JPH05261974A - Printing method of outline font - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To print high printing-grade characters without complicated correction processing by changing printing speed in the main or sub-scanning direction at the ratio of a printing output to outline front data in the number of character points with a reference and making character-dot spaces in both directions proportional to the number of character points. CONSTITUTION:The same data of forty point characters are provided as outline font data in the number of character points as a reference. When the same data of the forty point characters are coordinate-transformed into ten points, the number of the character points is read first. Speed conversion processing is conducted on the basis of the number of character points assigned. The speed displays speed in the X direction, and indicates speed in the main scanning direction of a printing head at the time of a serial bit printer. When the reference speed of the forty point characters is represented by V, execution printing speed V' is represented by VX1/4. The execution printing speed V' obtained is set, and printing is conducted. Accordingly, when speed in the Y direction, the scanning direction, is kept constant, the spaces of printing dots in the X direction are proportional to the number of character points.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an outline font printing method for performing coordinate conversion and printing control when printing an outline font.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Nowadays, due to the demand for high printing quality, outline fonts are being printed when characters are printed. As such an outline font printing method, there is a method in which a set of a plurality of points forming a character is used as coordinates and a line or a curve is interpolated between these coordinate points to print the outline font. FIG. 2 is an example of such outline font data. This outline font data is 40
The letter "H" of the point is displayed in a matrix of vertical and horizontal 1/80 inch pitch. In the drawing, each data of X and Y coordinates indicated by black circles "●" is stored in the printing memory as outline font data, and the coordinate points are interpolated by a straight line or a curve by the attribute information attached to each data.

Further, normally, an outline font of a character at a point different from a character at 40 points is obtained by coordinate conversion from the data at this point. FIG. 3 shows an example of 10 points. This shows a diagram in which the same letter "H" as in the case of FIG. 2 described above is coordinate-converted from 40-point outline font data to 10-point data. That is, this coordinate conversion does not change the vertical and horizontal dot densities depending on the size (points) of the characters, and the dot pitch of 1/180 inch
The point character is coordinate-converted into 100 × 100 and the point character is converted into 25 × 25.

Next, the operation of such coordinate conversion will be described. FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a conventional coordinate conversion process. First, the X and Y coordinates of the outline font data of the reference character point number are read (step S1). Here, it is assumed that the reference character point number is 40 points.
Next, the X coordinate conversion (step S2) and the Y coordinate conversion (step S) are performed based on the ratio of the reference character point number P to the designated character point number P '(here, 10 points).
Perform 3). Further, here, the values after the decimal point of the values X'and Y'as a result of the coordinate conversion are rounded off.

After that, hint information is read from the X and Y attribute information (step S4), and correction processing is performed by the read hint information with respect to X'and Y'that have been coordinate-converted in steps S2 and S3. (Hinting). This hint information is, for example, in the case of the above-mentioned letter "H", information such that two vertical lines are aligned on either the left or right side, and in the case of a 10-point character, the height (Y
The length in the direction is information such as how much. The outline font other than the reference character is printed by performing the correction process with such hint information.

[0006]

However, in the conventional outline font printing method, as is clear from FIG. 3, so-called rounding processing such as rounding is required for the coordinate conversion. There is a possibility that the thickness of the vertical line may be different between the left and right, and that the character width, the character height, etc. may differ depending on the character depending on the position of the coordinate point and the number of designated character points. That is, the X coordinates “10” and “25” for 40-point characters are originally “2.5” and “6.25” for 10-point characters, but are rounded to “3” and “6”, respectively. .. Therefore, the thickness of the vertical line on the left side of the drawing is 3 and the vertical line on the right side is 4 out of the two vertical lines of the 10-point character "H", and the thicknesses do not match. Therefore, as described in the flowchart of FIG. 4, hint information is added to each coordinate data, and the converted coordinates are corrected (hinted) according to the number of converted character points to obtain the line width, the character width, and the character. I had to make complicated corrections such as height.

Further, in addition to the problem that complicated correction is required as described above, in the case of a diagonal line or a curved line of a character, there is a problem in print quality as the number of character points becomes smaller. 5 and 6 are explanatory diagrams of this, and FIG.
40-point diagonal line data, and FIG. 6 shows 10-point diagonal line data. In FIG. 5, the hatched data is (1
0, 10) and (20, 90) X and Y coordinates. On the other hand, the diagonal data of 10 points is
When the above X, Y coordinate conversion and rounding are performed,
(3, 3) and (5, 23) are obtained, and the result of linear interpolation is shown in FIG. As is clear from FIG. 6A, the shaded line data is composed of three straight line data that are cut, and the print quality is not satisfactory.

