, a font dictionary, font data, CMap data, and an image specification section.

The overall operation of the character processing performed by the RIP processing unit 44 on document data with this structure, shown in step S103 of FIG. 4, is shown in the flowchart of FIG. 8.

In this character processing, the RIP processing unit 44 first deletes the font data in step S201.

An example of font data to be deleted is shown in FIG. 9. Referring to FIG. 9, the font data includes information on the font data identifier 51 as well as glyph data 52, which is data on the character shape of the characters to be used. In other words, PDF data in which fonts have been embedded contains not only the character codes of the characters to be displayed, but also glyph data that indicates the character shapes of the characters to be actually represented.

In the font data example shown in FIG. 9, by extracting the glyph data 52 of the characters used, it is possible to extract the character string "Kyoto-ku Chiiwamoto Higashida-cho Tokyo...". If such a character string can be extracted, it is easy to guess that this character string is an address and that it is "Tokyo, Chiyoda-ku Iwamoto-cho...". For this reason, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes such font data during character processing.

Then, in step S202, the RIP processing unit 44 changes the embedded font name to a generic font name that can be referenced externally, so that the fault analysis data can be displayed on a general-purpose personal computer.

Specifically, as shown in FIG. 10, the RIP processing unit 44 changes the font name "XFTQGE+MSPMincho" to the font name "MSPMincho". Here, the font "MSPMincho" is the "MSP Mincho" font provided in the OS (short for Operating System) of a general-purpose personal computer. The font "XFTQGE+MSPMincho" is the name of the font embedded in this document data, and is a font that cannot be referenced after the font data is deleted in step S201.

Furthermore, since the RIP processing unit 44 deleted the font data in step S201, in step S203 it deletes the specification of the font data in the font dictionary. Specifically, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the description that specifies the font data "/FontFile2 39 0 R" specified in the font dictionary shown in FIG. 7. This is because, since the font data identified by the identifier "39 0 obj" was deleted in step S201, an error would occur if the description that specifies this font data remained.

In PDF data, fonts are represented by a font dictionary (also called a FontDescription dictionary). This font dictionary defines fonts and includes various information such as font type and encoding information. When embedding a font in PDF data, a font file is specified in the font dictionary. More precisely, in this embodiment, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the description "/FontFile2 39 0 R" from the font dictionary, which specifies the object ID that is the reference location for the font data, which is character shape data. Here, the character string "FontFile2" means that the data is a TrueType font.

Next, in step S204, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the CMap data from the document data and deletes the specification of the CMap data in the font dictionary. An example of the CMap data to be deleted is shown in FIG. 11. Here, CMap data is character map information that indicates the correspondence between character codes such as Unicode and glyph IDs, which are character shape identification information. This CMap data also describes the character codes used, making it possible to identify the characters used. For this reason, the RIP processing unit 44 also deletes such CMap data when processing characters.

One method for embedding this CMap data in PDF data is to provide a description in the font dictionary that specifies the CMap data. Therefore, by deleting the CMap data, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the specification of the CMap data in the font dictionary. Specifically, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the description that specifies the CMap data "/ToUnicode 31 0 R" specified in the font dictionary shown in FIG. 7. This is because, since the CMap data identified by the identifier "31 0 obj" has been deleted, an error will occur if the description that specifies this CMap data remains.

Finally, in step S205, the RIP processing unit 44 changes the character code in the character description section. When changing the character code, it is possible to replace it with another character code using a regular conversion rule, but if the rule is identified, there is a risk that the original character code can be restored. For this reason, in this embodiment, a conversion method using such regular conversion rules is not used.

It is also possible to use a conversion method that replaces all of the original character codes with the same character code, but when this type of conversion method is used, only one type of character appears. However, if the number of character types is the cause of the problem, such as a lack of capacity in the font cache memory that stores font data positionally, using a conversion method that replaces the original character codes with the same character code will make it impossible to reproduce the problem.

