JPH03130183A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To eliminate the wasteful consumption of printing form and ink as well as the unnecessary wear of a mechanical printing part by performing a simulated printing operation prior to printing, indicating the simulation results and correcting the printing data. CONSTITUTION:A control part 3 enters printing control data from a host computer 1 through an interface part 2 and stores the data temporarily. At the same time, the control part 3 controls each part of a device. A printing operation emulation part 5 simulates a printing operation. Therefore, the control part 3 calculates a position of printing paper where a printing position has moved following the feed of paper or the shift of a printing head using a paper feed value as a movement value of 'Y' coordinate and the movement value of a printing head as the movement value of 'X' coordinate. Then the part 3 sends a calculated coordinate data to a display part 6 together with character or symbol data to be printed. The display part 6 receives the data from the printing operation emulation part 5, then develops characters or symbols in a specified coordinates using a bit map and displays them. Thus it is possible to prevent wasteful consumption of printing form and ink as well as unnecessary wear of a mechanical printer part.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention relates to a printer, and more particularly to a printer that is connected to a host device and performs and displays a pseudo printing operation in response to print control data sent from the host device.

(Prior Art) Generally, a printer is connected to a higher-level device, receives processing results from the higher-level device as print control data, and performs a printing operation in accordance with the data.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a conventional example of this type of printer.

As shown in FIG. 2, print control data output from the host device ftl is sent to the control section 3 via the interface section 2. As shown in FIG. This print control data includes information such as the type of characters to be printed, the print position, and paper feed. The control section 3 analyzes this data and outputs a printing operation command corresponding to the data to the printing operation section 4. The printing operation unit 4 that receives this prints on the printing paper. Even if the printing methods are different, such as page printers, serial printers, and line printers, the series of processing methods described above are common.

(This is what the invention attempts to solve!!@) In the above-described conventional printer, when printing on paper, it is not possible to visually confirm the print result.

Therefore, if incorrect print data is sent, or if the print data is incorrect due to a data error that changes the content during transfer, the expected print may not be obtained, and the printer may malfunction or unexpected characters may appear. is printed. Sometimes the equipment can even be damaged.

Furthermore, when printing using a word processor or the like, it is difficult to correctly specify the printing position, character spacing, etc. because it is not possible to intuitively grasp the data after printing. Therefore, it is not possible to obtain the desired printing results unless the process of trial printing and making corrections is repeated many times.

This is especially difficult when you want to print accurately in a specified field, such as when printing on format paper.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the procedure of such work.

As shown in Figure 4, since printing step 11 exists in the correction loop consisting of steps 11, 12, and 10, every time data is corrected (step 10), unnecessary printing is performed. There are drawbacks.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to eliminate such drawbacks and to provide a printer that eliminates wastage of printing paper, ink, etc., and unnecessary wear and tear on printer mechanisms.

(Means for Solving the Problems) In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the printer of the present invention includes a printer that prints in the printing operation unit 4 in accordance with the printing control data sent from the host device, a printing operation emulation section 5 that performs a pseudo printing operation according to the printing operation; a display section 6 that displays the results of the pseudo printing operation performed by the printing operation emulation section 5; The present invention is configured to include a control section 3 that causes a display section 6 to display the result of the pseudo printing operation before printing in step 4.

(Example) Next, an actual example of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in FIG.
, a control section 6, a printing operation section 4, a printing operation emulation section 5, and a display section B.

The serial printer will be explained below.

The operation of the control unit 3O is the same as that of the conventional example, and the operation of the control unit S
inputs print control data from the higher-level device 1 via the interface section 2, writes - hours, and controls each section within the device.

Among these, the printer of this embodiment sends a control signal outputted from the control section 3 to the printing operation section 4, or sends the control signal output from the control section 3 to the printing operation section 5.
You can choose to send it to.

The printing operation section 4 performs paper feeding (line feed), movement of the print head, and printing.

In order to simulate the printing operation, the printing operation emulation unit 5 sets the paper feed amount to the Y-coordinate movement amount and the print head movement amount to the X-coordinate movement amount, and prints the printing position by paper feed and print head movement. Calculate the position on the paper. Then, the calculated coordinate data is sent to the display section 6 along with the data of the characters and symbols to be printed.

The display section 6 receives data from the printing operation emulation section 5, develops a character box or symbol into a bitmap at the designated coordinates, and displays it. In this way, the printing results can be displayed on the display.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an example of a work procedure when using this embodiment.

As shown in FIG. 3, the host device 1 creates data in step 7, and when the control section 3 inputting the data sends the output signal to the gold printing operation emulation section 5, the printing operation emulation is performed. In section 5, printing processing is emulated (step 8).

The result of printing process emulation (pseudo printing operation) is displayed on the display section 6, so the operator can judge whether the result is as expected or not (Step 9).If the result is not as expected, the data is Modify step 10) and return to step 8.

If the displayed result is as expected, printing can be performed by sending an output signal from the control section 3 to the printing operation section 4 (step 11).

In the above explanation, the operation of the printing operation emulation unit was explained as a simulated operation of the mechanical unit of a serial printer, but it can also be applied to other types of printers, such as a simulated operation of laser scanning in the case of a laser printer. can do.

(Effects of the Invention) As explained above, the present invention displays the result of performing a pseudo printing operation before printing, so that the operator can see this and modify the printing control data. This has the effect of preventing wastage of printing paper, ink, etc. due to incorrect control data, and unnecessary wear and tear on the printer mechanism.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a conventional array of printers. FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a sequence of work procedures when the embodiment of FIG. 1 is used. FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an example of a work procedure when a conventional printer is used. 1... Host device 2... Interface section 5... Control section 4... Print operation section 5... Print operation emulation section B... Display sections 7 to 12... Steps of work procedure

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a printer that performs printing in a print operation section in response to print control data sent from a host device, a print operation emulation section that performs a pseudo printing operation in response to the print control data;
A display section that displays the result of the pseudo printing operation performed by the printing operation emulation section, and a display section that controls each section in the apparatus, and displays the pseudo printing on the display section before printing in the printing operation section. A printer that has a control unit that displays the results of its operations.