JPH01148582A - Control of printing - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent a break of images from being generated at the boundary of adjacent pages and prevent the relationship between printing positions from being changed, by a method wherein in the case of printing data ranging across the boundary of the adjacent pages, character-forming data is directly printed by using the data on the former page as it is, whereas data on a line feeding across the boundary of adjacent pages is used at the head of the succeeding page. CONSTITUTION:Printing data from the host side is inputted through an input part 10, and characters for one line are expanded into patterns in a buffer (provided in a RAM 6). A one-line amount of data is transferred to a bit map memory (BMM) 9 in response to a line feed (LF) instruction from the host, then a paper is fed by an LF quantity given, and printing data for the next line is waited for. When printing data of 'A' to be printed in an area ranging across the boundary between pages P1 and P2, for example, the data is directly printed on the side of the former page P1 beyond a maximum printing region of the page. At this time, a surplus line feed quantity x1 required for printing the character 'A' is treated as a line feed quantity x2 (=x1) at the head of the latter page P2.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Technical Field The present invention relates to a printing control method in a laser printer or the like.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In general, there are various types of application software for personal computers, and some of them do not allow page management. If such software is used to output data to a page printer such as a laser printer, problems as shown in FIG. 5 may occur. This is the case when there is printed character information that spans between pages. In the drawing, ■ is a sheet of printing paper, and there are 3 pages of PI, P2, . P3 is shown. Further, each dimension a, b, and C indicates the length of the maximum printing area on the printing paper 1. Therefore, for example, "printed character information Aj spans pages P1 and P2, and page P
The upper half is printed on the l side, and the lower half is printed on the page P2 side. This also applies to the case of printed character information, for example r13J, which spans pages P2 and P3.

In this regard, for example, in the case of continuous paper 2 used in wire dot printers, etc., as shown in Figure 6, in which the pages are continuous by perforations 3, there is no page management and characters that span between pages are Even if it is based on software that may exist, the characters can be read because they are printed on the perforation 3.

2) When printing on the sheet-shaped printing paper 1, in order to prevent the characters spanning between pages from being separated, for example, as shown in FIG. 7(a), the characters r (Continuously print A J without stopping in the middle of page P1, that is, print beyond the maximum print area)
There is a method of controlling printing so that the next page P2 is then printed as shown in FIG.

However, when using the print control method as shown in FIG. 7, when compared with the print sample shown in FIG. 6, the position of the printed character "1" on page P1 is the same, but The position of the character "C" is raised by the line feed amount for the character "AJ" printed on the Pl side of the previous page, and is different from the printing position of page P2 on continuous paper 2 in Figure 6. turn into.

Similarly, for page P3, the position of the printed character "2J" will be shifted upward.

Purpose The present invention was made in view of the above points, and it is possible to prevent text information from being separated between pages even when there is text information that spans between pages, and also to change the layout of the print position relationship. An object of the present invention is to provide a printing control method that allows printing without any problems.

Structure In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a print control method that includes a bitmap memory for one page and creates and prints print information in this bitmap memory. This is characterized in that the character formation information is used on the previous page side and printed as is, and the line feed information spanning between pages is used at the beginning of the next page side.

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 4. First, the block configuration will be explained with reference to FIG. First, a ROM 5, a RAM 6, and a character generator 7 are connected to the CPU 4 by a pass line 8, and a bitmap memory 9 for one page is also connected.

Such a control system is connected to a host (not shown) via an input section 10, and to a laser printer 11 via a laser printer output section 12.

In such a configuration, print information from the host side is input from the input unit 10, and one line of characters is developed in a buffer (located on RAMB) based on such print information. Then, in response to a line feed LP command from the host, one line of data (in the buffer) is transferred to the bitmap memory BMM9, the paper is fed by the given line feed LF amount, and the print data for the next line is printed. wait.

Therefore, as shown in FIG. 6, printed information that spans between pages, for example, r A that spans between pages PL and P2.
When there is printing information J, as shown in FIG. 1(a), such characters that span between pages are printed as they are on the previous page, that is, on the page P1 side, beyond the maximum printing area. At this time, the extra line feed amount X1 required to print the character "A" (that is, if you consider Figure 6 etc., it corresponds to the line feed amount that should be printed at the top of the next page) is Instead of treating it as completed, go to the next page,
That is, the line feed amount x at the beginning of page P2, (
=x, ).

In other words, as shown in FIG. 1(b), at the beginning of page P2, line feed x2 is performed as if printing the lower half of the character "AJ" (indicated by a broken line) (actually, the lower half of the character "AJ" is printed at the lower end of the previous page P1). ), then the next character such as r CJ is printed.

Figure 4 shows a line feed LP based on this idea.
3 shows a control flowchart.

First, in response to a line feed LF command from the host, the contents of the buffer are written to the bitmap memory BMM9 by the number of lines in one direction, and the address of the bitmap memory BMM9 is incremented for the next time. Then, it is checked whether all the contents of the buffer have been moved by checking whether the buffer is empty. Next, bitmap memory B
Check whether one specified page of MM9 has been completed. At this time, if one page has been completed, there is still one line of data in the buffer. Therefore, the remaining line feed amount X is saved in the memory, and then the remaining buffer amount is written into the bitmap memory BMM9 until the buffer becomes empty.

Next, the contents of this bitmap memory BMM9 are output to the laser printer 11, and printing processing for the previous page is also performed. This is the processing up to the previous page.

Bitmap memory BM to print the next page
(initialize M9, etc.) and execute line feed for the remaining line feed amount x 1 of the previous page.

With such a control method, even when using application software without page management as shown in FIG. 6, for example, characters are cut off in the middle between pages and printed on a sheet of printing paper 1 as shown in FIG. 2. Moreover, the layout regarding the printing position relationship of characters at the beginning of a sentence on the next page is not changed, and a beautiful printing state can be achieved faithfully to the software.

Effects As described above, when printing information that spans between pages, the character formation information is used on the previous page side and printed as is, and the line feed information that spans between pages is printed at the beginning of the next page. For example, even when printing using application software created with the assumption of continuous paper without page management, printed characters are not cut off in the middle of the page, resulting in clear, easy-to-read printing. , it is possible to faithfully reproduce printing without changing the layout positional relationship for printing on the next page, etc.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing a control process according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a plan view showing an example of printing by the method of this embodiment, FIG. 3 is a block diagram, FIG. 4 is a flowchart, and FIG. FIG. 6 is a plan view showing an example of conventional printing, FIG. 6 is a plan view showing an example of printing on continuous paper, and FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing conventional control processing. 9...Bitmap memory J) Z1 diagram

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a print control method that includes a bitmap memory for one page and creates and prints printing information in this bitmap memory, when printing information that spans between pages, character formation information is used on the previous page side. Print it as is,
A print control method characterized by using line feed information spanning between pages at the beginning of the next page.