JPH0618039B2 - Video signal generator for display - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a CRT display device when the contents of the memory are obtained from a video signal to be displayed on the CRT display device and the resulting image is printed on a video printer. The present invention relates to a display video signal generator capable of generating a video signal including the contents of a memory in a non-displayed portion and outputting the generated video signal to a video printer.

[Technical Background of the Invention and Problems] A CRT display device used as a man-machine interface of a computer or various control devices is a V
The display data is stored in a RAM (video RAM; display data storage memory), or in a memory area for storing programs and data. This device uses a character (character / character) that is display data stored in the memory.
(Symbol) The code data of the graphic pattern is sequentially read, and the code data is given to the character generator that stores the fonts of these dot patterns, and the character or graphic font of the character corresponding to the code data is displayed. Character string
Output from the generator, convert this to a video signal,
The image is given to a CRT display device to be displayed as characters or patterns.

As a conventional method for printing the contents displayed on the CRT display device on a printer or the like, the CRT
There has been a method in which the same signal as the video signal input to the display device is taken out, the display information therein is sampled and given to a video printer or the like for printing.

By the way, when working, it is often necessary to know the front and back of the display information on the CRT display. In such a case, the screen must be scrolled one by one to display the contents of the desired area on the screen, and then Since it is necessary to scroll back to the display information of the original area again, if you just refer to it slightly, there is the trouble of having to search for the area on the screen, and operability is inconvenient because the work is interrupted each time. Was also bad. In order to know the front and back of the display area, it suffices to output the information of the necessary area to another output device without displaying this on the CRT display device. However, when a normal printer is used as the output device, the output period to the printer is long, so all other work is stopped. Therefore, send it to a video printer that does not have such a situation, and take a hard copy. Is the best.
However, since the video printer only prints the display information in the video signal, it cannot print information other than the display information displayed on the CRT display.

[Object of the Invention] The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to enable a video printer to print and record even the contents of a memory area that is not displayed on a CRT display. To provide a display video signal generator.

[Summary of the Invention] That is, in order to achieve the above object, the present invention reads the stored contents of a memory having a capacity of one screen or more for one screen and outputs the read data as a video signal, or In a device in which a font corresponding to a code indicated by the data is obtained from a character generator, which is converted into a video signal and output, and given to a display device for display, the area provided for display is Means for irrelevantly setting a desired read area of the memory, and sequentially reading the memory contents of the set area and directly outputting this as bit image data to output as a video signal, or as code data Control means for giving a character generator, converting the output of the character generator into a video signal and outputting the video signal, and this control An area provided for displaying the image data obtained from the video signal output by the means, and a hard copy control means for giving the image data to a printer for hard copy output as print data. Regardless of the above, by setting a desired read area of the memory, the memory contents of the set area are sequentially read and directly output as bit image data to form a video signal, or as character code data.・ By giving to the generator,
The output obtained from the generator is converted into a video signal, the font part of these video signals is extracted as image data, and this image data is output to the printer as print data and a hard copy
By giving the video signal to the control means, it becomes possible to easily take a hard copy of the contents of a desired area in the memory and to refer to the image of the area not displayed on the screen of the display device. To

[Embodiment of the Invention] An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a display video signal generator according to the present invention.

In the figure, 1 is a CRT controller, 2 is a multiplexer, and 3
Is a refresh memory, 4 is a character generator, 5 is a clock generator, 6 is a frequency divider, 7 is a dot counter, 8 is a parallel-serial conversion register, 9 is a video control circuit, 10 is a CRT display, 11 is Hardcopy control circuit, 12
Is a printer.

The clock generator 5 generates a clock pulse of a predetermined rate, and the frequency divider 6 divides the clock pulse output from the clock generator 5 to generate a reference pulse signal for image display. It is what is output.

The dot counter 7 divides the pulse output by the frequency divider 6 and outputs the pulse, which is a character font or a graphic character font of the character generator 4 (hereinafter, simply referred to as a graphic font).
An output pulse is generated every time the number of horizontal constituent dots is detected. In addition, the CRT controller 1
Detects the current character position (column position), raster position, line (line) position to be displayed on the CRT display based on the output of the dot counter 7, and displays the refresh memory address and this address. The character (or graphic) code indicated by the contents is output, and the horizontal and vertical synchronization signals are output.