When an extremely small number of points is specified with respect to the reference character point number, for example, a 40-point reference character has a 100 × 100 matrix and an 8-point character has a 20 × 20 matrix. As a result, the printing quality of lanes and curves is remarkably deteriorated, and there is a problem in that it is necessary to separately have data of a bitmap font designed for small characters.
The present invention has been made to solve the above conventional problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide an outline font printing method capable of printing characters of high print quality without requiring complicated correction processing. And

[0009]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an outline font printing method, which comprises outline font data having a reference character point number, and prints an outline font having a character point number different from the reference character point number. When outputting, the printing speed in the main scanning direction or the sub scanning direction is changed by the ratio of the number of character points of the print output and the outline font data of the reference character points, and the character dot spacing in the main scanning direction or the sub scanning direction is changed. Is proportional to the number of character points.

The outline font printing method of the second invention comprises outline font data of a standard character point number, and when an outline font having a character point number different from the standard character point number is printed out, a printout is carried out. The printing speed in the main scanning direction or the sub scanning direction is changed by the ratio of the number of character points of the above and the outline font data of the reference character point, and the character dot interval in the main scanning direction or the sub scanning direction is proportional to the number of character points. The first outline font printing method, and
A dot density fixed outline font printing method in which a printing speed is fixed when an outline font having a character point number different from the reference character point number is printed out; and the first outline font printing method and the dot One of the fixed-density outline font printing methods is selected.

[0011]

In the outline font printing method of the present invention, outline font data having a predetermined reference character point number is provided. When an outline font having a character point number different from this is printed out, first, the character point number of the character is checked. Next, the printing speed is changed at a ratio of the reference number of character points to the obtained number of character points, and the execution printing speed is obtained. Since the execution printing speed is proportional to the number of character points, the character dot interval also decreases as the number of character points decreases. Therefore, the correction process when an outline font having a character point number different from that of the reference character is printed out can be simplified and high-quality printing can be performed.

[0012]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a flow chart for explaining an embodiment of the outline font printing method of the present invention. First, in the present embodiment, it is assumed that the outline font data of 40-point character is provided as the outline font data of the reference character points, as described in the conventional technique. If the outline font data of 40-point character is converted into 10-point coordinates, the character point number is read first (step S1).

Next, speed conversion processing is performed based on the number of designated character points (step S2). What is this speed?
It is the speed in the X direction, and in the case of a serial dot printer, it indicates the carriage speed, that is, the speed of the print head in the main scanning direction. In the speed conversion process, the execution print speed is calculated by reference speed × (specified character point number / reference character point number). For example, when the reference speed of 40-point character is V, the execution print speed V'is V * 1/4.
Then, the execution print speed V'obtained in step S2 is set and printing is performed (step S3). Therefore, if the speed in the Y direction, that is, the sub-scanning direction is constant, the print dot interval in the X direction is proportional to the number of character points (print dot density increases).

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing the execution print speed for each designated character point number. As is clear from this figure, if the reference character point number is 40 and the execution printing speed in this case is V40, the execution printing speed for each designated character point number is a value proportional to each point number. That is, the smaller the number of points, the slower the actual printing speed, and therefore the higher the print dot density in the X direction. By storing such table data in the memory and determining the execution print speed from the table every time the number of designated character points differs, the speed conversion process can be easily performed.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a result of coordinate conversion of 40-point alphabetic character "H" into 10-point according to the present embodiment. As described above, when the 40-point character is coordinate-converted into the 10-point character, the execution printing speed V ′ is 1 /
Since it is 4, the print dot interval is also 1/4. Therefore, the dot pitch of the X coordinate of the 40-point character is 1/1
In the case of 80 inches, the dot pitch of the X coordinate of the 10-point character is 1/720, and the matrix is 100, which is the same as the case of the 40-point character. Also, Y
The coordinates are 1/180 inch and the same coordinate conversion is performed as before, and the matrix is 100 × (10/40) = 25.
Has become. In the case of the serial dot printer, this is due to the constraint of the wire pitch arranged in the vertical direction of the print head with respect to the Y coordinate.

As described above, since the conversion of the X coordinate is unnecessary in this embodiment, the thicknesses of the two vertical lines of "H" are equal, and the correction (hinting) in the X direction is performed at any number of character points. ) No processing required.

FIG. 9 shows a flowchart of the coordinate conversion process of this embodiment. That is, in the present embodiment, since the conversion of the X coordinate is unnecessary, only the conversion of the Y coordinate is performed. First, the Y coordinate data of the outline font data is read (step S1), and the Y coordinate is converted (step S2). This coordinate conversion is determined by the Y coordinate of the reference character x (point number P'of designated character / point number P of reference character) as in the conventional case. After that, the hint information from the Y coordinate attribute information is read (step S3), and the Y coordinate of the designated character is corrected (hinting process) by the hint information read here (step S4). Therefore, as is apparent from the comparison of the flowchart of FIG. 9 with the conventional flowchart of FIG. 4, the coordinate conversion of the X coordinate and the correction process are not necessary, so that the processing speed can be expected to be improved.

