JPH0358219A - Print control method and document preparing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To easily identify its own print document from another print document in a printer shared system by performing the print output of a header page on which an item to specify a document is printed according to the print of the document. CONSTITUTION:One laser printer 17 is shared with (n) word processors 11 via a cable 13, a printer controller 15, and a cable 16. Each word processor 11 designates the print of the document and sets a print condition, and after that, data for the development of a print content is generated on a bit map for laser printer, and generated data is transferred to the printer controller 15 with a communication processing. And the header page can be print-outputted with the document by designating (header print) by the setting of the print condition of each document. In such a way, it is possible to recognize the header page at a glance without staining the print document itself, and also, to immediately recognize the content of the page.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a print control method suitable for a case where a printing device is shared by a plurality of document creation devices.

[Prior Art] Conventionally, a single printing device (eg, a laser printer) is commonly used by a plurality of terminals or document creation devices (eg, word processors).

In such a printing device sharing system, when multiple terminals print using one printing@place, one printing device prints one after another in the order of the terminal that executed the printing. As a result, the printed documents of different operators (users) are piled up and output, and it takes a lot of effort to extract one's own printed documents from among them. Furthermore, it was not possible to tell from which terminal the printed documents other than the printed documents that the user had output were output.

To solve this problem, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 63-250733, a printed text identification code such as a code number of the department name of the person who created the printed text is assigned to the main body of the printed text, and the identification code is followed when printing. A system has been disclosed in which a sorting device selects and outputs printed sheets for each document to a separate outlet, or the identification code itself is printed together with the printed text body.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In the above-mentioned prior art, the method of sorting and outputting based on identification codes cannot be applied to printing apparatuses that do not have a sorting device.

On the other hand, the method of printing the identification code together with the printed text body results in printing an identification code other than the original content of the document, and therefore cannot be adopted depending on the purpose of the document. Furthermore, since the identification code must be printed in the margin of the document body, the amount of print data and character size are naturally limited, and it is not always easy to recognize the boundaries of accumulated printed documents. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a print control method and a print control method that can easily identify one's own printed document from other printed documents in a printing device sharing system without contaminating the target printed document itself with unnecessary characters. An object of the present invention is to provide a document creation device that implements the above method.

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above object, a print control method according to the present invention is a print control method in a printing device sharing system in which a printing device is shared by a plurality of document creation devices, comprising: A heading page with information identifying the document is printed out when the document is printed. The print data for the heading page can be automatically created by the system based on the management data of the document, or can be arbitrarily input by the user.

The user may be able to specify whether or not the heading page needs to be printed.

It is also possible to print the heading page in a color different from the printing color of the document.

The characters on the heading page may be printed as enlarged characters.

The printing device does not require a sorting device for sorting and outputting printed matter.

Further, the document creation device according to the present invention displays a printing condition setting screen for setting various printing conditions when printing a created document. Regarding the heading page, the option of whether or not to print out the heading page together with the document is presented on the print condition setting screen.

Note that the term "document creation device" in this specification is not limited to word processors, and may be any device that has a document creation/print instruction function, such as a personal computer. [Operation] In the print control method of the present invention, when documents created by multiple document editing devices are printed by one printing device, “heading printing” is specified in the print condition settings for each document. As a result, the heading page is printed out along with the document.

Specifically, when printing a document for each terminal, the "print document name",
A page with document identification information that identifies the document such as "Notes", "Number of copies printed", "Terminal station number", etc. is printed as a header page, and as the document is printed, it is printed out at the beginning or end of the document, for example. . The document identification information such as the above-mentioned "Print document name" as the printed content of the heading page can be entered at the time of registering the created document, or can be automatically detected and used as document management data that has already been created. The user does not need to input anything when printing the document.

However, if the user wishes to arbitrarily specify the contents of the index page, the user can input the contents of the index page arbitrarily by selecting "user" input in the print condition settings.

Since the heading page is printed on paper different from the paper of the printed document, it not only does not smudge the printed document itself;
Since a sufficient printing area is secured, written contents such as characters can be enlarged and printed. Therefore, it is possible to recognize at a glance that the page is a heading page, and the contents thereof can also be recognized immediately.

