JPH0872331A - Output device and method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To conserve the time required for the development of an outline font at the time of output while making high speed output possible. CONSTITUTION: When formed register data is received from a host computer 120, a printer 100 reads an outline font from a font memory 103 according to the content of the formed register data and develops the font on a bit map font to store the same in a font registering memory 107. When printing data is received, it is judged whether the printing data is developed as a bit map font and, when the printing data is developed, the image to be printed on a bit map memory is formed using the printing data to be outputted. Even in a case performing display output using a display device in place of printing output, the image can be outputted in the same way.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an output device and method suitable for processing input image data in various printers and display devices.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when printing or displaying with an outline font, the outline font had to be expanded into a bitmap font, so that it took a lot of time to expand the outline font. . Therefore, for frequently used fonts, the expansion processing from outline fonts to bitmap fonts is held in advance in an output device such as a printing device or a display device to reduce the expansion process.

[0003]

However, since the data capacity becomes huge by having the bitmap font inside the output device or the display device, it is possible to have only a very small number of bitmap fonts which are frequently used.
As a result, it is very unlikely that a bitmap font will be used for the specified print format or display format when printing or displaying, and there are many cases where an outline font must be used.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional example. By storing a bitmap font having a desired attribute in advance, the time required for expansion from an outline font is reduced and high-speed output is achieved. It is an object of the present invention to provide an output device and a method thereof that can be performed.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, the output device of the present invention has the following configuration.

[0006] A bitmap font having a specified arbitrary character attribute is developed from an outline font and stored in a storage device as required by the user. Furthermore, by registering this bitmap font in the output device, it can be used inside the output device.

In order to achieve the object of the present invention, the present invention provides a means for inputting information necessary for creating a bitmap font from an external device, and a bitmap font based on the input information. Expanding means, storing expanded bitmap fonts, and output using outline fonts, if there is a bitmap font with matching character attributes, output processing using this font And means for performing.

[0008]

With the above configuration, it is possible to own a frequently used bitmap font inside the output device, reduce the use of the outline font, and speed up the output process.

[0009]

[First Embodiment] An embodiment according to the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be noted that in the embodiment, an example will be described in which the invention is applied to a printing apparatus that receives data from a host and prints out. Note that the printing apparatus is described in the embodiments described below, but the present invention can be applied to a display apparatus that receives data and performs display output instead of the printing apparatus.

[Description of Apparatus Configuration (FIG. 1)] FIG. 1 shows a schematic configuration of an electrophotographic printing apparatus according to this embodiment.

In the figure, reference numeral 100 denotes a printing apparatus according to this embodiment, which forms a print result 110.

Reference numeral 120 denotes a host which outputs print information (data for print output) and creation registration information (information for developing, storing and registering a bit map font).

In the printing apparatus 100, the CPU 10 as a processing unit for controlling the entire printing apparatus and performing the processing described later.
1 and the following configurations.

Reference numeral 102 is a reception buffer for temporarily storing data sent from the host computer, 103 is a font memory for storing font data, and 104 is a font memory.
Is a page buffer memory that stores received data in page units, 105 is a bit map memory that expands image data for one page, and 106 is a bit map memory 10
5 is a printer engine that actually performs print processing based on the image data expanded in FIG. Here, although the printer has been described as an example in the present embodiment, the display processing may be performed by a CRT display device or a liquid crystal display prayer display device.

Reference numeral 107 is a storage device for storing the created bitmap font.

In the CPU 101, a ROM 101A storing a program (processing procedure corresponding to the flowchart of FIG. 3 described later) for functioning as a processing unit,
A RAM 101B used as a work area is built in.

[Description of Printer (FIG. 2)] FIG. 2 shows a laser beam printer (hereinafter referred to as LB) applied to this embodiment.
FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view showing the internal structure of (abbreviated as P). This LBP can register a character pattern and a fixed form (form data) from a data source (not shown). In the figure, 1
000 is the LBP main body, which is character information (character code) supplied from an externally connected host computer.
In addition to inputting and storing the form information or the macro command, a corresponding character pattern or form pattern is created according to the information, and an image is formed on a recording paper as a recording medium.

