JPH044953B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a horizontal broken line image generating device for generating ruled line image data without using a ruled line font in a word processor printer or a line printer.

[Prior art]

Conventionally, when generating image data (video data) of ruled lines in a word processor, etc., various fonts for the ruled lines are stored in a memory, and a required one of the stored various fonts is read using a predetermined code. By taking out the paper, the ruled lines were printed.

However, in this conventional method, there are at least 11 ruled lines (−, |, , , ,
〓, 〓, 〓, +, ⊥) fonts are required, and when trying to create ruled lines with different line thicknesses, line types (solid lines, broken lines, etc.), line lengths, etc., the number of fonts increases dramatically. However, this leads to an increase in memory capacity or cost. Furthermore, in this method, when one font is accessed, margin bits other than the bits in which ruled line data are written must also be accessed, which results in wasted processing time.

[Purpose of the invention]

This invention was made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and achieves arbitrary ruled lines, especially horizontal broken lines with arbitrary printing cycles, without using a ruled line font, thereby reducing the amount of memory and enabling high-speed processing. The present invention aims to provide a horizontal broken line image generating device.

[Structure of the invention]

The present invention is applied to a printer that performs printing by raster scanning for each main scan. In this invention, various character patterns stored in a font memory are sequentially outputted dot by dot in accordance with input character information, and the outputted character patterns are combined with horizontal dots generated sequentially for each dot in a horizontal broken line image generator. The raster image data is combined with the broken line image data dot by dot to create raster image data to be sent to the printer.

In the horizontal broken line image generating device of the present invention, a ruled line command input includes a horizontal ruled line identification signal, a signal indicating a ruled line printing start and end position, a signal specifying a broken line, and a signal indicating line thickness. means, an image buffer for horizontal ruled lines having a storage capacity for the number of dots for one main scanning line, an input/output port to which black data of a predetermined number of bits is set when a ruled line command is input; If a horizontal ruled line is specified in the ruled line command, the data transfer start address and data transfer length corresponding to the signals indicating the ruled line printing start and end positions are set, and the data transfer start address and data transfer length are a DMA controller that sequentially transfers the predetermined number of black data set in the input/output port to the horizontal ruled line image buffer; By intermittently selectively extracting write pulses generated from the DMA controller in synchronization with the black data transfer period of A horizontal broken line image creation means for forming horizontal ruled line image data in an image buffer for horizontal ruled lines, and when a horizontal ruled line is specified in the input ruled line command, it corresponds to information indicating the thickness of the line in the ruled line command. The present invention is characterized by comprising readout control means for repeatedly reading out the horizontal broken line image data created in the horizontal ruled line image buffer the number of times.

〔Example〕

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to embodiments shown in the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the overall configuration of a printer device to which the horizontal broken line image generating device of the present invention is applied.

A command signal CM and a print data signal DT inputted from a host computer or an external device such as an input/output device are inputted to a print control section 1 and a raster image creation section 2 in this printer device. If ruled lines are to be printed, this command signal CM includes a ruled line command. The print control unit 1 controls the raster image creation unit 2 to print the print data DT in a manner based on the command signal CM, controls the switching of the line buffers L ₁ and L ₂ , and also controls the drive of the print unit 3. Do this. As will be described in detail later, the raster image creation section 2 sequentially synthesizes the character pattern stored in the font memory in the raster image creation section 2 and the ruled line pattern generated in the raster image creation section 2 dot by dot, It is sequentially output to line buffers L ₁ and L ₂ as raster information RD for each scanning line. Line buffers L ₁ and L ₂ have a two-line buffer configuration, and one line buffer has raster information.
When RD is input, the other line buffer is the raster information of the previous scan line that has already been input.
RD is being output to the printing section 3. The printing unit 3 actually prints the raster information input from the line buffer onto the recording medium.

FIG. 2 shows an example of the internal configuration of the raster image creation section 2, which constitutes the main part of the present invention.

