JPH064241A - Method and device for printing - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform an efficient printing process in consideration of proper order corresponding to the amount of data by printing out stored data sequentially in the order determined on the basis of the stored amounts of print data of respective jobs. CONSTITUTION:Host computers 1-3 output print data consisting of print data and control commands to a printer device 100. A receiving buffer 41 is stored with the print data received from the host computers 1-3. A printer control unit 101 is equipped with a CPU 120 such as a microprocessor, a ROM 111 stored with the control program of the CPU 120 and various data, a RAM 112 which is used as a work area for the CPU 120 and temporarily stored with various data. etc. Thus, the received print data are all stored in the receiving buffer 41 and after the pages of the data are counted, the print data are analyzed and developed into a bit map, thereby generating image data for printing.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printing method and apparatus, for example, a printing method and apparatus for printing based on print information sent from a plurality of external devices.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A printer is known which is connected to a communication line such as a LAN and receives and prints print information sent from a plurality of computers connected to the line. Such a printer device includes a buffer for receiving and storing print information, and performs printing in the order of data received and stored in the buffer.

[0003]

For this reason, in the above-mentioned conventional example, since the printing is executed in the order in which the sheets are sent, without considering the number of printed sheets (processing time required for printing) at all, ) After receiving a large amount of print data,
Even if the print data having a small amount of data is received, the print data received thereafter is not printed until after the print data having the large amount of data received first is printed. Therefore, even if the print data is such that the printing ends immediately when the printing starts, the user is made to wait for a long time.

Further, even when print data is received from a plurality of computers and printed, there is only one type of printing method that is output, and therefore, looking at the print result shows that it is one. It is the same as printing data from a computer, and there is a problem that it is not known from which computer the printing data is printed.

The present invention has been made in view of the above conventional example, and an object of the present invention is to provide a printing method and apparatus for analyzing received print data to determine a printing order and printing. It is another object of the present invention to provide a printing method and apparatus for printing print data from a plurality of computers so that it can be determined which computer the print data is from.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, the printing apparatus of the present invention has the following configuration. That is,
A printing apparatus that receives print data from a plurality of external devices and prints the print data, the storage unit storing the received print data for each job, and the printing of the print data stored in the storage unit for each job. It has a determination unit that determines the order of jobs to be printed based on the data amount, and a printing unit that sequentially prints the print data stored in the storage unit in the order determined by the determination unit.

In order to achieve the above object, the printing method of the present invention comprises the following steps. That is, a printing method for receiving print data from a plurality of external devices and printing the print data,
The method includes a step of storing the received print data in association with each external device, and a step of printing each of the stored print data corresponding to each of the external devices in a distinguishable manner.

[0008]

With the above arrangement, the order of jobs to be printed is determined based on the print data amount for each job of the print data stored in the storage unit that stores the received print data for each job. The print data stored in the storage means is sequentially printed in the order described above.

According to another aspect of the invention, the received print data is stored in association with each external device, and the print data corresponding to each of the stored external devices is printed in an identifiable manner. To do.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT A preferred embodiment of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Before describing this embodiment, first, the configuration of a laser beam printer (LBP) of this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG.

FIG. 2 is a sectional view showing the internal structure of the laser beam printer (LBP) 100 of this embodiment.
P100 is a data source (not shown) (host computer, etc.)
Character pattern registration and fixed form (form data)
It is configured to be able to register etc.

In FIG. 2, reference numeral 100 denotes an LBP main body, which inputs and stores character information (character code) supplied from an externally connected host computer or the like, form information, macro commands, and the like. A corresponding character pattern, form pattern, or the like is created according to the information, and an image is formed on a recording paper, which is a recording medium. Three
Reference numeral 00 is an operation panel on which various switches for operation and LED displays are arranged, and 101 is a printer control unit for controlling the entire LBP 100 and analyzing character information and the like supplied from the host computer. The printer control unit 101 mainly converts character information into a video signal of a corresponding character pattern and outputs it to the laser driver 102.

The laser driver 102 is the semiconductor laser 10.
3 is a circuit for driving the semiconductor laser 3, and switches the semiconductor laser on and off in accordance with the input video signal. The laser light 104 is swung in the left-right direction by the rotary polygon mirror 105 to scan the electrostatic drum 106. As a result, an electrostatic latent image having a character pattern is formed on the electrostatic drum 106. The latent image is formed on the developing unit 107 around the electrostatic drum 106.
And then transferred to a recording paper. A cut sheet is used for this recording paper, and the LBP10 cassette recording paper is used.
The paper feed roller 10
It is taken into the apparatus by the 9 and the conveyance rollers 110 and 111 and is supplied to the electrostatic drum 106.

Next, FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a connection configuration between a printer device 100 according to a first embodiment of the present invention and a host computer.