1012 is a switch for operation and L
An operation panel 1001 is provided with an ED display and the like, and a printer control unit 1001 controls the entire LBP 1000 and analyzes character information supplied from a host computer. The control unit 1001 mainly converts character information into a video signal having a corresponding character pattern and outputs the video signal to the laser driver 1002. Laser driver 1
Reference numeral 002 denotes a circuit for driving the semiconductor laser 1003, which corresponds to the input video signal.
The laser light 1004 emitted from 03 is switched on and off. The laser 1004 is swung in the left-right direction by the rotating polygon mirror 1005 to scan the electrostatic drum 1006. As a result, an electrostatic latent image having a character pattern is formed on the electrostatic drum 1006.

The latent image is developed by the developing unit 1007 around the electrostatic drum 1006 and then transferred to the recording paper. A cut sheet is used as the recording sheet, and the cut sheet recording sheet is a paper cassette 1 mounted on the LBP1000.
008, and is taken into the apparatus by the paper feed roller 1009 and the transport rollers 1010 and 1011.
It is supplied to the electrostatic drum 1006.

[Explanation of Bitmap Font Creation and Registration Processing Means (FIG. 3)] FIG. 9 is a flow chart showing an example of processing when the host computer transmits print data. First, in step S901, it is determined whether to register a bitmap font. This decision may reflect the operator's intention. When a bitmap font is registered, it is determined in step S902 whether it has been registered, but this determination need not be performed.
In that case, a procedure for mortgaging the response from the printer needs to be added. Next, in step S903, the creation registration information shown in FIG. 4 is transmitted to the printer. Upon receiving the data transmitted in this way, the printer performs processing in the procedure shown in FIG.

Thereafter, the print data to be printed is transmitted in step S904.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart for explaining the bitmap font registration processing by the CPU 101 in the printing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention.

In this embodiment, the host computer 1
When the print information and the creation registration information from 20 are received, C
The PU 101 is interrupted and the data is stored in the reception buffer 102. That is, the reception process is performed in parallel with the process of FIG. However, this processing itself does not have a characteristic, and therefore its explanation is omitted.

In FIG. 3, first, the reception buffer 102
More data is read (step S1), and it is determined whether the read data is print information or creation registration information (step S2).

If it is determined that the print information is the print information, the character data corresponding to the print information is read from the font memory 103 or the registered bitmap font storage device 107 (step S3), and the image is bitmap memory based on the print information. It is expanded on 105 (step S4).

Further, until it is determined in step S5 that the bitmap expansion processing for one page has been performed, the above-mentioned processing from step S1 is repeated.

When it is determined in step S5 that the bitmap expansion processing for one page is completed, the process shown in FIG.
The printer (laser beam printer) engine 106 having the above mechanism prints out (step S6).

On the other hand, when the data read in step S2 is determined to be creation registration information, a bitmap font is expanded from the outline font based on this creation registration information (step S7). FIG. 4 shows an example of the created registration information in this embodiment. In this example, a typeface name, character size, character pitch, and a storage medium in which the created bitmap font is registered are specified as the creation registration information.

Although the creation registration information is visually represented in FIG. 4, it is actually described by the printer control code (page description language). In this creation registration information, character attributes necessary for creating a bitmap font, such as typeface name, character size, and character pitch, are specified, and bitmap fonts are expanded from outline fonts based on these attributes. However, at this time,
The bitmap font is created according to the format of the font data stored in the font memory 103.

The bitmap font created in step S7 is stored in the storage device 107 designated by the creation registration information (step S8). The storage device 107 includes a RAM, a writable ROM, and Any disk is possible.

Further, the stored bitmap font can be deleted only by the deletion information of the bitmap font described later.

Further, it is assumed to have a function of registering the bitmap font stored in the storage device 107 so that the printing device can use it (step S10).
The registration content may be the creation registration information itself shown in FIG.

