JPH08115182A - Information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To faithfully and easily reproduce various information on the document to be recorded by discriminating automatically the types of these document information and also selecting the optimum recording device of the document based on the result of discrimination on the information types. CONSTITUTION: When a recording request is received from a document editing program, etc., the types of information on the document to be recorded are discriminated and the corresponding flag is turned on. Then the recording devices that have colors written in their color columns are checked in a recording device list of a table 1 when a color designation flag is turned on. Thus the document is recorded (printed) by a recording device 110. A vector device which performs the recording for each segment is suitable when a graphic flag is turned on. Therefore the recording device having a vector written in its technique column is selected, and the document is recorded (printed) by a recording device 111. On the other hand, any corresponding recording device is not available, the recording device that is registered at the head of its list of the table 1 is used for the recording (printing) of the document.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which displays, edits or saves complex document information including characters, figures, images and the like, and performs processing for outputting the information from a recording apparatus.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A recording device having functions such as a printer, a copying machine and a facsimile, or a recording device used as an output device of a multifunction machine or a workstation including a computer, a word processor, etc., is a sheet or a plastic thin plate based on image information. Images (including characters and symbols) on recording materials (recording media) such as (sheets for OHP)
Is configured to record. The recording device can be classified into an ink jet type, a wire dot type, a heat sensitive type, a thermal transfer type, a laser beam type and the like depending on the recording system of the recording means used.

In a serial type recording apparatus which employs a recording system in which a main scanning is performed in a direction intersecting a conveying direction (sub-scanning direction) of a recording material, the recording material is set at a predetermined recording position and then the recording material is set. An image (including characters, symbols, etc.) is recorded by a recording unit (recording head) mounted on a carriage that moves (main scanning) along, and after one line of recording is completed, a predetermined amount of paper is fed (sub-scan). An image is recorded in a desired range of the recording material by repeating the operation of performing (scanning) and then recording (main scanning) the image of the next row. On the other hand, in a line type recording apparatus that records a recording material only in the sub-scanning direction in which the recording material is fed in the transport direction, the recording material is set at a predetermined recording position, and one line of recording is continuously performed at one time. A predetermined amount of paper feed (pitch feed) is performed, and an image is recorded on the entire recording material.

Among them, the ink jet type (ink jet recording apparatus) is a means for recording by ejecting ink from a recording means (recording head) onto a recording material, and it is easy to make the recording means compact and high definition. Images can be recorded at high speed, plain paper can be recorded without requiring special processing, running costs are low, and the non-impact method reduces noise and uses multicolor inks. Therefore, it has an advantage that it is easy to record a color image. Above all, a line type recording apparatus using a line type recording means in which a large number of ejection ports are arranged in the paper width direction can further speed up recording.

In particular, an ink jet type recording means (recording head) for ejecting ink by utilizing heat energy,
Through the semiconductor manufacturing process such as etching, vapor deposition, and sputtering, the electrothermal converter formed on the substrate, the electrode,
By forming the liquid passage wall, the top plate, and the like, it is possible to easily manufacture a liquid discharge device having a high-density liquid passage arrangement (ejection port arrangement), and to further reduce the size. Further, by utilizing the advantages of IC technology and micro processing technology, it is easy to make the recording means long and planar (two-dimensional), and it is also easy to make the recording means full-multi and high-density mounting. is there. On the other hand, there are various requirements for the material of the recording material, and in recent years, in addition to the ordinary recording material such as paper and resin thin plate, thin paper and processed paper (paper with punch holes for filing and perforation). Paper, paper of any shape, etc.)
It has been required to use such as.

Further, the types of information contained in the document to be recorded (output) include color information, font information, etc. in addition to the information on characters, figures and images, and include these various kinds of information. Various information processing devices having various functions have been proposed as devices for performing various processes such as displaying, editing, and saving of a document (compound document information) and outputting the information by a recording device. ing. In a conventional information processing apparatus of this type, when a document is recorded, it is necessary to explicitly specify a controllable output device (recording device).

[0007]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional technique, it is difficult to judge what function the designated recording device has, and therefore the document to be recorded is In some cases, the characteristics possessed were not adequately and properly expressed.

The present invention has been made in view of the above technical problems, and an object of the present invention is to automatically determine the type of information included in a document to be recorded, and to determine based on the determination result. An information processing apparatus capable of faithfully and easily reproducing various kinds of information included in a document to be recorded by selecting an optimum recording apparatus for recording the document.