In FIG. 1, reference numerals 1, 2 and 3 denote host computers, which output print data including print data and control commands to the printer device 100. Four
A reception buffer 1 stores print data received from the host computers 1 to 3. Reference numeral 43 denotes a printer engine unit whose details are shown in FIG. Printer control unit 1
01 is a CPU 120 such as a microprocessor, a CPU
ROM 111 storing a control program for 120 (corresponding to the flowchart of FIG. 4) and various data, CPU
A RAM 112, etc., which is used as a work area for 120 and temporarily stores various data, is provided.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the structure of print data sent from the host computer to the printer of this embodiment. In FIG. 3, the print data is stored in the reception buffer 41 in the order received.

In FIG. 3, each of 301 and 302 indicates a unit (job) of one print data, and each print data is always sandwiched between a “print start command” 310 and a “print end command” 311. It is sent from the host computer. Since a plurality of host computers are connected to the printer device 100, this is configured to eliminate interference of print data between the host computers.

Next, a print processing procedure in the printer apparatus 100 of the first embodiment having the above-described configuration will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. This process is RO
This is achieved by the control processing of the CPU 120 executed according to the control program stored in M111. <When there is no print data in the reception buffer 41 and the control unit 101 is not performing the image data creation process for printing> First, the print data sent from any of the host computers 1 to 3 in step S1. When the first 1 byte is received, the process proceeds to step S, and it is checked whether or not there is print data in the receiving buffer 41 that is currently undergoing receiving processing, or that has been received but has not been printed yet. There is no print data being received,
When the reception buffer 41 is empty, the process proceeds to step S3, and all the print data received in step S1 is stored in the reception buffer 41 (from the print start command to the print end command). At this time, the number of pages of print data is counted by a counter.

In this way, all the received print data are stored in the reception buffer 41, and when the counting of the number of pages is completed, the process proceeds to step S4, the print data is analyzed and developed into a bit map, and the image data for printing is printed. To create.
The laser driver 1 uses the image data created in this way.
02 to drive the semiconductor laser 103 to perform printing / recording by electrophotography. When one page of print data is output and printing is performed in this manner, step S
In step 5, the counter indicating the number of pages of print data is decremented by 1, and it is checked in step S6 whether printing of all received pages has been completed. When all the pages received in this way are printed, the process proceeds to the next process. If not, the process returns to step S4 to execute the above-described print process.

<When the print data is stored in the reception buffer 41, and the print data is received from another host computer while the control unit 101 is performing the process of forming the image data based on the print data. > When the first byte of the print data sent from the host computer is received in step S1, the process proceeds to step S2,
It is checked whether or not there is print data currently being processed in the reception buffer 41. If there is print data being processed, the process proceeds to step S7, all the received print data is stored in the reception buffer 41, and the counter indicating the page number of the print data is also incremented in the same manner as in step S3. Next, in step S8, it is checked whether the print data currently being processed has been processed. If not, the process proceeds to step S13, in which it is determined whether data is received from the host computer. If so, the process proceeds to step S1. If not, the print data being processed is continuously processed. In this way, the print data sent from the host computer is also stored in the receive buffer 41 after the previous print data until the processing of the print data stored in the receive buffer 41 is completed.

In step S8, when all the print data being processed is developed into image data and transferred to the printer engine section 43, the process proceeds to step S9, and the print data in the reception buffer 41 is examined.

In this embodiment, at this time, the print data from the two host computers are both received in the reception buffer 4.
If it is stored in step 1, then in step S9,
The number of paper discharge commands (command for printing data for one page and discharging) between the “print start command” and the “print end command” of each of the two print data is counted. That is, the number of pages of print data included in each of the two print data is counted. Next, in step S10, the counted number of printed pages is compared for each unit of print data (for each print data (job) from each host computer).

Next, in step S11, as a result of this comparison, the reception buffer 41 performs the analysis, conversion (creation of image data) and printing from the print data of the job having a small number of print pages in steps S4 to S6. The order of the print data stored in is sorted in print data units (job units) in the order of the print data having the smallest number of pages to be printed.

Next, in step S12, it is checked whether the next print data has not been received from the host computer at this time, and if it has been received, the process returns to step S1.

On the other hand, if print data from the host computer is not received in step S12, step S4
Then, according to the contents of the reception buffer 41, the print data is analyzed in the order stored therein and converted into image data. Next, in step S5, the counter indicating the number of pages of print data is decremented by 1, and in step S6 it is determined whether or not the value of the counter is "0", that is, whether printing of the print data is completed. If not, the process returns to step S4. Here, when all pages of one print data are printed, it is checked whether or not other print data is stored in this reception buffer 41, and if there is other print data, the process returns to step S4 again and the next print data To print. In this way, when the two print data are stored in the reception buffer 41 as described above, steps S4 to S6 are repeated twice.