By checking the heading page, the operator can easily distinguish the printed material output by the operator from other documents. In particular, by adding a heading page to the beginning or end of a document, the heading page is always inserted at the boundary of the accumulated documents, making it easier to find the boundaries of the documents. In addition, the operator can quickly extract his or her own printed document from the piled up printed documents according to the information on the number of printed sheets written on the heading page.

Note that anyone other than the operator can also recognize the ownership of the printed document from the terminal station number etc. on the heading page. This is useful in a printing device sharing environment where the printing device is often installed at a location separate from the terminal.

[Example] Hereinafter, one embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail.

FIG. 10 shows a configuration example of a printing device sharing system to which the present invention is applied. In this system, n word processors 11 are connected to a cable 13 and a printer controller 15.
and one laser printer 1 via cable 16.
7 is shared.

Each word processor 11 creates a document, specifies to print the document, and sets printing conditions, and then creates data for developing the print content into a bitmap for a laser printer. Processing is performed to transfer the data to the printer controller l5 through communication processing.

Page management is also performed when the document has one page or multiple pages. Instructions for printing headings, creating heading page data, etc., which will be described later, are performed in each word processor 11.

The controller 5 performs processing to develop a bitmap based on the transferred data, determines the print order of documents for which print instructions have been received from each terminal, and issues print status data.

The laser printer 17 performs a process of printing the bitmap data issued from the controller 15 on paper as is.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a word processor to which the present invention is applied.

In this figure, 1 is an input device using a keyboard for inputting characters, etc., and 2 is a CRT for displaying characters, etc.
A display output device such as a display, 3 a memory or magnetic storage device for storing document contents, 4 a print output device such as a wire dot printer, and 5 a control device such as a microprocessor for controlling the above-mentioned parts.

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing an overview of the print control method of the present invention.

First, the ``Print Condition Setting J'' screen for specifying the conditions necessary for printing is displayed (101), and the user specifies whether or not to perform heading printing (102). At that time, specify "Required" as the initial value for the heading printing item.Here, specify the heading printing by selecting "Unnecessary" using the numeric keypad 'O', for example.
, ``Required'' can be specified using the numeric keypad 11'.

Determines whether the key pressed after specifying all printing conditions is the key to start printing (hereinafter referred to as the Execute key) or the key to cancel printing (hereinafter referred to as the <Cancel> key). If the <Cancel> key is pressed, all processing is terminated and the screen returns to the editing/proofreading or work menu (104), and if the Execute key is pressed (104).
0 3). It is determined whether the heading printing designation is ``required'' or ``unnecessary'' (105). If the determination is ``unnecessary'', normal printing processing is performed, and if the determination is ``required'', processing is performed to create data for a heading page for printing the heading (106).
After creating the data, normal printing processing is performed (107). In this printing process, after printing and outputting a heading page at the beginning of the document, the original document is printed.6 Figure 6 shows the specification items for printing headings on the conventional print condition setting screen. This is an example of the added screen. In the figure, print items for heading printing are underlined for convenience of emphasis.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing in detail the heading print item designation process in the printing condition setting process (102) in FIG. It is determined whether the key input for the heading print item is a numeric keypad or another key (301). If it is l O j on the numeric keypad, highlight "Unnecessary" (303) and press '1' on the numeric keypad.
′ (404), invert the black and white r system J (3
0 5). If it is ``2'' on the numeric keypad (3 0 6)
, "User" is reversed (3 0 7). After completing the black and white inversion process, the input value is stored internally (311). If the key is any other key, an abnormal sound (error buzzer) is sounded (308) and the process returns to process 301. If the judgment in process 301 is that the <Execute> key or Cancel> key is pressed (309), the process ends (310). If the input key is the <Cursor> key, perform cursor movement processing (
312).

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the cursor movement process 312 of FIG. 3 in detail.