By performing the bitmap font development and registration processing as described above, the print information from the host computer matches the character attribute specified by the print information in the process of reading the character data in step S3. If a bitmap font exists, the print processing is performed using this bitmap font. On the other hand, if there is no bitmap font that matches the attribute specified by the print information, the outline font is used for printing.

In this embodiment, the electrophotographic printing apparatus is used. However, the recording method does not matter, and even if the image output is not the print output, the processing described in this embodiment is performed. Can be adapted.

As described above, according to this embodiment, a high speed printing process using a bitmap font can be performed by creating and registering a bitmap font having an arbitrary character attribute designated by the user.

[0036]

Second Embodiment In the first embodiment described above, the outline font in the printing apparatus is used to create and register the bitmap font.
In the embodiment, a case will be described in which an outline font inside the host computer is used to create and register a bitmap font. According to this, since the host computer owns the outline font possessed by the printing apparatus in the above-described embodiment, the bitmap font development processing inside the printing apparatus is unnecessary by developing the bitmap inside the host computer. Becomes

Data processing in the second embodiment will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. 5 and 10.

Of course, in order to perform the operation (processing) of the second embodiment, the ROM 101A stores a program corresponding to the flowchart of FIG. Also,
The device configuration is the same as that of the first embodiment.

In FIG. 10, steps S1003 to S1004 are different from the procedure shown in FIG.
Only this part will be described. When registering a bitmap font, it is tested in step S1003 whether the printer has an outline font to be developed. If it does, the same process as in the first embodiment is performed, but it is not provided. In this case, in step S1004, the outline font possessed by the host computer is expanded into a bitmap font, and step S100
In step 4, the created registration information is sent to the printer. The determination in step S1003 may be made based on a response to the created registration information sent to the printer.

For this host computer side processing,
The printing apparatus performs the processing according to the procedure shown in FIG.

In FIG. 5, steps S501 to S506 are the same as steps S1 to S6 of the first embodiment.

In the second embodiment, the bitmap data created inside the host computer is transferred to the printer together with the creation registration information in the first embodiment, and this creation registration information is stored in the font memory 103. After the format conversion according to the font data format (step S507), steps S508 and S50 are performed.
By performing processing similar to steps S8 and S9 in the first embodiment by means of 9, it is possible to use the same as in the first embodiment.

When the processing of step S507 of this embodiment is performed inside the host computer, only the processing of steps S508 and S509 need be performed inside the printing apparatus.

FIG. 6 shows an example of the created registration information in this embodiment.

In FIG. 6, bitmap data created by the host computer is attached to the creation registration information of the first embodiment.

By registering the bitmap data in the printing device in such a procedure, even for outline fonts not provided in the printing device, the expanded bitmap font can be registered in the printing device and used. It is possible to print at high speed.

[0047]

[Third Embodiment] In the first and second embodiments, a bitmap font is created and registered. In this embodiment, a case of deleting a registered bitmap font will be described. .

The data processing in the third embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. Of course, in order to perform the operation (processing) of the third embodiment, the ROM 101
The program corresponding to the flowchart of FIG. Further, the device configuration is the first
The same as the example of FIG. Step S1 and steps S3 to S6 are the same as those in the first embodiment.

In the third embodiment, step S7 of FIG.
If it is determined in 02 that the read data is the information for deleting the registered bitmap font (hereinafter referred to as deletion information), the corresponding bitmap font data is deleted from the storage device 107 (step S70).
7) Cancel the registration on the printing device (step S70)
By this, the registered bitmap font can be deleted.

Further, the deletion information of this embodiment is assumed to be composed of the character attributes of the font required for deletion, like the creation registration information of the first embodiment.

[0051]

[Fourth Embodiment] In the first, second and third embodiments described above, the case of registering and deleting a bitmap font expanded from an outline font has been described, but in the present embodiment, it is stored and registered in the cache area. A case will be described in which the stored bitmap font is stored and registered in the nonvolatile storage device.

Conventionally, the font data in the cache area using the volatile memory has disappeared from the memory after a certain data capacity and time have passed.
In this embodiment, the font data in the cache area is stored in a non-volatile storage device so that it can be used at all times.

