JPH04269566A - Printing pattern developing method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To decrease consumption of a memory by removing an auxiliary developing area by a method wherein a selection means which selects whether a developing area is used as two lines content or as one line content according to a character to be printed, is provided. CONSTITUTION:When an em character is printed, a selection means 14 selects use of a developing area as two lines, and develops a printing pattern firstly in a developing area A10 to start printing. It develops the printing pattern of a next line in a developing area B11 while printing in the developing area A10 and executes printing in the developing area B11 after end of printing in the developing area A10. When a longitudinal double em character is printed, the selection means 14 selects use of the developing area as one line, and develops a lower half pattern of the longitudinal double em character in one side developing area. It develops an upper half pattern in the other side developing area, and takes the patterns in two developing areas as one line content printing pattern to start printing. After end of one line printing, the printing pattern of a longitudinal double em one line content is developed again in the developing area A10 and the developing area B11.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer that forms characters using a dot matrix, and more particularly to a printing pattern development method for a printer that prints double-height characters.

0002

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, this type of technology has had a print pattern development area for two lines as a main development area and one line as an auxiliary development area. Hereinafter, one line of the main development area will be referred to as a main development area A, and the other line will be referred to as a main development area B.

In the case of full-width character printing, as shown in FIG. 10, one line of pattern is developed in the main development area A100, printing is started after the development is completed, and while the main development area A100 is being printed, the next line is printed. The pattern is developed in the main development area B101, and after the printing of the main development area A100 is completed, the pattern is developed in the main development area B1.
The operation of printing 01 was repeated.

Furthermore, in the case of double-height character printing, two main development areas share one auxiliary development area, and one area (
Main development area A100 + auxiliary development area 102) constitutes a double-height printing pattern for one line, printing starts from the auxiliary development area, and after the printing of the auxiliary development area is completed, the other area (main development area The next row of patterns is developed in B101+auxiliary development area 102).

[0005]

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, since the above-mentioned prior art requires a development area exclusively for double-height characters, it requires a development area for two lines of the main development area and one line of the auxiliary development area, a total of three lines. was needed. Therefore, there is a problem in that a large amount of memory is used, and the memory inside the microcomputer is not enough and memory external to the microcomputer must be used, which increases costs.

[0006] The present invention has been made to solve these drawbacks, and it is possible to select whether to use the developed area for two lines as two lines or as one line depending on the characters to be printed. By providing a selection means, the purpose is to eliminate the auxiliary development area and reduce the amount of memory used.

[0007]

[Means for Solving the Problems] The present invention has a developing means for developing an original character pattern into a pattern to be actually printed, and at least two developing areas in which the developing means develops the printed pattern, and the developing means has at least two developing areas for developing the printed pattern. When developing a pattern to be printed on the at least two development areas, select whether to develop the printing pattern in the at least two development areas as one line or two lines depending on the characters to be printed. It is characterized by having a selection means for selecting.

[0008]

[Operation] According to the above structure of the present invention, when printing full-width characters continuously, the selection means 14 selects to use the development area as two lines, first develops the printing pattern in the development area A10, and Printing starts from area A10, and while printing area A10, the next line of printing pattern is developed in development area B11, and after printing of development area A10 is completed, printing of development area B11 is performed, and during that time, development area A10 is printed. The printing pattern for the next line is developed and the process is repeated.

When printing double-height characters, the selection means 14
chooses to use the expansion area as one line, expands the bottom half pattern of the double-height character into one expansion area, expands the upper half pattern into the other expansion area, and then expands the pattern between the two expansion areas. Printing is started using the pattern as a printing pattern for one line. After the printing of one line is completed, the print pattern for one line of double height is developed again in the development area A10 and the development area B11, and this is repeated.

By providing selection means for using the development area as two lines or one line depending on the characters to be printed, there is no need to provide an auxiliary development area, so the amount of memory used can be reduced.

[0011]

Embodiment FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a printer to which the present invention is applied. The single chip computer 20 has a ROM 21 and a RAM 22 inside. The ROM 21 stores original character patterns, print routines, print pattern development routines, and received data processing routines, and the RAM 22 has an area for storing received data (hereinafter referred to as a receive buffer 30) as shown in FIG.
An area (hereinafter referred to as image buffer 31) for storing the pattern developed by the print pattern development routine is secured for two lines of full-width characters.

[0012] The print data received from I/F 24 is RA
The data is stored in the reception buffer 30 in the M22. At the same time, the data in the receive buffer 30 in the RAM 22 is processed according to the data processing routine stored in the ROM 21.
The first received data is processed, and in the case of character data, it is developed into a pattern to be actually printed by a development routine stored in the ROM 21, and then stored in the image buffer 31 secured in the RAM 22.