[0009]

According to the present invention, in an information processing apparatus to which a plurality of recording apparatuses having different information processing functions are connected, the type of information such as characters, figures and images contained in a document and processing of each recording apparatus. The correspondence with the function is registered in the recording device list, and when the recording request is received, the type of information included in the document to be recorded is automatically determined, and based on the determination result, the recording device list is selected. The above object is achieved by selecting a recording device to be used and recording the document by the selected recording device.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of a first embodiment of an information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied. In FIG.
Reference numeral 101 is a CRT device that displays information, 102 is a VRAM (video memory), and information is the VRAM 10
CRT device 101 by expanding the displayed image in 2
Is displayed in. Reference numeral 103 is a keyboard provided with various keys for editing / inputting data, and 104 is a pointing device (PD) for performing instruction processing. 105 is C
PU, 106 is a memory, and the CPU 105
Executes the control program stored in the memory 106.

In FIG. 1, 107 is a hard disk device (HD) and 108 is a floppy disk device (FDD), which store the above-mentioned control programs and data. A network control unit 109 performs data transmission / reception processing with devices through various networks. Reference numeral 110 is an ink jet recording apparatus capable of color recording.
1 is a laser beam recording apparatus. Reference numeral 112 is an I / O bus (comprising an address line, a data line, a control line, etc.) that connects each of the above-described components. In the information processing apparatus of FIG. 1, the output device (recording device) 110, 1
When 11 is connected, items such as device name, color, and technology are registered in the recording device list as shown in Table 1 stored in the hard disk (HD) 107.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing the control operation of the information processing apparatus of FIG. In FIG. 2, when a recording request is received from a document editing program or the like, it is first checked whether or not a color other than black or white is designated for the document to be recorded (step S201). The color designation flag is turned on (step S20).
2). Then, it is checked over the entire document whether character data exists (step S203), and if it exists, the graphic flag is turned on (step S205). on the other hand,
If character data does not exist in step S203,
It is checked whether or not there is graphic information (step S204), and if there is, graphic flag is turned on (step S205).
If not, it is determined that there is image information such as a photograph, and the image flag is turned on (step S206).

Next, among the flags, the one that is turned on is checked. That is, if the color designation flag is ON, it is checked whether the color column of the recording device list in Table 1 is colored (step S207). Recording (printing) is executed (step S209). Graphic flag is O
If it is N, a vector recording device that records in units of line segments is suitable, and therefore, a technique is searched for in the technology column of the recording device list (step S208). Therefore, the recording device 111 records (prints) the document (step S209). On the other hand, if there is no corresponding recording device,
Recording (printing) of the document is executed by the recording device registered at the top of the recording device list in Table 1 (step S
210).

Next, a second information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied
Examples will be described. When the font data is stored in the recording device or when the processing function of the page description language such as Postscript is installed, rather than converting the character information into image data and recording it with the recording processing device. It is preferable to perform recording using a combination of character code and font designation. The reason is that the information recorded in the output target can be more faithfully and more easily reproduced by recording the combination of the character code and the font designation. Therefore, as shown in Table 2, a built-in font column is provided in the recording device list, and the font type is registered when the recording device is connected or when a font card or font data is added.

When a recording request is received from a document processing program or the like, it is checked whether or not a font is designated for the recording target, and if it is designated, the designated font is stored in the built-in font column of the recording device list. The registered recording device is searched for, and if it exists, the recording device prints (prints) the corresponding document.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing a network configuration example for realizing the third embodiment of the information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied. In FIG. 3, reference numerals 310, 320, and 330 are information processing devices. Reference numeral 311 is a color inkjet recording apparatus connected to the information processing apparatus 310 by a connection line 312, and reference numeral 321 is a connection line 312 connected to the information processing apparatus 320.
The laser beam recording apparatus is connected to the information processing apparatus 330, and the connected Postscript recording apparatus 331 is connected to the information processing apparatus 330 by a connection line 312. 340 is a network cable connecting the information processing devices 310, 320 and 330, and 341 is the information processing devices 310 and 3
A connector for connecting 20, 330 to the network cable 340, and 342 is a terminating resistor for preventing reflection of a signal flowing in the cable at both ends of the network cable 340.

In FIG. 3, the first information processing device 310 is shown.
Inkjet recording device 311 capable of color recording
Is connected to the second information processing device 320, a laser beam recording device 321 having a built-in European font capable of monochrome recording is connected to the second information processing device 320, and a Japanese font capable of monochrome recording is connected to the third information processing device 330. A built-in Postscript recording device 331 is connected. The information processing devices 310, 320 and 330 are connected by a network cable 340. Then, in the network of FIG. 3, it is assumed that a control program for implementing the invention is operating.