FIG. 4 is a modification of the present invention, and is an example of the configuration of a graphic display video signal generating device which displays a pure memory bit pattern in place of the character and graphic font display of FIG. Show. The basic structure and operation are similar to those of the embodiment shown in FIG.
However, there is no character generator 4 shown in FIG.

Therefore, the stored contents read from the refresh memory 3 are directly input to the parallel / serial conversion register 8 and converted into serial data.

Next, the CRT controller 1 described above will be described.
Here, the description will be centered on an example using the character generator 4. The CRT controller 1 has a structure as shown in FIG.
You can set the number of vertical characters to display and the total number of vertical characters.

The character counter 212 counts the output pulse of the dot counter 7 to count the current number of characters, and the horizontal display character detector 213 outputs CR from the output of the character counter 212.
It is detected whether or not the maximum number of characters that can be displayed in the horizontal direction on the screen of the T display 10 has been reached. Also,
The horizontal total character detection unit 214 counts the output of the character counter 212 to detect whether or not there is a dot signal output corresponding to the horizontal character number conversion value within the horizontal sweep time including the blanking period of the CRT display 10. The raster counter 215 counts the output of the horizontal total character detection unit 214 to obtain the current number of rasters by the horizontal sweep in the CRT display 10. Further, the raster number detection unit 216 generates an output and changes to the next line based on the count value of the raster counter 215 when the count value reaches the number of characters (or graphic) fonts in the line direction. Detect that. The line counter 217 counts the output of the raster number detector 216 to obtain the current display line, and the vertical display character detector 218.
Is for detecting whether or not the number of lines that can be displayed in one straight sweep period of the CRT display 10 has been reached. Based on the count value of the line counter 217, it is possible to know what line of characters is displayed. At the same time, when the set number of vertical characters for CRT display is reached, an output is generated. The flip-flop 219 is set by the output of the vertical display character detector 218 and reset by the output of the vertical detector 221.
The vertical total character detection unit 220 generates an output when the set total vertical character number is reached, and is normally set to the maximum number of lines in the vertical sweep period including the vertical blanking period of the CRT display 10. Detect the start time of vertical sweep. The vertical detector 221 includes a vertical total character detector 220, a horizontal display character detector 213, and a raster number detector 216.
A vertical synchronizing signal is generated based on the output of the line counter 217. This signal resets the line counter 217. Further, the flip-flop 222 is the horizontal display character detection unit 2
13 is set by the output of the horizontal total character detection unit 214.
Is reset by the output of. Flip flop 21
The outputs of 9, 222 are output as a signal indicating the horizontal display period via the AND gate 223. The count value of the raster counter 215 is output as a raster address, that is, a row address of the character generator 4. Further, the address generator 211 uses the dot counter 7
The addresses are sequentially output from the set start address in synchronism with the output of the above, and the character (or graphic) pattern of the display line is determined by referring to the outputs of the horizontal display character detecting unit 213 and the raster number detecting unit 216. Each time the horizontal display character detection unit 213 receives an output, the address corresponding to the display line is repeatedly output until the completion,
When the character pattern of the display line is completed, the operation moves to the address corresponding to the next display line, and the output of the vertical detection unit 221 returns to the start address and repeats the above operation.

The multiplexer 2 is a switching circuit for selecting an address signal on the address bus AB and an address signal output from the CRT controller 1. The refresh memory 3 is selected by the address signal supplied from the multiplexer 2. The parallel / serial conversion register 8 receives character (or graphic) font data for one line output from the character generator 4 as parallel data and synchronizes with the pulse output from the frequency divider 6. Then, the parallel data is converted into serial data by serially sending the data. Further, the video control circuit 9 converts the serial data into a luminance signal, receives a synchronizing signal from the CRT controller 1, adds a synchronizing signal as a television signal to the luminance signal, and outputs it as a video signal. It is a thing.

The CRT display 10 receives the video signal and displays the character (graphic), and the hard copy control circuit 11 receives the video signal and extracts the character (or graphic) font portion to form print data. Output to the printer 12. The printer 12 prints this print data to make a hard copy.

Next, the operation of the present apparatus having the above configuration will be described.

This device starts with the CRT controller 1.
Set the address, vertical character count of CRT display, and total vertical character count.

