JPH0474660A - Color printer control device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make it possible to print a sharp character which is not influenced by image data by digitizing image data and character data separately and later synthesizing digitized image data and digitized character data. CONSTITUTION:X and y which become a loop variable are initialized to 0, then data corresponding to (x, y) is retrieved from multivalue character data- based printed image memory 10 to substitute a variable (c) with the retrieved data and the variable is compared to any determined reference value. If one bit corresponding to points(x', y') on memory for digitized character data expan sion is '1' and this bit is set to '0', character data can be digitized. The digitized image data and digitized character data thus obtained are synthesized for each color component using each coordinate system. That is, data obtained by calculating the logic sum of bits equal to a positional coordinate correspond ing to each digitized image data and digitized character data of YMCBk is synthesized data.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention] [Industrial application field] The present invention relates to a color printer control device.

[Prior art] Conventionally, in color printers that do not have gradation, the dither pattern method and error diffusion method have been widely used as binarization techniques for printing data with gradation, that is, multivalued data. has been used. Furthermore, during binarization, it was common to develop image data and character data on the same memory.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in the conventional example described above, when image data and character data are developed on the same memory and binarized, for example, if a dither pattern method is used, the binarization is Since character information was already lost at this stage, the outline of the characters became jagged, like an enlarged bitmap font, and the quality of the characters deteriorated significantly. In addition, although the error diffusion method improves the jaggedness of the character outline, the outline of the character overlaid on the image is affected by the image data surrounding the character, so the contrast becomes low and the character The sharpness of the image tended to be lost. Therefore, it cannot be said that the performance of high-resolution color printer devices, which are currently becoming popular, is fully demonstrated. Furthermore, if error diffusion is used in a color printer to achieve the same level of quality for both images and characters, if you try to achieve this using software, the amount of processing involved will increase the system load, making it impractical. However, there was a problem in that if it were based on hardware, the cost of the system would increase.

The present invention has been made in view of the above conventional example, and an object of the present invention is to provide a color printer control device that can print clear characters without being affected by image data.

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above object, a color printer control device of the present invention has the following configuration. That is, the color printer control device includes a receiving means for receiving a print command from a host computer, and whether the print command received by the receiving means is a print command for image data or a print command for character data. a discriminating means for discriminating which one;
image data storage means for storing the image data according to color components; character data storage means for storing the character data according to color components; and binary image data for reading out the image data from the image data storage means and binarizing it. a character data binarization unit that reads out the character data from the character data storage unit and binarizes it, and an image that stores the data binarized by the image data binarization unit according to color components. a binary data storage means; a character binary data storage means for storing the data binarized by the character data binarization means according to color components; and composing means for reading character binarized data from the character binarized data storage means and synthesizing image data for each color component.

[Operation] With the above configuration, the present invention operates to binarize image data and character data separately, and then synthesize the binarized image data and the binarized character data.

[Embodiments] Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a host computer having a built-in printer control device and a color printer connected thereto, which is a typical embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, a host computer 1 includes an operating system 2 (hereinafter referred to as O8) and application software 3 for document creation (hereinafter referred to as O8).
(referred to as an application) and a color printer control device 5. Further, a color printer 4 that receives and prints binarized RGB or YMCBk data via an interface cable 14 is connected to the host computer 1.

In such a system, an application 3 that can handle text and images for document creation in color operates under O8.

FIG. 2 shows a block diagram showing the configuration of the color printer control device 5. As shown in FIG. In FIG. 2, the color printer control device 5 includes a print control dedicated CP016, a drawing command receiving I
/F section 17, printer device I/F section 13, data bus 1
8, a work memory 19 for programs, a work memory 20 for image data, a ROM 21, and image memories 7, 8, 10 and 11. The ROM 21 stores an image data processing program 6, a character data processing program 9, a composite data generation program 12, etc. for color print control. In addition, image memories 7.8.10 and 11 are RGB or Y, respectively.
It is assumed that memory brains for only several colors of MCBk are provided.

Based on the drawing command from the OS 2, the image data processing program 6 extracts only the data related to the image, draws it for each color component in the multivalued image data development memory 7, and converts the multivalued image data obtained as a result into color data. A binary image data development memory 8 is provided with a function of performing binarization development for each component. On the other hand, the character data processing program 9 extracts only character-related data based on the drawing command from the OS 2, and draws it for each color component in the multi-value character data development memory 10, and the multi-value character obtained as a result is Data is analyzed for each color component, and if it exceeds a certain standard value, the corresponding bit is turned on, and if it is not, it is turned off and binary character data development memory 1
1 is equipped with a function to perform binarization expansion. The composite data generation program 12 also has a function of composing bitmap data developed in the binary image data development memory 8 and the binary character data development memory 11.

Furthermore, the printer I/F unit 13 transmits the data synthesized by the composite data generation program 12 to the color printer 4.

A control procedure for separately developing and composing image data and character data in the system configured as described above will be described below with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG.

First, in step S1, the color printer control device O32
Receive drawing instructions from. The command system of the drawing commands received here and the communication method with O8 may be of any particular type. Next, it is determined whether the drawing command received in step S2 is related to images or characters, and if it is related to images, step S3
Proceed to step S4, and draw each color component of RGB or YMCBk in the multivalued image data drawing memory 7. If it is related to characters, proceed to step S4 and write it in the multivalued character data drawing memory 10 as in the case of image data. , and draw each color component. In this embodiment, for the sake of explanation, drawing is performed for each color component of YMCBk.

