JPH0624044A - Area fill printing method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform an area fill processing of an outline font at a high speed by generating necessary printing data after area fill information is arranged at a non-printing dot part. CONSTITUTION:A print dot data 3 shown by black circles in the figure is an outline font after a coordinate transformation. A print head is to be scanned in the direction of the arrow, i.e., from right to left. A space between lines Ca and Cb expresses a part inhibited from being subjected to area fill. A space between the lines Cb and Cc is a part to be subjected to area fill. The left side of the line Cc is a part inhibited from being subjected to area fill. In order to transmit such information, area fill information 4 is stored in lines adjacent to the line Ca and the line Cc. In the case of the figure, the area fill information adjacent to the line Ca has a content for inhibiting the area fill until the line Cb. The area fill information 4 adjacent to the line Cc also expresses information on inhibiting the area fill.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an outline font fill printing method using a serial dot matrix printer.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There are various types of printers for printing characters and figures. The serial dot matrix printer transfers predetermined print data to the print head by a fixed amount, and prints on the paper while scanning the print head. FIG. 2 is an explanatory view of a general pseudo matrix printing method for explaining the printing operation of the wire dot printer. In the figure, consider a case where the wire dot printer prints diagonal lines by arranging the print dots 1 as shown in the figure diagonally. (A) and (b) show dot arrays when printing is performed by different methods by print heads having the same ability. In the print head shown in this example, eight print head wires are arranged in a direction perpendicular to the scanning direction. Then, these wires are driven and printed according to the print dot data.

Generally, the printing speed of this type of serial dot matrix printer is limited by the drive frequency of the print head wire. For example, in order to obtain a printing speed of 100 characters per second at a density of 100 dots per inch in the lateral direction, it is necessary to perform printing at the following speed. The character pitch is 10 characters per inch. Also, 1 inch is 2.54 cm. (1/100) ÷ (180/10) = 0.00056 sec / dot Under these conditions, the drive frequency of the print head wire is 1
It needs to be 800 hertz. In the figure, (a) uses a printing method using a pseudo matrix, and (b) uses a normal printing method.

If the same print head wire prints adjacent print dots 1 one after another, the dots can be arranged only at intervals of 1/180 inch at the above printing speed. Therefore, when an oblique line is to be drawn, the print dots 1 are printed in the arrangement as shown in (b). However, for example, as shown in (a),
It is assumed that the print dot 1 initially arranged at the bottom of the diagonal line is printed by the print head wire at the bottom of the print head. The next print dot 2 printed with the same print head wire is 1/180 inch apart. However, the print dot 1 printed by the second print head wire from the bottom is displaced from the bottom print dot 1 by 1/360 inch in the scanning direction as shown in FIG. With the above arrangement, it is possible to arrange the print dots at the apparent half pitch without doubling the drive frequency of the print dot wire. by this,
Higher quality printing than that shown in (b) can be achieved. Such a method is called pseudo matrix printing, and has been widely used in printers of this type conventionally.

On the other hand, when printing characters or graphics,
For printing the characters, a font memory was used that stored that bitmap for each character. However, outline fonts have come into widespread use in order to prevent an increase in this type of memory capacity and to facilitate enlargement and reduction of characters. Such an outline font is composed of the outline of a character, the coordinate data of its vertices, the data on the line segment connecting each vertex, and the like. Even if such an outline font is used, the serial dot printer can perform high-quality printing by utilizing the pseudo matrix.

[0006]

FIG. 3 shows an example of a general outline font. For example, the figure in the figure
It consists of the coordinates of the eight vertices and the data of the line segments that make up the contour connecting them. Usually, such an outline font is prepared for a sufficiently large image, and when printing is necessary, the coordinates are converted into the required size and reduced, and then the bitmap is generated. The one shown in FIG. 3 is, for example, a 32-point outline font. FIG. 4 shows an example explanatory view of a general reduced outline font. The font shown in FIG. 4 is a 10-point outline font. In such a case, the coordinates of the vertices of the figure shown in FIG. 3 are calculated to be 10/32, and, for example, the (X, Y) coordinates are (10, 10).
In the case of, the coordinates are converted into (3, 3).

Here, as can be seen by comparing the figures in FIGS. 3 and 4, when the outline font is reduced, 3
At 2 points, two lined rectangles were respectively filled, but when reduced to 10 points, a narrow rectangle becomes one vertical straight line and there is no filled portion. Therefore, when a bitmap is generated from such an outline font, it is necessary to appropriately control whether or not painting is necessary. In addition, it is preferable that this kind of data processing is a method in which arithmetic processing is as simple as possible. For this purpose, in order to add the filling data to the outline font, it is preferable that the amount of the data is as small as possible for effective use of resources.