In the first embodiment described above, the number of pages of each print data is compared in step S10 of FIG. 4, but the present invention is not limited to this, and the ratio of the number of pages, printing It can also be realized by comparing the number of characters and the like.

Further, even if the number of printed pages and the number of printed characters are almost the same, if it is found that the data (for example, graphic or image data) which obviously takes a long processing time is included in the print data, The order can be changed so that the print data including such graphic data is printed later.

Further, in the above-described first embodiment, the order of the print data stored in the reception buffer 41 is rearranged, but a pointer for designating the print data to be printed is provided and the instruction by the pointer is changed. You can also respond by doing.

As described above, according to the first embodiment,
When multiple host computers use one printer to print, even if the amount of print data is small, the printer is executing the print processing from other host computers, so the printing ends. It has the effect of eliminating the problem that the waiting time until the time becomes significantly longer.

FIG. 5 shows a printer 10 according to the second embodiment of the present invention.
In the block diagram showing the schematic configuration of 0a, portions common to those in FIG. 1 described above are denoted by the same reference numerals, and description thereof will be omitted.

Reference numerals 31 and 32 are interface sections provided corresponding to each host computer. The printer control unit 101a includes a CPU 210 and a CPU 210.
A ROM 211 that stores various data such as a control program and character fonts, a RAM 212 used as a work area of the CPU 210, and the like are provided. Reference numeral 51 denotes a reception buffer, which corresponds to the reception buffer 41 of the first embodiment. A page memory 52 stores the image data for one page obtained by analyzing the print data stored in the reception buffer and converting the image data.

Next, the operation of the printer of the second embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. The control program for executing this process is the printer control unit 101.
It is stored in the ROM 211 of a.

First, in step S21, when 1 byte of data is received from the host computer, the process proceeds to step S22, and it is checked which interface unit has received the print data. When the interface unit 31 receives the data, the process proceeds to step S23, and the flag indicating that the data is received from the interface unit 31 is turned on. On the other hand, when data is received from the interface unit 32, the process proceeds to step S24 and the interface unit 3
The flag indicating that the data has been received from 2 is turned on. These flags are provided in the RAM 212.

Next, in step S25, the received print data is stored in the reception buffer 51. After all the data is stored in the reception buffer 51 in this way, the process proceeds to step S26, and it is checked through which interface unit the data of the reception buffer 51 is input data by referring to the flag of the RAM 212 described above.

When the data is received via the interface unit 31, that is, the print data is received from the host computer 1, the process proceeds to step S27, and the image data for the host computer 1 is developed (see FIG. 7). And will be described later with reference to FIG. 1) and store it in the page memory 52. On the other hand, when the data received via the interface unit 32, that is, the print data from the host computer 2, the process proceeds to step S28, and the host computer 2
Image development (described later with reference to FIG. 8) is performed and stored in the page memory 52.

When the storage of the image data in the page memory 52 is completed in this way, the process proceeds to step S29, and the image data is output to the printer engine 43 for printing. Next, the process proceeds to step S30, and it is checked whether or not the print processing for all the received pages is completed. If not completed, the process proceeds to step S26, the print data of the next page is expanded into image data, and printing is performed.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a print result of print data input from the host computer 1 via the interface section 31.

In this case, the image is developed so that the character arrangement comes first in the paper feeding direction.

On the other hand, FIG. 8 shows the interface section 3
2 is a diagram showing a print result of print data received from the host computer 2 via the host computer 2. FIG.

In this case, the image is developed so that the head of the character comes in the direction opposite to the paper feeding direction.

In the second embodiment, in steps S23 and S24, the contents of the flags are made different depending on the received interface unit, and the image development is performed by referring to the flags, which is shown in FIG. As described above, by storing the print data in the reception buffer 51 together with the special codes 901 and 902 indicating the print data from each host computer, it is possible to determine which host computer the data is used for printing. It may also be configured.

As described above, according to the second embodiment,
Even when a plurality of host computers are connected, there is an effect that it is possible to determine from which host computer the print data is based on the print result.