Therefore, in this embodiment, the RIP processing unit 44 generates fault analysis data by replacing multiple character codes contained in the document data with different character codes rather than replacing them with the same character code.

An example of changing character codes in such a character description section is shown in FIG. 12. In the example shown in FIG. 12, for example, the character code representing a single character "14BE" is changed to the character code "0101", and the character code representing a single character "1B8F" is changed to the character code "0102". FIG. 12 shows a case where the original character code is changed by replacing it with a character code composed of a combination of the page number and the character drawing order. In other words, each character code means that the first character to be drawn on the first page, and the second character to be drawn on the first page.

In this way, by replacing character codes with character codes that represent information about the attributes of the characters before replacement, rather than replacing them with random characters, it is possible to determine, when analyzing a problem, for example, which character on which page was rendered correctly, which is expected to be helpful in analyzing a problem.

In addition, for example, the document data to be processed as described above may be huge. In particular, in the case of a so-called production printer that prints data consisting of a large number of pages at high speed, the total number of pages of the document data to be analyzed may be a large volume of data exceeding 100,000 pages. In such a case, character processing such as character code replacement and font data deletion is not performed on all character data, but character processing can be applied only to the part that uses a font different from the fixed form data as a part corresponding to confidential information. For example, by identifying the font name and character size used in the part where confidential information such as the company name, the user's name, and the address is printed, and applying character processing to the part with that font and character size, it is possible to generate data that is efficiently concealed from characters that should not be leaked to the outside. By configuring in this way, it is possible to shorten the processing time for efficiently processing data that should not be taken out to the outside. As an alternative method, for example, the font name and size used in the part described in the form data may be identified, and character processing may be applied to the data part specified with a different font and size. For example, it is possible to identify the part where a commonly used form is used from the contents of the document data, and character processing can be performed on the characters in the part other than the form identified in this way. For example, in the case of PostScript, it is possible to identify the part that is reused with execform, or in the case of PDF, it is possible to identify the part that uses the form in the part that is described by Form Xobject.

Next, the overall operation of the image processing by the RIP processing unit 44 shown in step S105 of FIG. 4 is shown in the flowchart of FIG. 13.

First, in step S301, the RIP processing unit 44 deletes the original image data. Then, in step S302, the RIP processing unit 44 generates replacement image data. For example, the RIP processing unit 44 generates image data that includes attribute information of the deleted data, specifically, an object ID that is identification information of the original image data, and a page number, as replacement image data.

Then, in step S303, the RIP processing unit 44 replaces the image data by storing the generated replacement image data in the location where the deleted image data was stored.

Finally, in step S304, the RIP processing unit 44 compresses the data in the compression format used in the original PDF data, and in step S305, performs necessary processing such as changing the image dictionary that indicates the attributes of the image data in the image designation section.

A specific example of such image processing will be described with reference to Figures 14 and 15. Figure 14 shows an example of image data in the image designation section before processing, and Figure 15 shows an example of image data in the image designation section after processing.

With reference to Figure 14, it can be seen that this image data has been assigned an object ID 61 of "36 0 obj", which is an identifier for identifying this image data. This image data is described as two-valued binary data in the portion between the characters "stream" and "endstream". In order to explain this using the PDF data shown in Figure 5 as an example, we will explain it as if image data representing the characters "Statement of Charges", "ABC Card Co., Ltd.", and "ABC GROUP" is described as binary data.

Then, the RIP processing unit 44 replaces the image data shown in FIG. 14 with image data as shown in FIG. 15. FIG. 15 shows the case where the image data described in the portion between the characters "stream" and "endstream" has been replaced with image data representing the characters "01" and "36." Here, "01" indicates the page number on which this image data is placed, and "36" indicates the object ID, which is the identifier of the image data before conversion.

By performing the character processing and image processing described above by the RIP processing unit 44, the PDL structure of the document data shown in FIG. 7 is converted into the structure shown in FIG. 16.