At this time, the YMCBk memory 7 where data is drawn
．． 10, there is a fifth point on top to give position information to each dot.
As shown in the figure, for each YMCBk, set the address of the dot corresponding to the upper left corner of each document to the origin (0,0).
A virtual coordinate system is provided with the X-axis pointing to the right and the Y-axis pointing downward from the origin.

In step S5, it is determined whether the drawing work has been completed, and if it is the final drawing command, the process advances to step S6, and if a continuous drawing command is received, the process returns to step Sl and repeats the same process.

In step S6, the obtained multivalued image data is developed into binary image data using an appropriate binarization technique such as a dither pattern method or an error diffusion method.

The expanded binary image data has a virtual coordinate system (X'', y'
) will be established.

Next, the multivalued character data obtained in step S7 is binarized according to the processing procedure shown in the flowchart of FIG. Here, too, in order to provide position information to the binarized data, a virtual coordinate system (x', y
' ) will be provided.

First, in step 5101, set the loop variables X and y to O
In step 5102, data corresponding to (x + y) is retrieved from the multi-valued character data drawing memory 10 and substituted into variable C, and in step 5103 this is compared with an arbitrarily determined reference value t. If C exceeds the reference value t, the process advances to step 5104; otherwise, the process advances to step 5105. In step 5104, the points of interest on the current multi-valued character data drawing memory (
1 bit corresponding to the point (x', y') on the memory for binary character data expansion corresponding to x, y)
Then, in step 5105, the character data is binarized by setting this bit to "0". In the case of this embodiment, the color included in the binarized character data is the binarized color component, that is, Y (Yellow:
Yellow), M (Magenta),
8 colors: yellow, magenta, cyan, black, red, green, blue, and white expressed by the combination of the three colors C (Cyan Nijian) and the white of the printing paper.
Becomes a color.

Next, in step 5106, the variable X is incremented and the point on the right is set as the point of interest for the next process. If the point of interest exceeds the right edge of the document as a result of incrementing the variable This is the point of attention in the processing. As a result of incrementing the variable y, if the point of interest exceeds the bottom edge of the document, the process ends.

By performing the processing from steps 5101 to 5109 described above, it is possible to perform binarization without damaging the outline information of characters by performing the processing on each of the YMCBk multivalued character data drawing memories.

In step S8, the binary image data and binary character data obtained in steps S6 and S7 are synthesized for each color component using each coordinate system. That is, in this embodiment, the combined data is obtained by calculating the logical sum (OR operation) of the bits corresponding to the corresponding position coordinates of each YMCBk binary image data and the binary character data.

Data synthesized in this way always has the color components of binary character data.

In other words, this means that the combined data is printed so as to reflect the color components of the character data.

Finally, the data synthesized in step S8 is processed in step S9.
to the color printer 4 via the printer device I/F section 13.
Output to.

According to this embodiment, the image data is subjected to a relatively simple method such as the dither pattern method, and the character data is subjected to the binarization processing according to the characteristics of the image data using the method described above. Because it can be done
It is possible to print characters with clear outlines that are not affected by image data without using special hardware. This is particularly effective in systems that handle characters using outline fonts, and by expressing characters in multiple colors, it also contributes to the effective use of color printers.

In this embodiment, the color printer control device has been described as a built-in host computer type, but the present invention can also be applied to an externally connected color printer control device.

[Effects of the Invention] As is clear from the above description, according to the present invention, by independently performing binarization processing that matches the characteristics of image data, different types of image data can be prevented from interfering with each other. This has the effect of printing clear image data.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a host computer having a built-in printer control device and a color printer connected thereto, which is a typical embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the printer control device. , Figure 3 is a flowchart showing the processing procedure for separately binarizing image data and character data, and finally combining and outputting the two data. A flowchart showing the processing procedure for digitization, and Figure 5 shows the positional relationship between the virtual coordinate system set when drawing and developing multivalued data and binary data on the image memory and the document. It is a diagram. In the figure, 1... host computer, 2... operating system, 3... application software for document creation, 4... color printer device, 5... color printer control device, 6... Image data processing program, 7... Memory for drawing multivalued image data, 8... Memory for developing binary image data, 9... Character data processing program, 1
0...Memory for drawing multivalued character data, 11...
・Binary character data development memory, 12...Synthetic data generation program, 13...Printer device I/F
Part, 14...Interface cable, 16...CPU dedicated to print control, 17...Drawing command reception I/F
section, 18 data bus, 21...ROM.

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) A color printer control device, comprising: receiving means for receiving a print command from a host computer; and whether the print command received by the receiving means is a print command for image data or for character data. a determining means for determining which one is a print command; an image data storage means for storing the image data according to the color components; a character data storage means for storing the character data according to the color components; image data binarization means for reading data from the image data storage means and binarizing it; character data binarization means for reading the character data from the character data storage means and binarizing it; and the image data. image binarized data storage means for storing the data binarized by the binarization means according to color components; and image binarization data storage means for storing the data binarized by the character data binarization means according to color components character binarized data storage means for storing the image binarized data according to the image binarized data storage means; read out the character binarized data from the character binarized data storage means for each color component; 1. A color printer control device, comprising: a composition means for generating image data composited with a color printer. (2) The character data binarization means includes a comparison means for comparing each bit of each color component constituting the character data with a predetermined value, and binarization of each color component based on the comparison result by the comparison means. Claim 1 characterized in that it has a determining means for
The color printer control device described in Section 1. (3) The combining means includes a detection means for detecting a bit position of a color component of the character binary data corresponding to each bit position of each color component of the image binary data; A composite bit that generates a new bit value based on the value of each bit of each color component and the value of the bit at the bit position of the corresponding color component of the character binary data detected by the detection means. 2. The color printer control device according to claim 1, further comprising a generating means.