JPH0632953B2 - Dot printer printing method - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a print control system for a serial dot printer in which wire rows of print heads are arranged in parallel.

(Prior Art) In the print head of the conventional serial dot printer, as shown in FIG. 5, the dot element rows are arranged in one vertical column,
The dot matrix (pixel pattern) used is the 7th
The full matrix shown in the figure, which represents one character with 8 dots in the horizontal direction, and the pseudo matrix, which represents one character with 12 dots in the horizontal direction, as shown in FIG. 6, are general.

By the way, since the printing speed of this type of printer is limited by the response period of the dot elements of the print head, the minimum dot interval (pixel interval) becomes large when the same dot element is continuously driven in the lateral direction. It is well known that the printing speed can be increased by performing such operation. Now, in the full matrix of FIG. 7, assuming that the minimum dot interval when printing the same dot element continuously in the lateral direction is the basic dot interval P, the minimum dot interval D in the pseudo matrix of FIG.
It is clear that the printing speed can be increased at a ratio of 4: 3 by printing at 4 / 3P and using the pseudo matrix, and the pseudo matrix is used in many cases. For example, if the response cycle of the head is 1 ms, one character will be printed in 6 ms and 8 ms, respectively. 8th to further increase the printing speed
A printer is known in which two sets of dot element arrays of the print head shown in the figure are arranged in parallel. In this case, print the columns 1, 2, 5, 6, 9 in Fig. 6 with the dot element row on the right side and leave the remaining columns.
It is controlled so that 3, 4, 7, and 8 are printed by the left dot element row. This is illustrated in FIG. 9, and as is apparent from the same figure, the interval d between the laterally continuous dots is twice as large as the interval D in the case of the head of one row in FIG. In the case of in-line heads the printing speed can be doubled.

(Problems to be solved by the invention) However, in the dot matrix of the letter "M" shown in FIG. 10, as shown in the same figure, d has 1.5 times as many combinations as the one-row head shown in FIG. Therefore, even if a print head having two rows of dot elements was used, the printing speed was limited to 1.5 times. In addition, although it seems that the above problem can be solved by changing the column allocation of the left and right dot element rows in FIG. 10, a combination of 1.5 times d occurs in other parts,
After all, the printing speed cannot be increased more than 1.5 times by changing the column allocation.

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to improve the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art and provide a printing method for a high speed dot printer.

(Means for Solving Problems) In order to solve the above problems, the present invention is used in a printing method of a dot printer for printing a dot matrix pattern by a print head having two dot element arrays arranged in parallel. The dot element columns are alternately changed to print dots in the same row.

(Operation) In the above configuration, the dots in the same row are printed by alternately changing the dot element columns to be used, so that the minimum dot interval when the same dot elements are continuously driven in the row direction becomes large.

Therefore, the above problems can be solved and the printing speed can be increased.

(Example) FIG. 1 shows an example in which the character "M" is printed according to the present invention. The black circles are printed by the dot element array on the right side of the print head shown in FIG. 8, and the white circles are the left dots. Printing is performed by the element array. In this description, the print head moves from left to right to perform printing. In each dot element, the first dot appearing in the dot matrix is printed in the right dot element row, and the next dot appears in the left dot element. By controlling the individual dot elements of the left and right dot element rows alternately so that they are printed in rows, the spacing between the dots printed in the horizontal direction in each dot element is controlled to be 4 grids or more. Is.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention. A microprocessor (CPU) 1 for controlling a printer and a read only memory (ROM) 2 in which a program and dot matrix pattern data such as character symbols are stored. When,
Random access memory (RAM) 3 for temporarily storing data received from the outside, I / O driver 4 driven by a command from CPU 1, and bus connecting CPU 1, ROM 2, RAM 3, and I / O driver 4 And line 5. Further, the I / O driver 4 has an interface circuit with an external device (not shown), a print head, a line feed motor,
A spacing motor for moving the print head in the print direction is connected.

With the circuit thus configured, the CPU 1 receives print data (character code) and control data from an interface unit (not shown) according to a program stored in the ROM 2.
The printer starts printing when the above print data for one line is received, but as a method of generating print timing, a method of obtaining a timing pulse by a slit encoder synchronized with a spacing operation and a pulse motor for a spacing motor are used. There is known a method in which the CPU 1 generates the timing for stepping the pulse motor to obtain the printing timing.

FIG. 3 is a control flow chart of the present invention. The CPU 1 creates print data for a print head having two dot element arrays arranged in parallel at each print timing for one column. Hereinafter, FIG. 3 will be described in detail. In the figure, each logical operation is indicated by: “logical product”, “+” logical sum, “exclusive OR”, and “−” complement.
, Is the number of each step. The symbols Rd and Ld are data printed by the right and left dot element arrays, respectively. However, as shown in FIG. 8, the separation distance l is set between the right and left dot element rows.
Therefore, for example, when printing from left to right, the data is printed with the dot element row on the right side and with the dot element row on the left side on the same dot column when printing a certain dot column. When you proceed, the dot element row on the left is printed. REG is a register for logical operation of the CPU 1, and stores which column of dot elements is used. In the following example, "0" is the right column and "1" is the left column. Further, it is assumed that it is cleared to "0" before printing.