If the input key is the <Right Cursor> key, the user input character is input (402), and after the character input is completed, the key is checked again6.As a result, if the key is the Execute key or the Cancel key, the user enters the character (402). , the input data is saved (404), and if the <left cursor> key is pressed, cursor movement processing is performed (408). Also, if you use the <Cursor Down> key (409). The cursor movement flag is updated (410) and this process exits. If the input key is the <Down Cursor> key in the key reception process 401 (40
5) Update the cursor movement flag (406).
The process exits, but if any other key is input, an abnormal sound is generated (411) and the key acceptance process 401 is performed again.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the heading page creation process 106 of FIG. 1 in more detail.

When printing headings, the data is "Print document name""
Remarks It is determined whether data created from the system such as "Number of copies to print" is to be used as a heading, or a character string input independently by the user is to be used as a heading (501). If the judgment is "System", "Print document name", "Remarks",
Data such as "number of printed sheets" is read (502), and then a format for a heading page is created based on the read data (503). If the data of the heading page is "user" in the above process (507), the format for the heading page is displayed on the screen (5 0 8), and the user is made to input the character string of the heading page data (509). ．． When inputting a character string, after the heading data is finalized, the character data is enlarged (504) to enlarge the display when outputting. After that, expand the data to the print buffer (5 0 5)
, and then performs normal printing processing (5 0 6). FIG. 7 is an example of headline printing when system creation is selected using the document creation device to which the present invention is applied.

Figure 8 shows an example of the data entry screen for the heading page that is displayed when you specify the user for printing the heading page in the print condition settings and press the Execute key.The heading page entered on this input screen is printed. An example is shown in Figure 9. In this embodiment, the heading page is added to the beginning of the document, but it may be added to the end of the document. Further, it is also possible to switch between the case where the paper is ejected with the print surface facing upward and the case where the paper is ejected with the print surface facing downward. For example, if the printing surface is facing upward, it may be output last, and if the printing surface is facing downward, it may be output at the beginning.

When using a printer that can switch printing colors, the printed documents can be identified more easily by changing the color of the characters on the index page to the color of the characters on the printed document.

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the present invention, multiple terminals can
To construct an easy-to-use printing device sharing system that can quickly search and extract a desired printed document even if the printed document is overlapped with that of another user when a printer is shared. Can be done.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing a general flow of an embodiment of the print control method according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a Japanese input device to which the present invention is applied, and FIG. 3 is a print condition setting shown in FIG. 1. Flowchart showing the detailed flow of the heading page print designation method of the process, FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the detailed flow of the cursor movement process of FIG. 3, and FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the detailed flow of the heading page creation process of FIG. 1. ，
No. Figure 6 is an explanatory diagram of an example of a printing condition setting screen to which the present invention is applied, Figure 7 is an explanatory diagram of an example of headline page printing when data for a headline page is created and printed by the system, and Figure 8 is an explanatory diagram of an example of a headline page print. Explanatory diagram of an example of the screen of the user character input field displayed on the next screen when page data is specified by the user, No. 9
The figure is an explanatory diagram of an example of headline page printing when the user inputs data for the headline page, creates and prints it, and FIG. 10 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of a printing device sharing system to which the present invention is applied. . DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1...Keyboard, 2...Display device, 3...Storage device, 4...Printing device, 5...Control device.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A printing control method in a printing device sharing system in which a printing device is shared by a plurality of document creation devices, wherein a heading page on which information identifying a document is printed is A print control method characterized in that the printout is performed using the following methods. 2. The print control method according to claim 1, wherein the print data for the heading page is automatically created by the system based on management data of the document. 3. The print control method according to claim 1, wherein the print data for the heading page is input by a user. 4. The print control method according to claim 1, wherein the user is allowed to specify whether or not the heading page is to be printed. 5. The print control method according to claim 1, wherein the heading page is printed in a color different from that of the document. 6. The print control method according to claim 1, wherein the characters on the index page are printed as enlarged characters. 7. The printing control method according to claim 1, wherein the printing device does not have a sorting device for sorting and outputting printed matter. 8. When printing a created document, in a document creation device that displays a printing condition setting screen for setting various printing conditions, if a heading page is printed that specifies the document to be printed, A document creation device characterized in that the option of whether or not to print out the document together with the document is presented on the printing condition setting screen.