The present invention has been made in view of the above points, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a fill printing method for efficiently performing outline font filling processing by utilizing the characteristics of a pseudo matrix. .

[0009]

According to the fill printing method of the present invention, when fill printing is performed on an outline font using a pseudo matrix, print dot data forming an outline is adjacent to each other in the scanning direction of the print head. In the non-printed dot portion on the pseudo matrix, fill information for designating whether or not to perform fill in the scanning direction of the print head is arranged in advance, while referring to the print dot data and fill information, The print data to be supplied to the print head is generated.

[0010]

According to this method, the fill information is stored in the non-print dot portion which is adjacent to the print dot data and which is not used for printing together with the print dot data forming the outline. When generating bitmap data for printing, if there is fill information whose content is “0”, for example, immediately behind the print dot data in the scanning direction of the print head, the print dot data remains unchanged. Fill continuously. When the fill information is "1", the subsequent fill is prohibited. Since the non-printed dot portion is not actually used in the printing operation, even if this kind of filling information is stored together with the printing data, the printing operation is not affected at all. Therefore, the pseudo matrix can be effectively used to efficiently generate print data.

[0011]

The present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the embodiments shown in the drawings. FIG. 1 is an outline font explanatory view showing an embodiment of the solid printing method of the present invention. The outline font in the figure is, as described above with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4, added to the data that has already been reduced and coordinate-converted by a certain scale factor, and fill information necessary for the fill control. is there. That is, the print dot data 3 shown by the black circles in the figure is an outline font after coordinate conversion. The print head is assumed to scan in the arrow shown in FIG. 1, that is, from right to left. In this case,
As shown in, the vertical line on the right side is represented by only one line, and the filling with the vertical line in the middle is not performed. That is, as shown in FIG. 1, the area between the line Ca and the line Cb is a non-painting prohibited portion.

The area between the line Cb and the line Cc is a filled area. Further, the left side of the line Cc is a non-painting portion. In order to convey such information, the fill information 4 is stored in the line adjacent to the lines Ca and Cc. The portion in which the fill information 4 is stored indicates the dot at a portion that is exactly 1/360 inch away from the line Ca, and when printing is performed on the line Ca, the portion in which the fill information 4 is stored. Is the non-printed dot portion. In this embodiment, the fill information 4 adjacent to the line Ca is the information of the content that prohibits the fill up to the line Cb, and the fill information 4 stored in the portion adjacent to the line Cc.
Is also information that prohibits filling. Also, the line Cb
The area adjacent to may be considered to have information that allows filling.

FIG. 5 shows a hardware block diagram for carrying out the method of the present invention. The present invention is implemented, for example, by the hardware shown in this figure. That is, this apparatus comprises an outline font data memory 5, a coordinate conversion unit 6, a fill information addition unit 7, a data expansion unit 8, a bitmap memory 9 and a printing unit 10. The outline font data memory 5 stores the outline font 11 which is the original form as shown in FIG. The coordinate conversion unit 6 is a part that performs coordinate conversion processing to obtain an outline font that is reduced from the original outline font 11 by a constant scale factor. The fill information addition unit 7 is a unit that adds the fill information 4 as described with reference to FIG. 1 to the outline font 12 output by the coordinate conversion unit 6. The data expansion unit 8 is a unit that reads the output of the filling information addition unit 7 and generates the print data 14 for printing. This forms a bitmap. The bitmap memory 9 is a memory for temporarily storing the print data 15. The printing unit 10 is a unit that reads out the print data 15 from the bitmap memory 9 by a predetermined amount and sends it to the print head to perform printing.

FIG. 6 is a diagram for explaining the bitmap data expansion operation of the present invention. The outline font as shown in FIG. 1 and the data in which the fill information 4 is added to the outline font are
Bit map data for filling is developed by the logical operation processing as shown in FIG. The equation (1) in FIG. 6 is the logical equation. In this equation, Dn represents data for one line of the outline font shown in FIG. The data for one line in the table shown on the lower side of FIG.
For example, the contents of the print dot data from the left end to the 16th line of the line b5 shown in FIG. 1 are shown. The contents of the print dot data 3 and the fill information 4 shown in FIG. 1 are 1 and the other parts are 0.