PDn (n = 1 to 9) is dot matrix data (character generator data) stored in the ROM 2.

FIG. 4 is a table showing the state transition at each print timing of each dot column of REG, PDn, Rd, and Ld when the character “M” shown in FIG. 1 is processed by the above print data creation program. Yes, each row in each column corresponds to each row in the dot matrix. First, when the CPU 1 detects the printing timing of the first dot column of a character, it outputs the print data of the right and left dot element rows by the logical operation of ▲ ▼ PD ₁ and REG PD ₁ as shown in the step of FIG. create. That is, at this time, the data of the dot matrix pattern (black circled portion of column 1 in FIG. 1) corresponding to the left vertical line of the character “M” is represented as a column of “1” in the first column of PD ₁ . Then, the logical operation for each row is performed on this column 1. In this case, since REG is cleared to "0" as described above, the print data Ld of all the dot elements in the left dot element row is "0", and the dot elements in the left row are not used. On the other hand, all the bits can be used for the inverted ▼ of the REG data. And, intended by PD ₁ , PD
₁ is "1" bits with the corresponding bits of "1", the print data Rd of those other bits are "0" is obtained.
Next, in step, the logical operation of REGPD ₁ is executed and the data of REG is updated. This allows
If a certain bit of PD ₁ is “0”, that is, if it is a non-printing dot, the REG data of the bit corresponding to that bit does not change, but if it is “1”, that is, if it is a printing dot, the bit corresponding to that bit REG data is inverted.
That is, "1" is inverted to "0", and "0" is inverted to "1". This means that each time a dot is printed, the dot element array used changes alternately in the row direction. The result of the above operation is Rd and Ld in column 1 and column 2 in Fig. 4.
Is the REG value. After the CPU 1 executes the print data creation processing, the data Rd on the right wire row drives the print head through the I / O driver 4 in FIG. 2, and the data Ld on the left dot element row is the 8th data as described above. The CPU 1 controls to print when the print head moves by 1 in the figure and the left dot element array reaches the first dot column. Next, in the second dot column, since PD ₂ is all “0”, print data is not output to both the right and left dot element rows in the step, and the result obtained by the logical operation of REGPD _{2 in} the step is stored in REG. Then, the logical operation of the third dot column is provided. At this time, since the result of the logical operation is "1" for the first to seventh rows, the left dot element row can be printed for the corresponding row. Also, in the next third dot column step,
Since only the second row of PD ₃ is "1" and REG is "1" for the first to seventh rows as described above, printing is performed only on the second row element of the left dot element row. Data is given. In the step, the right dot element row is selected only for the second row by the logical operation, and the left dot element row remains as it is for the remaining rows. Thereafter, the same processing is repeated at each print timing, and the processing up to column 9 is performed and printing is performed. In column 9, by repeating the steps as shown in FIG. 3 as described above, the dot element rows that can be printed in the same row alternately change according to the history up to the previous column 8, The right and left dot element rows are used for the fourth and fifth rows,
The first to third and sixth to seventh rows are selected so that the left dot element row is used.

The fourth figure shows the process of the above process for each column.
It is a figure.

(Effects of the Invention) As described in detail above, according to the present invention, the dots in the same row are printed by alternately changing the dot element rows to be used, so that the same dot elements are continuously driven in the row direction. The minimum dot spacing at the time of printing becomes large and the printing speed can be increased.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a second example of dot matrix printing according to the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a flow chart of print data creation, and FIG. 4 is a diagram in which a letter "M" is processed according to the flow chart of FIG. Shows the print head in one row, FIG. 6 shows the dot pattern of the character “A” in the pseudo matrix, FIG. 7 shows the dot pattern of the character “A” in the full matrix, and FIG. 8 shows the dots in two rows in parallel. FIG. 9 shows a print head of the element array, FIG. 9 shows an example of printing the character “A” by the conventional method, and FIG. 10 shows an example of printing the character “M” by the conventional method. 1 ... CPU, 2 ... ROM, 3 ... RAM 4 ... I / O driver, 5 ... bus line

Front page continuation (72) Inventor Nobuo Wakasugi 1-7-12 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo Within Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (56) Reference JP-A-56-63677 (JP, A)

Claims (1)

[Claims] According to a dot matrix data stored in a character generator, a print head having two parallel dot element arrays in which adjacent dots are horizontal,
In a dot printer printing method for printing a dot matrix pattern, a column of dot matrix data having a bit number equal to the number of dots in a column and having a register which is cleared to 0 prior to printing is stored in the character generator. And the contents of the register for each bit to determine the data to be printed in one dot element column, and the bit contents of the column contents of the character generator and the complement of the contents of the register. The data to be printed on the other dot element row is determined by the logical product of the two, and the data is printed based on these data, and the bitwise exclusive OR of the content of the register and the content of the column of the character generator Updating the contents of a register and using the updated contents of the register By,
A printing method for a dot printer, characterized in that data to be printed in each dot element row is determined for the next column.