JPH082002A - Controlling device of printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To realize printing which minimizes lowering of the quality of print due to divided printing, by a method wherein a letter of a size being equal to or smaller than the height of a head is printed by one scanning without being divided, while a letter of a size exceeding the height of the head is divided for printing, on the occasion when the letter of the size exceeding the height of the head is printed. CONSTITUTION:In the case when an image shown in (a) is to be printed, a letter 'A' of a size exceeding the height of a head is divided for printing as shown in (b), (c) or (e). In the case when a letter 'B' of a size being equal to or smaller than the height of the head is to be printed, in contrast, the head is moved to a position where the whole of the letter can be printed by one scanning, and then printing is executed without division, as shown in (d).

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer controller used in a serial printer for printing out an image in which characters having a height exceeding the height of a head are mixed.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a serial dot matrix printer, when printing characters that exceed the height of the head, it is necessary to divide the characters before printing. In this case, for example, in the example of FIG. 2, the first pass is printed at the current head position, the second height is printed after feeding the height of the head, and similarly the third and fourth passes are printed. Printing is completed with a total of 4 passes.

When a character having a height within the height of the head is mixed in a character exceeding the height of the head, conventionally, as shown in the example of FIG. Press to finish printing. However, in this case, the character "B" having a height within the height of the head is printed separately in the second pass and the third pass even though the character is a size that can be printed in one pass. For this reason, there is a drawback in that the print quality of "B" is deteriorated due to a slight inclination of the head, misalignment between passes caused by poor paper feeding accuracy, and the like.

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to provide a printer control device capable of preventing deterioration in the quality of characters that can be printed by one scanning. To do.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention is a printer controller for scanning a print head in the digit direction to record an area corresponding to the height of the print head. Characters are not divided and are always printed with a single scan of the head, and characters with a height that exceeds the height of the head are controlled to be divided into prints. For characters that can be printed with a single scan, the print quality is degraded. I didn't come.

[0006]

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the outline of the present invention. When the print data is transferred from the host computer 1 to the printer 2 of the present invention through the interface, the control unit 3 inside the printer 2 analyzes the transferred print data, and if necessary, the character generator (CG) 4 sets the font. The data is read, and the print image is expanded and stored in the print buffer 5. The print buffer 5 stores an image corresponding to the height of the head. When a character exceeds the height of the head and requires division printing, the control unit 3 cuts out the print image in the scanning zone to be divided. And stores it in the print buffer 5. And print buffer 5
The data written in is sent to the print control unit 6 by the print start command sent from the host computer 1 as a trigger, and printing is executed.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the sequence of division printing, and FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing the procedure of division printing. The detailed procedure of divided printing will be described below with reference to these drawings.
Here, description will be made on the assumption that a pattern in which a character "A" exceeding the head height and a character "B" equal to or less than the head height are mixed is printed as shown in FIG.

First, it is checked whether or not there is a character equal to or lower than the height of the head in the scanning zone where the current head is located (step S1). At the head position shown in FIG. 1A, since the image of "B" is not applied to the scanning zone, the process moves to step S4, and further, there is a character exceeding the height of the head in the scanning zone where the current head is located. Check. At the position of FIG. 1A, since the upper end of the image of "A" overlaps the scanning zone, the image of the height of the head is cut out and stored in the print buffer 5 in step S5, and the print buffer 5 is printed in step S6. Print the print image stored in.

By the processing up to this point, the printing of the hatched portion in FIG. 1B is completed. Then, after the scanning of the print head is completed, in step 7, the paper is fed so that the upper end of the unprinted pattern coincides with the upper end of the head. As a result, the head is located at the position shown in FIG.

Next, the second scanning will be described.

Similar to the previous time, first, it is checked whether or not there is a character equal to or lower than the height of the head in the scanning zone of the currently positioned head (step S1). At the position shown in FIG. 1 (c), the image of "B" below the height of the head is applied to the scanning zone. Therefore, the process proceeds to step S2, and in the scanning zone of the head currently located, the characters " Check if "B" can be printed completely.

At the head position shown in FIG. 1C, "B"
Since the image of (1) cannot be printed unless it is divided, the process moves to step S4, and it is checked whether there is a character at the current head position that exceeds the head height.

In this case, since a part of the image of "A" is present in the scanning zone of the head currently located, the image of "A" present in the current scanning zone is cut out and the print buffer 5 is cut out in step S5. The image cut out is stored, and printing is executed in step S6. Then, after the head scanning, in step 7, the paper is fed so that the upper end of the unprinted pattern coincides with the upper end of the head. The top of the unprinted pattern at this point is the top of the "B" image,
The head moves to the position of the upper end of "B" shown in FIG. 1 (d).

Further, the third scanning will be described.