Further, each information processing device 310, 320, 3
At the time of start-up, 30 acquires recording device information from another information processing device that can be connected on the network and creates a recording device list as shown in Table 2 in FIG. First information processing device 31
When recording (printing) a document created by a document processing program or the like on 0, it is first determined whether the recording target is color data, and if it is color data, the color flag is turned on. Next, it is determined whether or not it is composed only of documents. If it is composed only of documents, it is determined whether or not a European font is used. If European fonts are used, a European font is used. The flag is set to ON, and the Japanese font flag is set to ON when a European font is not used.

When the data is composed of a document and other data, and if it contains graphic data consisting of one or more line segments and points, the graphic flag is turned on.
Otherwise, the image flag is turned on. Next, check each flag, and if the color flag is ON, look for a recording device in which the color column in Table 2 is color,
Since the first information processing apparatus 310 (own apparatus) corresponds to this, the recording apparatus (inkjet recording apparatus) 311 connected to the own apparatus outputs (records).

When the European font flag is ON, the built-in font column of Table 2 is searched, and the second information processing device 320 corresponds to this in the present embodiment. Therefore, the recording device connected to the device 320. A recording command and a document are sent to 321. Further, when the Japanese font flag is ON, the built-in font column in Table 2 is searched, and the third information processing device 330 corresponds to this in the present embodiment, so the recording device connected to the device 330 is searched. Send a document to 331 and request recording.

If there is no information processing device in which each font flag is ON, a request is made to another information processing device in which another font flag is ON for recording, and further, it has an internal font. If there is no information processing apparatus, a request is made for recording (printing) to the recording apparatus of the information processing apparatus 310 at the head of Table 2 in FIG. If the graphic flag is ON, it is checked if the technology (type) of the information processing device is other than the raster, and in Table 2 in FIG. 3, the second and third devices 320 and 330 indicate that Since it is applicable, the recording device 321 of the information processing device 320 found first among them is requested to record.

If the image flag is ON, the technology (type) of the information processing apparatus is checked for raster, and in Table 2 in FIG. 3, the first information processing apparatus (own apparatus) is checked.
Since 310 corresponds to this, the corresponding document is output (recorded) by the recording device 311 connected to the own device 310.
The recording device list as shown in Table 2 is in the order of information of the own device (first information processing device) 310, and then information of other devices (second and third information processing devices) 320 and 330. Therefore, even if the recording apparatus having the same function is present in both the own apparatus and the other apparatus, the one connected to the own apparatus is selected.

According to the embodiment described above, the characteristics of the document to be recorded (output), that is, the presence or absence of color designation,
By automatically distinguishing the characteristics such as graphics or images, font type, etc., it is configured to automatically select the most suitable recording device for recording the output target, so various output target It is possible to obtain an information processing apparatus capable of reproducing the information of 1) as faithfully and easily as possible.

[0024]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the present invention, in an information processing apparatus to which a plurality of recording apparatuses having different information processing functions are connected, information such as characters, figures and images included in a document is stored. The correspondence between the types and the processing functions of each recording device is registered in the recording device list, and when a recording request is received, the type of information contained in the document to be recorded is automatically determined, and the result of this determination is Based on the configuration, the recording device to be used is selected from the recording device list based on the recording device, and the document is recorded by the selected recording device, so that optimum recording can be performed according to the type characteristics of the information to be output. Provided is an information processing device capable of faithfully and easily reproducing various information contained in a document to be recorded.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of a first embodiment of an information processing apparatus to which the present invention has been applied.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a control operation of information output processing of the information processing apparatus of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a network configuration for realizing a third embodiment of an information processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied.

[Explanation of symbols]

 101 CRT device (display device) 102 VRAM (video memory) 103 keyboard 104 pointing device (PD) 105 CPU 106 memory 107 hard disk device (HD) 108 floppy disk device (FDD) 109 network control unit 110 color recording device 111 laser beam recording Device 112 I / O bus 310 First information processing device 320 Second information processing device 330 Third information processing device 311 Color recording device 321 Laser beam recording device 331 Postscript recording device 340 Network cable 341 Connector

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An information processing apparatus, to which a plurality of recording apparatuses having different information processing functions are connected, records the correspondence between the types of information such as characters, figures, and images included in a document and the processing functions of each recording apparatus. It is registered in the device list, and when a recording request is received, the type of information contained in the document to be recorded is automatically discriminated, and the recording device to be used is selected from the recording device list based on the discrimination result. Then, the information processing apparatus is characterized in that the document is recorded by the selected recording apparatus.