A command signal CM and a data signal DT input from an external device are input to a control device 10 within the raster image creation section 2. This command signal
The ruled line command included in the commercial includes horizontal and vertical ruled line identification bits, ruled line printing start position (X, Y), ruled line printing end position (X', Y'),
This includes bits that specify line types such as broken lines and solid lines, and bits that specify line thickness.

The control device 10 and other components are connected to a data bus.
DB, address bus AB, and a control bus (not shown). The font memory 20 stores characters such as alphabets, numbers, and kanji characters so as to correspond to their actual shapes, and the font memory 20 stores character data based on the character code data DT output from the control device 10. is read out and sent to the character image buffer 40 via the read character data and the bus selector 30.
Enter. The character image buffer 40 has a capacity to temporarily store image data for at least one raster line, and temporarily stores character data sequentially input from the font memory 20 for each raster line. The temporarily stored character data is output to a PS (parallel-serial) converter 55 via the bus selector 30 under the control of the buffer selector 50.

Next is the configuration for generating a ruled line image.
First, the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines has a capacity that can temporarily store image data for horizontal ruled lines corresponding to at least one raster line segment, and is transferred from the I/O port 60 in units of 1 byte. Data for horizontal ruled lines is stored in a predetermined area according to a specified address. Similarly, the vertical ruled line image buffer 42 has a capacity that can temporarily store vertical ruled line image data corresponding to at least one raster line segment, and has a capacity that can temporarily store image data for vertical ruled lines corresponding to at least one raster line segment.
Vertical ruled line data transferred in byte units is stored in a predetermined area according to a designated address. Each of these image buffers 40, 41, 42
Each enable terminal and each write enable terminal have enable signals EN ₀ , EN ₁ , EN ₂ respectively.
and write enable signals WE ₀ , WE ₁ , WE ₂
are respectively input, and each image buffer 40, 41, 42 receives enable signals EN ₀ , EN ₁ ,
It becomes active when EN ₂ is input,
Furthermore, when both the enable signals EN ₀ , EN ₁ , EN ₂ and the write enable signals WR ₀ , WR ₁ , WR ₂ are input, each becomes in a writable state.

Next, the I/O port 60 consists of one byte, and black data is set by the control device 10 when creating a ruled line image. This 1 byte of black data has a printing length of approximately 1 mm line length. Data is transferred from the I/O port 60 to the image buffers 41 and 42 for horizontal and vertical ruled lines.
It is executed at high speed by a DMA (dynamic memory access) controller 70.

DMA controller 70 is a well-known DMA device for high-speed data transfer, and controller 10
When there is a DMA request from the control device 10, the control device 10 is held and then the DMA operation is started. The DMA controller 70 and the control device 10 are connected to each other by a bus via a tri-state buffer (not shown).
The tri-state buffer controls the control device 10.
is preferably separated from the data bus DB and address bus AB when the DMA controller 70 operates. When a ruled line command is detected in the command signal, the control device 10 issues a DMA request to the DMA controller 70, and at the same time prints the print start position (X, Y) and print end position (X', Y') in the ruled line command. The corresponding data transfer start address and transfer byte length are set in the DMA controller 70. In addition, when a horizontal broken line is specified, the horizontal broken line specification signal SL is set to a high logic level, and in the case of a horizontal solid line, the signal SL is set to a high level.
is the low level. Thereafter, the DMA controller 70 holds the control device 10 and disconnects it from the bus, and transfers the black data of the I/O port 60 to the horizontal ruled line image buffer 41 or the vertical ruled line image buffer 41 based on the data transfer start address and transfer byte length. The images are transferred to the image buffer 42 at high speed.