Here, Dn-1 in the table shown in FIG. 6 indicates print dot data to the right of the print dot data of interest. Further, Dn-2 indicates print dot data on the right side of the print dot data of interest. Further, a bar drawn on the character means that the contents of the data are inverted. That is, 0 means 1 and 1 means 0. Therefore, for example, if the operation of the equation (2) is performed on the 16th print dot data from the left of Dn, first, Dn
-1 is the data on the right side of the print dot data of interest and is 0. Further, Dn-2 is the data to the right of the print dot data of interest, and its content is 0. This has a bar, so it becomes 1 when inverted, but Dn
The product of -1 and Dn-2 gives 0. Therefore, (2)
When the equation is calculated, the 16th print dot data from the left is 0.

On the other hand, paying attention to the print dot data of the fifteenth Dn from the left, Dn-1 becomes 1, and Dn-2 becomes 1 when inverted. Therefore, the product of both is 1. As a result, the fifteenth print dot data in the equation (2) becomes 1. The calculation of the equation (2) from Dn is performed by such a method. The same applies to the case of the expression (3), and the logical operation shown in the expression is performed. As a result, the final Dn 'print dot data is obtained.

When printing is performed according to the bit map obtained by the data development as shown in FIG. 6, the result is as shown in FIG. FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of a printing example according to the method of the present invention. In the figure, the print dot data obtained by the arithmetic processing of FIG. 6 has an array as shown by the black circles 21 of FIG. Also,
The radius of the filled portion 22 of the print head wire is about 0.25 in consideration of the spread of the ink when printing.
Will be millimeters. Therefore, if printing is actually performed, it is possible to fill the entire area with the shape shown in the figure. The vertical lines in the figure are drawn at 1/360 inch intervals.
This allows good fill even when using a 1/360 inch pseudo matrix. Of course,
Similar processing can be performed for more complicated character and graphic contours.

FIG. 8 shows another outline font explanatory diagram according to the method of the present invention. In the case of the outline font in this figure, the distance between the line Cb and the line Cc is not an even multiple of 1/180 inch. That is, in the example described with reference to FIG. 1, the interval between the line Cb and the line Cc is a multiple of 1/180 inch. Therefore, exactly two lines are regularly sandwiched between the line Cb and the line Cc, and the printing as shown in FIG. 7 is performed. However, when the interval between the line Cb and the line Cc is an odd multiple of 1/360 inch as shown in FIG. 8, the filling process between them becomes special. In the case of the present invention, it is shown by the logical expression described above with reference to FIG. 6 that good filling is possible even in such a case.

FIG. 9 shows a logical operation process for expanding the outline font data as shown in FIG. 8 and a print example thereof. The logical operation processing in the figure is exactly the same as that already described with reference to FIG. 6, so a detailed description thereof will be omitted. However, according to such logical operation processing, the line Cb and the line shown in FIG. Between Cc, print dot data for filling is inserted only on the lines Cd and Ce. When printing is performed based on such print data, as shown in the lower side of FIG. 9, if the filling radius of one dot is about 0.25 mm, apparently continuous painting is possible.

The present invention is not limited to the above embodiments. In the above-described embodiment, the fill information stored adjacent to the print dot data has been described as the information indicating the prohibition of the subsequent fill, but this may mean the fill of the rest. That is, it is sufficient that adjacent to the line Ca, the line Cb, and the line Cc shown in FIG. 1, fill information for instructing whether or not the fill is to be performed or prohibiting the fill is stored in some form. The method of generating print data and the logical expression thereof may be other than those described above, and these processes may be performed using software or hardware using a gate or the like.

[0021]

As described above, the fill printing method according to the present invention is applied to the non-printing dot portion existing in the pseudo matrix used in the serial dot matrix printer.
Since the necessary print data is generated after arranging the fill information indicating whether to apply the fill or prohibit the fill, it is possible to execute the outline font fill process at high speed with a simple algorithm. .

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of an outline font according to the method of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of a general pseudo matrix printing method.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a general outline font.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a general reduced outline font.

FIG. 5 is a hardware block diagram for implementing the method of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of a bitmap data expansion operation of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a printing example according to the method of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram of another outline font according to the method of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating another example of printing according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 3 Print dot data 4 Fill information

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Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. When an outline font is filled and printed by using a pseudo matrix, the print head is formed at a non-print dot portion on the pseudo matrix which is adjacent to the print dot data forming the outline in the scanning direction of the print head. Toward the scanning direction of
Filling printing characterized in that fill information for specifying whether to execute the fill is arranged in advance, and the print data to be supplied to the print head is generated by referring to the print dot data and the fill information. Method.