Although the laser beam printer has been described as an example of the printer device of the above-described embodiment, the printer device is not limited to this, and it can be applied to an ink jet printer described below. <Schematic Description of Apparatus Main Body> FIG. 10 is a schematic view of an inkjet recording apparatus IJRA to which the present invention can be applied. In the figure, the carriage HC that engages with the spiral groove 5004 of the lead screw 5005 that rotates via the driving force transmission gears 5011 and 5009 in conjunction with the forward / reverse rotation of the drive motor 5013 has pins (not shown). And arrows a and b
It is reciprocated in the direction. An inkjet cartridge IJC is mounted on the carriage HC. Fifty
A paper pressing plate 02 presses the paper against the platen 5000 in the moving direction of the carriage. 5007,5
Reference numeral 008 denotes a photo coupler, which is a carriage lever 5006.
Is a home position detecting means for confirming the existence of the motor 5013 in this area and switching the rotation direction of the motor 5013. Reference numeral 5016 is a member that supports a cap member 5022 that caps the front surface of the recording head.
The suction recovery of the recording head is performed via 3. Reference numeral 5017 is a cleaning blade, and 5019 is a member that allows the blade to move in the front-rear direction.
These are supported by. Needless to say, a well-known cleaning blade can be applied to this example instead of this form. Reference numeral 5012 denotes a lever for starting suction for suction recovery, which is a cam 5 that engages with the carriage.
It moves with the movement of 020, and the driving force from the driving motor is movement-controlled by a known transmission means such as clutch switching.

The capping, cleaning, and suction recovery are configured so that the desired processing can be performed at their corresponding positions by the action of the lead screw 5005 when the carriage comes to the area on the home position side. As long as the desired operation is performed at the timing, any of the above can be applied to this example. <Description of Control Configuration> Next, a control configuration for executing the recording control of the above-described apparatus will be described with reference to the block diagram shown in FIG. In the figure showing the control circuit,
1700 is an interface for inputting a recording signal, 17
Reference numeral 01 is an MPU, 1702 is a program ROM for storing a control program executed by the MPU 1701, and 1703 is a dynamic RAM for storing various data (the above-mentioned recording signals, recording data supplied to the head, etc.). A gate array 1704 controls supply of print data to the print head 1708, and also controls data transfer between the interface 1700, the MPU 1701, and the RAM 1703. Reference numeral 1710 is a carrier motor for carrying the recording head 1708, and 1709 is a carrying motor for carrying the recording paper. Reference numeral 1705 is a head driver for driving the head, and 1706 and 1707 are motor drivers for driving the carry motor 1709 and the carrier motor 1710, respectively.

The operation of the above control structure will be described. When a recording signal is input to the interface 1700, the gate array 1
A recording signal is converted between the 704 and the MPU 1701 to print data for printing. And the motor driver 1
The recording heads 706 and 1707 are driven, and the recording head is driven according to the recording data sent to the head driver 1705 to perform printing.

It is obvious that the constituent elements of the present invention can be incorporated in the control structure of the ink jet printer as described above, and the present invention can be applied not only to the laser beam printer but also to the above ink jet printer and the like.

The present invention may be applied to a system composed of a plurality of devices or an apparatus composed of a single device. Further, it goes without saying that the present invention can also be applied to the case where it is achieved by supplying a program for implementing the present invention to a system or an apparatus.

[0049]

As described above, according to the present invention, there is an effect that it is possible to analyze received print data, determine the printing order, and print.

Further, when printing the print data from a plurality of computers, there is an effect that it is possible to determine from which computer the print data is to be printed, based on the print result.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a basic configuration of a printer according to a first embodiment of the present invention and a connection with a host computer.

FIG. 2 is a structural cross-sectional view showing a configuration of a laser beam printer of this embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration of print data from a host computer according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a print control procedure in the printer of the first embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a printer according to a second embodiment of the present invention and a connection with a host computer.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a printing procedure in the printer of the second embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a print result of data received from the host computer 1 according to the second embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a print result of data received from the host computer 1 in the second embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing a configuration of print data that is a modification of the second embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a schematic view of an inkjet recording apparatus IJRA to which the present invention can be applied.

11 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of the inkjet recording apparatus of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1, 2, 3 Host computer 31, 32 Interface section 41, 51 Receive buffer 43 Printer engine section 100, 100a Printer 101 Printer control unit 120, 210 CPU 111, 211 ROM 112, 212 RAM

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A printing apparatus that receives print data from a plurality of external devices and prints the print data, the storage unit storing the received print data for each job, and the print data stored in the storage unit. A determining unit that determines the order of jobs to be printed based on the amount of print data for each job; and a printing unit that sequentially prints the print data stored in the storage unit in the order determined by the determining unit. A printing apparatus having: 2. A printing apparatus for receiving and printing print data from a plurality of external devices, the storage device storing the received print data in association with each external device, and the storage device stored in the storage device. A printing device that prints each piece of print data corresponding to each of the external devices in a distinguishable manner, and a printing device. 3. A printing method for receiving and printing print data from a plurality of external devices, the method comprising storing the received print data for each job, and for each job of the stored print data for each job. A printing method comprising: a step of determining the order of jobs to be printed based on the amount of print data; and a step of sequentially printing the print data stored in the determined order. 4. A printing method for receiving and printing print data from a plurality of external devices, the method comprising: storing the received print data in association with each external device; and storing the stored external device. And a step of printing the print data corresponding to each of the print data in a distinguishable manner.