Similar to the previous time, first, it is checked whether or not there is a character equal to or lower than the height of the head in the scanning zone of the head currently positioned (step S1). At the position shown in FIG. 1 (d), the image of "B" below the height of the head is applied to the scanning zone. Therefore, the process proceeds to step S2, and in the scanning zone of the currently positioned head, the character " Check if "B" can be printed completely. This time, since the image of "B" can be completely printed, the process moves to step 3, the characters less than the head height, that is, the image of "B" is developed in the print buffer 5, and the current head is pressed in step S4. Check if there is a character that exceeds the height of the head at the position. FIG.
At the position shown in (d), a part of the image of "A" is overlaid, so in step S5, of the characters exceeding the height of the head, the part over the scanning zone is cut out and overlaid on the print buffer 5. To deploy. As a result, FIG.
The shaded area shown in (d) is stored in the print buffer 5. This image is printed in step S6, and after head scanning, paper feeding is executed in step S7 so that the upper end of the unprinted pattern coincides with the upper end of the head. As a result, the head moves to the position shown in FIG.

Then, in the fourth scanning, the lowermost portion of the image of "A" which exceeds the height of the head is printed to complete the division printing process.

By the way, since there are various heights even if the characters are below the height of the head, there are various heights. Therefore, when the characters of various heights are overlapped with each other, the scanning zone division is very complicated. Becomes

Therefore, as a second embodiment, an example will be described below in which the character height at which printing is completed in one scan is specified to be frequently used and the processing is simplified.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing an outline of the second embodiment. When the print data is transferred from the host computer 11 to the printer 12 of the present invention through the interface, the control unit 13 analyzes the transferred print data,
If necessary, read the font data from CG14,
The print image is written in the print buffer 16. At this time, the height of the character read from the CG 14 is compared with the character height stored in advance in the height storage unit 15, and if the height is the same, the scanning zone is determined so that the character is not divided,
The image is stored in the print buffer 16.

If the height of the character read from the CG 14 is different from the height of the character stored in the height storage unit 15,
The control unit 13 cuts out an image of a character in the scanning zone as a character to be divided, stores it in the print buffer 16, and sends it to the print control unit 17 using a print start command sent from the host computer 11 as a trigger to execute printing. . The height storage unit 15 provided in the EEPROM can store a character height equal to or lower than the head height in advance by a scan switch of the printer main body or a command from the host computer 11. For example, the character height most frequently used can be stored. It is practically effective if it is remembered.

Further, a third embodiment will be described.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing the outline of the third embodiment. The print data is transferred from the host computer 21 to the printer 22 of the present invention via the interface. The control unit 23 analyzes the transferred print data, reads the font data from the CG 24 as necessary, and writes the print image in the print buffer 27. At this time, C
The character height information read from G24 is sent to the character height counter 25, and the character height counter 25 counts for each character height in order to determine the frequency of use, and the height of the head. Of the following characters, the character height of the character that is frequently used is stored in the character height storage unit 26 provided in the EEPROM. On the other hand, the control unit 23 compares the height of the character read from the CG 24 with the height of the character stored in the height storage unit 26, determines the scanning zone so that the character is not divided if the height is the same, and stores it in the print buffer 27. Store the image. CG
If the height of the character read from 24 is different from the height of the character stored in the height storage unit 26, the control unit 23 cuts out the image in the scanning zone and stores it in the print buffer 27 in order to perform division processing. . The data written in the print buffer 27 is sent to the print control unit 28 by the print start command sent from the host computer 21 as a trigger, and printing is executed. In this embodiment, a character having a frequently used character height is automatically discriminated, and a scanning zone is determined and printed so that the character is not divided and printed. Is relatively inconspicuous.

[0023]

As described above, in the present invention, a character with a height within the height of the head is not divided and is always printed by one scan of the head, and a character with a height exceeding the height of the head is printed. With respect to the above, since the divided printing is performed, it is possible to minimize the deterioration of the printing quality such as the vertical and horizontal deviation due to the divided printing.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an order of divided printing according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an order of conventional divided printing.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an order of conventional divided printing.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an outline of an apparatus according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a division printing process of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing an outline of an apparatus according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing an outline of an apparatus according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1, 11, 21 Host computer 2, 12, 22 Printer 3, 13, 23 Control unit 4, 14, 24 Character generator 5, 16, 27 Print buffer 6, 17, 28 Print control unit 15, 26 Character height storage unit 25 counter

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Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A printer controller for scanning a print head in the digit direction to record an area corresponding to the height of the print head, wherein the height of a character to be printed in a scan area in which the print head is located and If the height of the characters to be printed is within the height of the print head, the means for comparing the heights of the print heads and the comparison means determine the scanning area of the print heads as described above. A printer control device comprising means for relatively moving the print head to a position where a character can be printed by scanning once. 2. The printer control device according to claim 1, wherein only the characters which are within the height of the print head and which are frequently used are printed by one scan. 3. A means for counting the frequency of use for each character type having a different height among the characters within the height of the head, and a means for identifying a character type having a high frequency from the counting means and storing the character type information. 2. The printer control apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: a printer configured to print only a character type stored in the storage unit in one scan.