In this setting, the CRT controller 1
If it is assigned as / O (input / output device),
The address is specified by control means such as a processor (not shown), and the start address, C
The number of vertical characters on the RT display and the total number of vertical characters are given as data and set. Here, the vertical character number and the vertical total character number are set to standard values that can be displayed on the CRT display.

On the other hand, a clock pulse of a predetermined rate is output from the clock generator 5, and the frequency divider 6 divides the clock pulse output from the clock generator 5 to generate a reference pulse signal for image display. Output. The frequency division ratio of the frequency divider 6 is set so that a pulse having a normal rate suitable for displaying an image on the CRT display 10 can be obtained.

The output pulse of the frequency divider 6 is given to the dot counter 7 and the video control circuit 9, and the dot counter 7 counts this pulse and the counted value is the character (or graphic) of the character generator 4. -An output pulse is generated every time the number of dots in the horizontal direction of the font is reached. Further, the CRT controller 1 outputs an address updated by one address each time the dot counter 7 outputs from the set start address. This address is given to the refresh memory 3 via the multiplexer 2, and the stored content of the corresponding address is read from the refresh memory 3 and given to the character generator 4. As a result, of the character (or graphic) font of the code indicated by the stored contents read from the refresh memory 3, the character (or graphic) font at the first raster position is read, and the parallel / serial conversion is performed. It is input to the register 8. That is, the character (or graphic)
If the font has a structure of, for example, 7 × 9 dots, one character requires 9 rasters of the CRT display, and therefore, of these 9 rasters, the data string of the font to be displayed on the first raster is read. In the case of the above-mentioned dot configuration, the read-out font data string has 7 dots, so this is input to the parallel-serial conversion register 8 and converted into serial data. That is, the parallel / serial conversion register 8 receives the input 7
The parallel data for dots is set, and the frequency divider 6 is set.
This data is sequentially shifted and output by the output pulse of. Thereby, the parallel data is converted into serial data at a speed corresponding to the raster scan speed of the CRT display 10 and given to the video control circuit 9.

Next, when the count of the dot counter 7 advances by 1, the output address of the address generator 211 also advances by 1, so the content of this address is read from the refresh memory 3, and the read code is sent to the character generator 4. The font for the first raster is output in the same manner as described above, the parallel-serial conversion is performed, and the font is output to the video control circuit 9.

In this way, when the fonts for the number of characters that can be displayed in the first raster are read, the address update is stopped until the output of the horizontal total character detection unit 214 is received, and the output of the horizontal total character detection unit 214 is received. Next, the processing returns to the start address again, and the display contents on the second raster and its character (or graphic) font are read. This is controlled by the count value of the raster counter 215 of the CRT controller 1. That is, according to the above-mentioned example, the raster counter 215 does not return to the initial value until it counts 9, and during this period, the character counter 212 has a count capacity for the number of characters in the horizontal direction and manages the number of characters in the horizontal direction. Every time the count value for the number of characters corresponding to the horizontal sweep period is reached, the horizontal total character detection unit 216
This character counter 2 to return to the initial value by the output of
The count value of 12 is added to the start address to be the current address to be read. In FIG. 2, the output of the dot counter 7 is given to the address generation unit 211 to start the start address.
The address is incremented and output from the address generation unit 211 as an address for addressing the refresh memory 3.

The raster counter 215 is caused to count each time the output of the horizontal total character detection unit 216 is generated, and the vertical direction is calculated every time the count value of the raster counter 215 reaches the number of vertical constituent dots of the character (or graphic) font. Line counter 217 for managing the total number of characters in
, And the raster counter 215 and the character counter 212 are reset. And Raster
The count value of the counter 215 is the character generator 4
Character generator 4 as the raster address of
Output to.

Therefore, until the raster counter counts 9, the CRT controller 1 reads each font of the characters on the first line of the display character string (the font corresponding to the raster position indicated by the raster counter 217) from the character generator 4.・ Controls the generator 4, raster
When the counter 215 counts "9", the count value of the line counter 217 is incremented by 1 to specify the address of the character string storage position on the second line, and the second line is operated by the same operation as described above. Read the font of the eye character string.

When the count value of the line counter 217 reaches the total number of characters in the vertical direction of the CRT display, the CRT controller 1 generates a vertical sync signal when the count value of the raster counter 217 reaches the end of the line. It is given to the video control circuit 9.