Next, the write signal control unit 80 is a circuit that outputs write enable signals WE ₀ , WE ₁ , WE ₂ to each of the image buffers 40, 41, 42, and an example of its internal configuration is shown in FIG. In addition,
The configuration shown in FIG. 3 is particularly for controlling the write enable signal _WE1 of the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines. In FIG. 3, the write pulse WR of the DMA controller 70
(see FIG. 4a) is input to an AND gate 81, while it is input to a counter 82. This write pulse WR is output in synchronization with data transfer of one byte by the DMA controller 70. When the counter 82 receives the DMA acknowledgment signal DMACK, it becomes active and performs a predetermined binary counting operation. The DMA acknowledgment signal DMACK is a signal that the DMA controller 70 sends to the control device 10.
This signal is output when acknowledging a DMA request, and is at active level during DMA operation. The multi-bit output of counter 82 is input to encoder 83. The encoder 83 has a predetermined combinational logic, and by encoding the output of the counter 82 in a predetermined manner, the encoder 83 generates a pulse signal EC (FIG. 4c) in which high level and low level are repeated at a predetermined period. reference) is output. The internal logic within the encoder 83 is configured to be arbitrarily set. This pulse signal EC is input to the NAND gate 84, where it is logically ANDed with the horizontal broken line designation signal SL (see FIG. 4b) input from the control device 10, and then input to the AND gate 81. When printing a horizontal broken line, the horizontal broken line designation signal SL is at a high level, and the pulse signal EC output from the encoder 83 is logically inverted and output to the AND gate 81.
However, when printing a horizontal solid line, the horizontal broken line designation signal SL is at a low level, so the output of the NAND gate 84 is at a high level, and the write pulse is output from the AND gate 81 as it is. . Because of this configuration, the write enable signal _WE1 output from the AND gate 81 is output at a predetermined period as shown in FIG. 4d when the horizontal broken line designation signal SL is input at a high level. Repeat high level and low level. Therefore, the black data transferred from the I/O port 60 to the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines by the DMA controller 70 becomes intermittently unable to be written, and as a result, is stored in the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines. The image data to be displayed is horizontal broken line image data with a predetermined period.

Next, in FIG. 2, address decoder 80 decodes the address signal on address bus AB under the control of control device 10, and outputs the decoded signal to buffer selector 50. 3 mentioned above
The addresses assigned to each of the image buffers 40, 41, and 42 are different.
By decoding the address signal on the address bus AB, it is possible to determine which image buffer is designated by the control device 10.
The buffer selector 50 is the image buffer 40,
When writing data to 41 and 42, by referring to the decoder results, it is determined which image buffer should be in an active state where writing or reading is possible. Also, when reading data,
Which image buffer to select is determined based on a selection signal IS input from the print control section 1 (see FIG. 1). Based on the control of the control device 10, the bus selector 30 selects each image buffer 40,
When writing data to 41 and 42 and when reading data, the write address AB, read address RA, and data buses DB and DB' are appropriately switched and connected.

Next, the PS converter 55 performs 1 when reading data.
The data stored in the three image buffers 40, 41, and 42, which are transferred in bytes, is subjected to parallel-to-serial conversion and sequentially outputted bit by bit to the OR circuit 56. The OR circuit 56 calculates the logical sum of these three outputs to create a character image buffer 4.
0, and the ruled line image output from the horizontal ruled line image buffer 41 or the vertical ruled line image buffer 42,
The logical sum output is outputted to line buffers L ₁ and L ₂ in FIG. 1 as the final output of the raster image creation section 2.

In this configuration, the operation when printing horizontal broken ruled lines will be described.

Upon receiving the ruled line command, the control device 10 sets white data in the I/O port 60 and issues a DMA request to the DMA controller 70. DMA controller 70 is control device 10
After holding and disconnecting from the bus, the 1-byte white data is sequentially transferred to the horizontal ruled line image buffer 41 to clear the horizontal ruled line image buffer 41.