Referring to Figure 16, it can be seen that the character processing and image processing performed by the RIP processing unit 44 changes the font name, replaces the character code in the character description section, deletes the designated portion of the font data in the font dictionary, deletes the font data and CMap data, and replaces the image data in the image designation section.

Figure 17 shows an example of an image displayed or printed based on the PDF data of the degree of change shown in Figure 16. Referring to Figure 17, it can be seen that the characters before conversion have been changed to different characters, making it impossible to ascertain confidential information. It can also be seen that image information 50 showing the company name and company logo mark, as shown in Figure 6, has been replaced in Figure 17 with image information 70 showing the page number and object ID.

In this way, by replacing image data with images that are different for each image and that represent information that can identify each image, rather than replacing the image with an image of a fixed pattern, it becomes possible to identify the cause of the problem even if a problem occurs in which images are unintentionally swapped or an image is placed in a location other than the intended one.

In each of the above embodiments, the term "processor" refers to a processor in a broad sense, including general-purpose processors (e.g., CPU: Central Processing Unit, etc.) and dedicated processors (e.g., GPU: Graphics Processing Unit, ASIC: Application Specific Integrated Circuit, FPGA: Field Programmable Gate Array, programmable logic device, etc.).

In addition, the processor operations in each of the above embodiments may not only be performed by a single processor, but may also be performed by multiple processors located at physically separate locations working together. Furthermore, the order of each processor operation is not limited to the order described in each of the above embodiments, and may be changed as appropriate.

[Variations]
In the above embodiment, the case where document data is processed in the image forming device 10 is described, but the present invention is not limited to this, and the present invention can also be applied in the same way to a case where document data is processed in an image processing device that does not have a printing function to generate data for fault analysis.

10 Image forming apparatus 11 CPU
REFERENCE SIGNS LIST 12 Memory 13 Storage device 14 Communication interface 15 Display device 16 Operation input device 17 Print engine 18 Control bus 20 Client terminal 30 Network 31 Job receiving section 32 Display section 33 Operation input section 34 Controller section 35 Image output section 41 Job management section 42 RIP control section 43 RIP processing section 44 RIP processing section 45 Print data management section 50 Image information 51 Font data identifier 52 Glyph data 61 Object ID
70 Image Information

Claims (10)

It has memory and a processor.
when an image output process based on document data in which character code of a character to be displayed and character shape data of the character are described in a page description language are not normally executed, the processor replaces the character code described in the document data with another character code and deletes the described character shape data to generate failure analysis data;
Image processing device. The image processing device according to claim 1, wherein the processor generates fault analysis data by replacing multiple character codes contained in the document data with different character codes. The image processing device according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the processor deletes font designation data that designates the character shape of a font from the document data when generating the fault analysis data. The image processing device according to claim 3, wherein the processor changes the name information of the font of the characters used when generating the fault analysis data to a generic font name. An image processing device according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the processor deletes character map information indicating the correspondence between character codes and character shape identification information from the document data when generating the fault analysis data. The image processing device according to claim 1, wherein, when the document data includes image data, the processor replaces the image data with an image that displays information indicating attributes of the image data. The image processing device according to claim 6, wherein the processor is configured such that the image displaying information indicating attributes of the image data is an image including identification information of the image data. The image processing device according to claim 6, wherein the processor is configured such that the image displaying information indicating attributes of image data is an image showing information regarding the position where the image data is arranged. an image output unit that executes an image output process based on document data;
It has memory and a processor.
when an image output process based on document data in which character code of a character to be displayed and character shape data of the character are described in a page description language are not normally executed in the image output unit, the processor replaces the character code described in the document data with another character code and deletes the described character shape data to generate failure analysis data;
Image forming device. a step of generating failure analysis data by replacing the character code described in the document data with another character code and deleting the described character shape data when an image output process based on document data in which the character code of a character to be displayed and character shape data of the character are not normally executed,
A program for a computer to execute.

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