The printing routine stored in the ROM 21 drives the mechanism 23 to perform printing in response to a printing command or when the image buffer 31 for one line becomes full.

The operation of printing in the printer configured as described above will be explained based on the flowcharts shown in FIGS. 4, 5, 6, and 7. In addition, IBUFA in the figure
Those written as are image buffers A32 and IBUFB.
The one written as is image buffer B33, expansion IBU
The letter F indicates the image buffer in which the print pattern is developed, and the letter IBUF indicates the image buffer in which the developed print pattern is printed.

After the printer is powered on, it starts operating according to the program stored in the ROM 21.

In the case of full-width character printing, as shown in FIG.
First, the image buffer A32 is set as the image buffer in which the print pattern is developed, and development of the print pattern into the image buffer A32 is permitted (step 1).

Next, it is checked whether the image buffer in which the print pattern is to be developed is permitted to be developed, and if development is prohibited, the process waits until it is permitted (step 2).

When the image buffer to be expanded can be expanded, data processing is started (step 3).

When data processing for one line is completed, the image buffer that has been expanded is prohibited from being expanded, the image buffer that has been expanded is made the image buffer for printing, and the image buffer that has not been expanded is used as the next image buffer. Specify the image buffer to be expanded (steps 4, 5,
6).

[0020] Printing is then started (step 7). For printing, an interrupt is applied to the single chip computer 20 by a signal generated by the mechanism 23, and processing is performed according to a flowchart shown in FIG. 5, which will be described later, during the interrupt processing.

By repeating the operations from step 2 to step 7, continuous printing of full-width characters is performed. At this time, the image buffer is used for two lines as shown in FIG.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the processing in the interrupt routine when the single-chip computer 20 is interrupted by a signal generated by the mechanism 23 (when printing full-width characters).

When this routine is called, it is first checked whether printing of the image buffer designated for printing has been completed (step 8), and if it has not been completed, printing processing is performed (step 9). If the printing has been completed, the image buffer that has been printed is determined (step 10).

If the image buffer for which printing has been completed is image buffer A32, expansion of image buffer A32 is permitted (step 11), and if the image buffer for which printing has been completed is image buffer B33, expansion of image buffer B33 is permitted (step 11). 12).

When double-height characters are to be printed continuously, as shown in FIG. 6, first, the image buffer in which the print pattern is developed is set to image buffer A32, and development of the print pattern in image buffer A32 is permitted (step 13). ).

Next, it is checked whether the image buffer A32 is permitted to be expanded, and if expansion is prohibited, the process waits until expansion is permitted (step 14).

When the image buffer A32 becomes expandable, data processing is started (step 15).

Here, one line of data is processed, and the upper half of the double-height is expanded into the image buffer B33, and the lower half is expanded into the image buffer A32.

When data processing for one line is completed, image buffer A32 is prohibited from being expanded, and image buffer B33 is designated as the image buffer for printing (step 16).

[0030] Then, printing starts (step 17).
. For printing, an interrupt is applied to the single chip computer 20 by a signal generated by the mechanism 23, and processing is performed according to a flowchart shown in FIG. 7, which will be described later, during the interrupt processing.

By repeating the operations from step 14 to step 17, continuous printing of double-height characters is performed. At this time, the image buffer is used for one line as shown in FIG.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing the processing in the interrupt routine when the single-chip computer 20 is interrupted by a signal generated by the mechanism 23 (when printing double-height characters).

When this routine is called, it is first checked whether printing of the image buffer designated for printing has been completed (step 18), and if it has not been completed, printing processing is performed (step 19). If the printing has been completed, the image buffer that has been printed is determined (step 20). If the image buffer for which printing has been completed is image buffer A32, development of image buffer A32 is permitted (step 21). If the image buffer for which printing has been completed is image buffer B33, the image buffer to be printed next is set as image buffer A32 (step 22).

[0034]

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the present invention, there is no need to provide an auxiliary expansion area, so the amount of memory used is reduced to two-thirds of that of the conventional one, and the circuit configuration is simplified because there is no need to use external memory. It has the advantage of being simplified and reducing costs.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

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

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a memory map of one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram showing the prior art of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 Deployment area A 11　　　　Development area B 12 Deployment means 13 Original character pattern 14 Selection means

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A printer that configures characters using a dot matrix, comprising a developing means for developing an original character pattern into a pattern to be actually printed, and at least two developing areas in which the developing means develops the printed pattern; When the developing means develops the pattern to be printed on the at least two development areas, the printing pattern is developed by using the at least two development areas as one line or two lines depending on the characters to be printed. 1. A printing pattern development method characterized by comprising a selection means for selecting one of the following.