Thereafter, the control device 10 sets black data in the I/O port 60, and sets in the DMA controller 70 the data transfer start address and the number of transfer bytes corresponding to the print position specified by the ruled line command signal. In this case, since the horizontal broken line is designated in the ruled line command signal, the control device 10 sets the horizontal broken line designation signal SL to a high logic level. next,
After holding the control device 10 again and disconnecting it from the bus, the DMA controller 70 starts transferring black data from the I/O port 60 to the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines. At this time, the address signal on the address bus AB has been decoded by the address decoder 80, and as a result, it goes without saying that the horizontal ruled line image buffer 41 is in the selected state by the buffer selector 50. During this data transfer, the DMA controller 70 attempts to transfer the required number of transfer bytes of black data one byte at a time to the storage area corresponding to the printing position of the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines.

On the other hand, the write signal control unit 80 intermittently selects and extracts the write pulse signal WR of the DMA controller 70 in the manner described above, and uses this intermittently extracted pulse signal as the write enable signal WR of the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines. Output as ₁ . As a result, black data is transferred from the I/O port 60 to the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines, but when the write enable signal WR ₁ is at low level, black data is not written. It is possible to create a horizontal ruled line image that is repeated at a period of .

Next, the horizontal broken line image data stored in the horizontal ruled line image buffer 41 is read.
This is performed by the print control section 1 (see FIG. 1). From the print control section 1 to the raster image creation section 2
A buffer selection signal IS for reading and an address signal RA for reading are input to , and the bus selector 30 switches the address bus and data bus to the RA and DB' sides during reading. A ruled line command is input to the print control unit 1, and the print control unit 1 reads out the memory contents of the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines as required by decoding the information indicating the line thickness in the ruled line command. Recognize the number of times. The print control unit 1 has a raster counter (either software or hardware) that indicates which raster line in one line (consisting of a plurality of raster lines) is currently being printed. and
The print control section 1 determines when to send out the selection signal IS for selecting the image buffers 40, 41, and 42 based on the count value of the raster counter. For example, 10
When printing a horizontal broken line of a raster line segment, when the raster count value reaches a value indicating the desired print start position, the image buffer 41 is selected and a selection signal IS and a read address signal are sent to select the image buffer 41 and perform a predetermined read operation. By sending out RA and then reading out the same horizontal broken line image data stored in the image buffer 41 10 times, a horizontal broken line of 10 raster line thickness is printed. The image data read out from the image buffer 41 for horizontal ruled lines at the appropriate time is PS.
is input to the OR gate 56 via the converter 55,
After being ORed bit by bit with other character pattern data or vertical ruled line image data in the OR gate 56, the line buffer _L1 or _L2 is output as final raster image data RD to be input to the printing section 3 (see Figure 1). is input.

By the way, after printing one horizontal broken line,
Counter 82 in write signal control section 80
The previous count value is retained, and
Even if another horizontal broken line is printed again in this state, the printing start positions of the horizontal broken lines do not necessarily match as shown in FIG. 5a. Therefore, in this embodiment, each time a horizontal broken line ruled line image is generated, an appropriate initial value is set in the counter 82, so that horizontal broken lines with the same phase as shown in FIG. 5b are printed. .

Note that when printing horizontal solid lines, the control device 10
An arbitrary horizontal solid line can be printed by setting the horizontal broken line designating signal SL to a low logic level and performing the same operations as described above.

That is, when printing horizontal ruled lines, the printing position, print length, line type, etc. in the main scanning direction of the horizontal ruled lines to be printed are changed depending on the storage contents of the image buffer 41, and the data is stored in the image buffer 41. The line thickness is changed depending on the number of times the same image data is read out.

Next, the case of printing vertical ruled lines will be briefly explained.