The video control circuit 9 converts the serial data from the parallel / serial conversion register 8 into a video signal, and adds the sync signal from the CRT controller 1 to the CRT display 10. Therefore, the CRT
The contents stored in the refresh memory 3 for a predetermined number of words from the address corresponding to the start address are displayed on the display 10 as characters on the CRT display 10.

Displaying the contents of the refresh memory 3 on the CRT display 10 is as described above.
As shown in FIG. 3, the contents of one screen in the designated address area of the refresh memory 3 are read and displayed.

Next, a case where a hard copy of the content of the refresh memory 3 including an area other than the area displayed on the CRT display 10 is obtained from the video signal will be described.

In this case, the start address set value is set to a desired start address in advance and the number of lines occupying the desired area is set in the vertical total character detection unit 220 before the hard copy instruction is given. When a hard copy instruction is given from an input device such as a keyboard (not shown), a normal C is controlled by a control means such as a processor (CPU) not shown.
The start address set value is temporarily set to the desired start address from the set value in the RT display, and the number of lines occupying the desired area is set in the vertical total character detection unit 220.

Then, the above-described operation is performed, the counts of the character counter 212, the raster counter 215, and the line counter 217 are advanced, and the address generation unit 211 refreshes to advance the address until the set value of the vertical total character detection unit 220 is reached. From the memory 3, the contents of the area from the start address to the set value of the vertical total character detection unit 220 are read all at once in a form corresponding to the sweep of the television and output as a video signal. The control circuit 11 extracts the character (or graphic) font portion of the video signal as image data, and outputs this image data to the printer 12 as print data. Then, the printer 12 prints this print data to make a hard copy.

As described above, when a hard copy is obtained, by designating a desired start address and the total number of vertical characters corresponding to the required memory area, the refresh memory 3 is required regardless of the contents displayed on the CRT display 10. A hard copy of the storage contents of the area can be obtained.

It should be noted that the display image of the CRT is disturbed until the video signal of the contents of the desired area in the memory is completely sent to the hard copy controller circuit 11, but when the sending is completed, the control means automatically sets the set value in the normal CRT display. Will be returned.
Since the time required to completely send the video signal of the contents of the desired area in the memory to the hard copy controller circuit 11 is short, the influence of the disturbance of the display image of the CRT has practically no problem. Also, in the case of the graphic display type shown in FIG. 4, similarly, the memory contents of the designated area are continuously read and converted into video signals, so that the contents of the desired memory area can be hard copied.

[Effect of the Invention] As described above in detail, according to the present invention, it becomes possible to make a hard copy of the contents of the desired area of the refresh memory regardless of the contents displayed on the CRT display, so that scrolling is possible. Then, you don't need to call the screens in the desired area one by one and copy them.
Moreover, it is possible to provide a display video signal generator having a feature that a hard copy of the memory contents can be obtained without interrupting the work.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a CRT controller, FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the relationship between a refresh memory and its display area, and FIG. The figure is a block diagram showing a modification of the present invention. 1 ... CRT controller, 2 ... multiplexer, 3
…… Refresh memory, 4 …… Character generator, 5 …… Clock generator, 6 …… Divider,
7 ... Dot counter, 8 ... Parallel / serial conversion register, 9 ... Video control circuit, 10 ...
CRT display, 11 ... Hard copy control circuit, 12 ... Printer, 211 ... Address generation unit, 212 ... Character counter, 213 ... Horizontal display character detection unit, 214 ... Horizontal total character detection unit, 215 ... ... Raster counter 216 ... Raster number detection unit, 217 ...
Line counter, 218 ... Vertical display character detector, 2
19, 222 ... Flip-flop, 220 ... Vertical total character detection unit, 221 ... Vertical detection unit, 223 ... AND gate.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A screen for reading the stored contents of a refresh memory having a capacity of one screen or more and outputting the read data as a video signal, or a font corresponding to a code indicated by the data is used as a character. In a configuration in which the signal is obtained from a generator, converted into a video signal and output, and is supplied to a display device for display, the refresh memory is desired to include a region outside the region provided for the display. And a means for setting a read area, and the memory contents of the set area are sequentially read, and this is directly output as bit image data to be output as a video signal or output as code data.
Control means for giving a generator a video signal to output the output of the character generator and image data obtained from the video signal output by the control means, and printing the image data on a printer for hard copy output. A display video signal generator characterized by comprising a hard copy control means for giving as data.