FIG. 6 (b) shows an example of the printing of the diagonal lines of this embodiment, which is shown in comparison with the conventional printing example of the diagonal lines {FIG. 6 (a)}. Thus, by setting the print dot pitch of the X coordinate to be 1/720 inch, it is possible to significantly improve the print quality as compared with the conventional print. Further, as a matter of course, the same effect can be expected in the curved portion.

Next, as another embodiment, a printing method will be described in which two types of printing, the outline font in the high print quality mode and the high speed print mode described in the above embodiment, can be selected. The high-speed printing mode is a printing mode that uses a fixed dot density outline font printing method with a fixed printing speed, and refers to, for example, the outline font printing method described in the related art. FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing the selection process of the printing method. First, as a setting means for selecting which of the above two types of printing methods is selected, outline printing mode sensing is performed by a DIP switch or operation switch of the printer, a command from an external device, or a menu mechanism of the printer (step S1). , A flag is set based on the sensed print mode (step S
2).

That is, the selection by the DIP switch and the operation switch of the printer is the selection by the hardware switch provided in the printer, and the command from the external device is a command given from the outside to the printer. And, based on the preset settings on the printer side,
One of the print modes is selected according to the command. The menu setting is to display or print out a setting menu for the above selection on a printer, and the operator selects according to the setting menu.

Next, the printer switching process after the outline printing mode flag is set will be described. FIG. 11 is a flowchart showing the switching process.
First, the outline printing mode flag set in the above-mentioned setting process is read (step S1), and it is determined whether the high printing quality mode is set or not by the flag determination (step S2). If it is determined in this determination that the high print quality mode is set, the high print quality mode is set in step S3, and if it is determined that the high print quality mode is not set, the high speed print mode is set (step S4).

In each of the above embodiments, the serial dot printer has been described as an example, but the invention is not limited to this type of printer, and in a page printer using a line head such as an LED (light emitting diode). Also, by controlling the driving cycle of the LEDs and the traveling speed of the paper, it is possible to obtain the same effect as that of each of the above embodiments. That is, in such a page printer, the LED line head is provided in a direction orthogonal to the paper feeding direction (actually, the photosensitive drum rotating direction, but here, for convenience of description, the paper feeding direction). The line head is configured to perform printing by turning on / off the light. Therefore, when the paper feed direction is the sub-scanning direction of the line head, the printing speed in the sub-scanning direction is changed by changing the LED driving cycle (light emitting cycle) or the paper running speed with respect to the sub-scanning direction. Therefore, the outline font can be printed by the same method as in the above embodiment.
In this case, the control is performed in the Y direction, whereas the above embodiment controls the character in the X direction.

[0023]

As described above, according to the outline font printing method of the first aspect of the invention, the ratio of the point number of the character to be printed and the point number of the reference character in the main scanning direction or the sub-scanning direction is used. Since the printing speed is changed so that the character dot spacing in the main scanning direction or sub-scanning direction is proportional to the number of character points, complicated correction processing is not required and the printing process can be speeded up, and high printing quality can be achieved. The outline font can be printed.

According to the outline font printing method of the second invention, in addition to the printing method of the first invention, a dot density fixed outline font printing method with a fixed printing speed is provided, and these are selected. Since it is possible, there is an effect that it is possible to provide a printer capable of printing two types of outline fonts depending on the application.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart for setting an execution print speed in an outline font printing method of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of general outline font data.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of 10-point printing by a conventional outline font printing method.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of coordinate conversion by a conventional outline font printing method.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of 40-point diagonal line data.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of 10-point diagonal line data of the conventional example and the example.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of an execution print speed with respect to a designated character point number relating to the outline font printing method of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram of coordinate conversion into 10 points in the outline font printing method of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of coordinate conversion processing in the outline font printing method of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart of another embodiment of the outline font printing method of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of a print mode switching process of another embodiment of the outline font printing method of the present invention.

Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁵ Identification code Office reference number FI technical display location G09G 5/24 9061-5G

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. When the outline font data of a standard number of character points is provided and an outline font having a number of character points different from the standard number of character points is printed out, the number of character points of the printout and the standard character point are output. Number of outline font data, the printing speed in the main scanning direction or sub-scanning direction is changed to make the character dot interval in the main scanning direction or sub-scanning direction proportional to the number of character points. Printing method. 2. When outline font data having a standard number of character points is provided and an outline font having a number of character points different from the standard character point is printed out, the number of character points of the printout and the standard character point Number of outline font data, the printing speed in the main scanning direction or sub-scanning direction is changed to make the character dot interval in the main scanning direction or the sub-scanning direction proportional to the number of character points. And a dot density fixed outline font printing method in which a printing speed is fixed when an outline font having a character point number different from the reference character point number is printed out, and the first outline font printing method, Any of the fixed dot density outline font printing methods The method of printing outline font and selects one.