The case of vertical ruled lines is the same as the case of horizontal ruled lines,
The DMA controller 70 sequentially transfers the black data from the I/O port 60 to the vertical ruled line image buffer 42 according to the data transfer start address and transfer byte length set by the control device 10, thereby completing one raster. The basic image data of the line segment is stored in the image buffer 42. however,
Data transfer control from the I/O port 60 to the image buffer 42 for vertical ruled lines is performed by the DMA controller 7.
0 or may be performed by the control device 10 itself. This is done by the control device 10 itself because image data for vertical ruled lines usually has a small amount of black data in one raster line (often a few bytes to 10-odd bytes), unlike that for horizontal ruled lines. This is because high speed performance is not hindered even when In this way, the print control section 1 can read out the vertical ruled line image data for one raster line stored in the vertical ruled line image buffer 42 at the required time and number of times according to the ruled line command information. Vertical ruled lines will now be printed.

That is, when printing vertical ruled lines, the print position and line thickness in the main scanning direction of the vertical ruled lines to be printed are changed depending on the storage contents of the image buffer 42, and the The line type, line length, etc. of vertical ruled lines are changed depending on the reading mode of the same stored content.

In the above embodiment, the write signal control section 80 consisting of a counter 82, an encoder 83, etc. is employed as a configuration for creating a horizontal broken line image, but the write signal control section 80 is not limited to this and may be constituted of other circuits. It's okay. In short,
Any configuration may be used as long as the circuit can intermittently extract and output a write pulse signal inputted in synchronization with data transfer by the DMA controller at a predetermined cycle.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the present invention, arbitrary ruled lines can be printed without having a ruled line font, and therefore, ruled lines can be printed with a high degree of freedom without increasing the number of ruled line fonts, that is, the memory capacity. Printing can be realized. In addition, the DMA method is adopted for transferring the ruled line image data, and since the ruled line image data generated only for the raster lines on which ruled lines are to be printed is read out, high-speed printing processing is possible. In particular, since the horizontal broken line can be printed only by the intermittent control of the write enable signal, it becomes possible to print the horizontal broken line with any printing cycle by simply setting the intermittent control mode appropriately.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an example of the overall configuration of a printer device to which the horizontal broken line image generating device of the present invention is applied, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing one embodiment of the horizontal broken line image generating device according to the present invention. FIG. 3 is a circuit block diagram showing an example of the internal configuration of the write signal control section, FIG. 4 is a time chart for explaining an example of the operation of the device of this embodiment, and FIG. 5 is an example of the operation of the device of this embodiment. FIG. 1...Print control unit, 2...Raster image creation unit,
3... Printing section, 10... Control device, 20... Font memory, 30... Bus selector, 40... Character image buffer, 41... Horizontal ruled line image buffer,
42... Image buffer for vertical ruled lines, 50... Buffer selector, 55... PS converter, 56... OR gate, 60... I/O port, 70... DMA controller, 80... Write signal control unit, 82...
Counter, 83...Encoder, 90...Address decoder.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A ruled line command input means for inputting a ruled line command including a horizontal ruled line identification signal, a signal indicating a ruled line printing start and end position, a signal specifying a broken line, and a signal indicating line thickness; An image buffer for horizontal ruled lines having a storage capacity for the number of dots for main scanning lines; an input/output port to which black data of a predetermined number of bits is set when a ruled line command is input; If a horizontal ruled line is specified in , the data transfer start address and data transfer length corresponding to the signals indicating the ruled line printing start and end positions are set, and data is sent to the input/output port according to these data transfer start address and data transfer length. a DMA controller that sequentially transfers the set black data of the predetermined number of bits to the horizontal ruled line image buffer; By intermittently selecting and extracting the write pulses generated from the DMA controller in synchronization with the transfer cycle and inputting the selectively extracted pulse signals to the horizontal ruled line image buffer as a write enable signal, the horizontal ruled line image is a horizontal broken line image creation means for forming horizontal broken line image data in a buffer; and when a horizontal ruled line is specified in the input ruled line command, the horizontal ruled line image data is formed in the ruled line command a number of times corresponding to the information indicating the thickness of the line in the ruled line command; A horizontal broken line image generation device comprising: readout control means for repeatedly reading out the horizontal broken line image data created in a horizontal ruled line image buffer.