JPH01180358A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable a suitable underline to be easily selected by establishing a means wherein a fixed underline is set irrespective of a font of a character, a means wherein an underline corresponding to the font of the character, and a selection means wherein either of them is selected to function. CONSTITUTION:When a character data which is selected to give an underline is inputted, whether a fixed underline is selected or not is judged by a selective position of a DIP switch or a command from a host. When the fixed underline is selected, the fixed underline of 3 dot in height is established by an offset of 9 dot to all characters to be joined by the underline. When the fixed underline is not selected, what font does correspond to is judged from the command from the host, an underline corresponding to the font selected respectively among a font of each character, a font of a character to be printed finally, or used fonts is established, and is outputted to a printer engine to perform printing on paper.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention] 11 minutes! The present invention relates to a printer equipped with means for printing an underline.

Various printers such as wire dot printers, thermal printers, and laser printers are generally capable of printing underlines.

By the way, conventional printers of this type either have only one type of fixed underline, or have underlines that correspond to each font of the printer, which causes the following problems. Ta.

For example, in the former case, the printout will be as shown in FIG. 7(a), and the same underlining will be drawn for both small and large characters, which is unbalanced in terms of design.

In the latter case, as shown in Figure 7 (b), an underline with a design corresponding to each character font is printed, so it is natural as a design, but
For example, if there is a specific font in only one place in one sentence, there is a problem that when an underline is drawn for the entire sentence, the underline changes only in one place.

This invention has been made in view of the above points, and has an object to easily select an appropriate underline even when underlining a character string containing a mixture of characters of various fonts. purpose.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a printer equipped with means for printing various underlines, as shown in the functional block diagram in FIG. A fixed underline setting means A to be set, a font-compatible underline setting means B to set an underline corresponding to a single character font, and either one of these underline setting means A and H are selected and made to function. Underline selection means C is provided.

Hereinafter, a detailed explanation will be given based on one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a system configuration diagram of a laser printer which is an embodiment of the present invention, and 1 is a personal computer;
A host such as a word processor, a data processing device 9 and an image processing device 2 is a laser printer which is a page printer.

The laser printer 2 includes an operation unit (control panel) 3 equipped with various displays, switches, etc., and a printer controller that inputs data such as character codes and images (graphics) from the host 1 and creates video data on a page-by-page basis. 4, and a printer engine 5 that prints characters and images on paper using the video data.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the printer controller 4. As shown in FIG.

This printer controller 4 has an interface (I/
F) includes a host interface 6 for connecting to the host 1, an engine interface 7 for connecting to the printer engine 5, a panel interface 8 for connecting to the operation unit (control panel) 3, and a floppy disk device 13. ．． Option interface 9 for connecting with options such as a read/write RAM cartridge 14 and a read-only ROM cartridge 15
It is equipped with

CPU10 is a microcomputer that centrally controls the entire printer controller, and uses a general-purpose 16-bit or 32-bit CPU.

The ROM 11 is a program memory, and stores, in addition to programs for controlling the CPU 10, an underline setting program according to the present invention, resident fonts, and the like.

RAM12 is a large capacity random access memory,
Used for various buffers and files.

The printer engine 5 is composed of an engine driver, a drive unit, a sensor, etc. for controlling paper feeding of the image forming unit, image forming sequence, etc., and information and signals necessary for printing operations are input and output through the engine interface 7. .

The operating section 3 is equipped with a dip switch 16 as underline selection means. The operation unit 3 includes various other switches, indicators, etc., but illustrations and explanations are omitted here.

The printer controller 4 has a function of adding an underline to characters that are instructed to be underlined when creating page-by-page video data, and as an underline setting means for this purpose, the characters shown in FIG. The present invention has both the functions of a fixed underline setting means A for setting a fixed underline regardless of the font of the character, and a font-compatible underline setting means B for setting an underline corresponding to the font of the character.

Then, by switching the dip switch 16 of the operating section 3, one of these functions is selected. The dip switch 16 may be provided at a position other than the normal operation section, or the underline setting function may be switched by a command from the host.

Next, regarding the type of underline that this laser printer has, 300 dpi (dat/1nch)
This will be specifically explained using an example where the performance is as follows.

As shown in FIG. 4, the baseline is determined so that the lowest points of the characters are aligned in both small and large fonts.

Then, as shown in Figure 5, an underline of 3 dots in height (line thickness) with the highest point located 9 dots below this baseline (referred to as an "offset") is printed as a fixed underline. It is held in the controller 4.

Furthermore, as a resident font in ROM1l.

Height: 12 points, 10 points, 9 points.

and 7 point fonts, and each font has an underline with the following offset and height.

12 points: offset 9 dots, height 3 dots
t10 point: offset 7 dots, height 3 d
ot9 points: offset 7 dat, height 2 d
at7 points: offset 5 dots, height 2 d
In this embodiment, the dip switch 1 described above is
Fixed underline setting mode that sets a fixed underline of 9 dots offset and 3 dots in height regardless of the font of the character to be underlined, and the font of the character to be underlined. Correspondingly, a font-compatible underline setting mode for selectively setting the various types of underlines described above can be selected.

Furthermore, in the font-compatible underline setting mode, underline settings corresponding to the following fonts 1 to 2 can be selected by a command from the host.

■ Set an underline for each character that corresponds to the font.

■ Set an underline corresponding to the font of the character to be printed at the end of the line (or the entire string) for that line or the entire string.

■ Set an underline for the line (or the entire string) that corresponds to the font selected from the fonts used in the line (or the entire string).

The underline selection setting operation performed by the printer controller 4 will be explained with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG.

When character data specified to be underlined is input, when developing it into bitmap data, first check whether a fixed underline is selected by the selection position of the deep switch 16 or a command from the host. If a fixed underline is selected, a fixed (same) underline with an offset of 9 dots and a height of 3 dots is set for all characters to be underlined.

If Fixed Underline is not selected.

It is determined that the underline corresponding to the font is selected, and then it is determined which font it corresponds to by the command from the host, and in response to the command that instructs one of the above font, the font of the last character to be printed, or the font selected from the fonts used.

Then, the character data (bitmap data) with each underline set is output to the printer engine 5 to be printed on paper.

In this way, according to this embodiment, depending on the font configuration of the entire line or character string to be underlined, it is possible to select whether to draw the same overall underline or to draw different underlines depending on the font. There are three ways to select fonts.

Therefore, an optimal underline can be selected depending on the state of the line or character string to be underlined.

As described above, according to the present invention, an appropriate underline can be easily selected even when underlining a character string containing a mixture of characters of various fonts.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of this invention, Figure 2 is a system configuration diagram of a laser printer that is an embodiment of this invention, and Figure 3 is a diagram showing the configuration of the printer controller in Figure 2.
FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a baseline used as a reference for the underline position. FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of the offset and height of the underline. FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing an underline selection setting operation by a printer controller, and FIG. 7 is a diagram showing different examples of underlining by a conventional printer. 1...Host 2...Laser printer 3
...Operation unit (control panel) 4...Printer controller 5...Printer engine 10...CPU (microcomputer) 11...
・ROM (program memory) 12...RAM (
Random access memory) 1B...Dip switch (underline selection means) Fig. 1 Δ Fig. 2 Fig. 3 @4 ■ Fig. 5 Fig. 7

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a printer equipped with a means for printing an underline, a fixed underline setting means sets a fixed underline regardless of the font of the character, and a font-compatible underline setting means sets an underline corresponding to the font of the character. and underline selection means for selecting and operating one of the underline setting means.