The data processing in the fourth embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. Of course, in order to perform the operation (processing) of the fourth embodiment, the ROM 101
The program corresponding to the flowchart of FIG. Further, the device configuration is the first
The same as the example of FIG. Step S801,
Also, steps S803 to S806 are the same as those in the first embodiment.

In the fourth embodiment, when it is determined that the data read in step S802 is the information for registering the bitmap font of the cache area in the non-volatile storage device (hereinafter referred to as cache registration information). By performing the same processing as steps S8 and S9 of the first embodiment in steps S808 and S809, the same use as that of the first embodiment is enabled. The memory that stores the bitmap font in step S809 is non-volatile.

Like the creation registration information of the first embodiment, the cache registration information is composed of information necessary for storing and registering the font area font data in the nonvolatile storage device. Be present.

In the first, second, third, and fourth embodiments, the units of characters that can be registered and deleted are processed in desired units such as typeface units, character set units, and character units. You can also do it.

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

[0058]

As described above, according to the output device and the method of the present invention, it is possible to reduce the outline font development processing time by creating, registering and using a bitmap font having a desired attribute. Can be reduced
This has the effect of speeding up the output processing.

[0059]

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block configuration diagram of a printing apparatus according to an embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the printing apparatus according to the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the operation contents of the CPU in the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram of creation registration information according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation contents of the CPU in the second embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a configuration diagram of creation registration information in the second embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing operation contents of a CPU in the third embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the operation contents of the CPU in the fourth embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing the operation contents of the host computer in the first embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing the operation contents of the host computer in the second embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 101 CPU 102 Receive Buffer 103 Font Memory 104 Page Buffer Memory 105 Bitmap Memory 106 Printer Engine 107 Font Registration Storage Device

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. An output device for outputting a pattern using an outline font, comprising receiving means for receiving output data, and output data received by the receiving means for expanding an outline font into a bitmap font. Determination means for determining the creation registration information to be instructed, storage means for storing the outline font, and storage in the storage means based on the result of the determination by the determination means and the contents of the creation registration information Expansion means for expanding the outline font into a bitmap font, storage means for storing the bitmap font expanded by the expansion means, and output using the bitmap font stored in the storage means in accordance with output data An output device comprising: 2. Deletion information determination means for determining that the output data received by the reception means is deletion information for deleting the bitmap font stored in the storage means, and determination by the deletion information determination means. The output device according to claim 1, further comprising: a deleting unit that deletes the bitmap font based on the content of the deletion information. 3. The output data received by the receiving means further comprises means for determining that the output data is a bitmap font, and when the output data is a bitmap font, it is stored by the storage means. The output device described in. 4. The storage means stores a bitmap font in a non-volatile memory.
4. The output device according to any one of 3 to 3. 5. The output device according to claim 1, wherein the output unit is a printing device or a display device. 6. An output method for outputting a pattern using an outline font, comprising a receiving step of receiving output data, and expanding the output data received by the receiving step from an outline font to a bitmap font. A determination step of determining that it is the creation registration information to be instructed, a storage step of storing the outline font, and a storage step of storing the outline registration information based on the result of the determination step and the content of the creation registration information. An expansion step of expanding the outline font into a bitmap font, a storage step of storing the bitmap font expanded by the expansion step, and an output using the bitmap font stored in the storage step according to output data And an output method. 7. A deletion information determination step of determining that the output data received by the reception step is deletion information for deleting the bitmap font stored in the storage step, and a determination by the deletion information determination step. The output method according to claim 6, further comprising a deletion step of deleting the bitmap font based on the content of the deletion information. 8. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the step of determining that the output data received by the receiving step is a bitmap font, and if the output data is a bitmap font, the output data is stored by the storing step. Output method described in. 9. The storage step stores the bitmap font in a non-volatile memory.
9. The output method according to any one of 8 to 8. 10. The output method according to claim 6, wherein the output step outputs to a printing device or a display device.