JPH09109464A - Bar code printing system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To minimize the possibility of troubles in which a printed bar code can not be read or is misread by overlapping with another character. SOLUTION: In a bar code printing system in which character information is converted into a bar code pattern through a character/symbol conversion part 11, a Reed-Solomon code conversion part 12, and a symbol/bar code conversion part 13, and the bar code is printed on a matter to be printed such as mail, the bar code pattern is allocated to the symbol of each character information in consideration of the appearance frequency of the character information in the conversion part 13.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a system for printing character information as a bar code, and in particular, printing characters such as a zip code and an address display number as a bar code for the efficiency of sorting and delivering mail. The present invention relates to a bar code printing system suitable for printing.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, a review of the postal code system is under consideration. Specifically, a new bar code (destination place name information) that is different from the current one at the central office and information such as address display number (destination place number information) are displayed on a dedicated bar on the destination display surface of postal items such as postcards and envelopes. It has been considered to improve the efficiency of postal services by printing as a bar code according to a code system and automatically sorting the mails by reading the bar code at a local station or a delivery station.

In this case, the bar code representing the postal code and the address display number is printed at a predetermined position (area) on the destination display surface. On the other hand, the position of characters such as the address written by the sender of the mail is irregular. Therefore, the printed bar code will overlap with the characters such as the destination,
Problems such as unreadable barcodes or incorrect barcodes may occur. In the former case, re-reading work is required by the operator, which hinders the efficiency of work, and in the latter case, there is a problem that the mail arrives late due to misdelivery.

[0004]

As described above, when a postal code or an address display number is printed as a bar code on a mail piece, the bar code cannot be read or cannot be read correctly due to overlapping with characters such as the addressee. There was a problem.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a bar code printing system capable of reducing the possibility that the bar code cannot be read or is mistakenly read because the printed bar code overlaps with other characters. And

[0006]

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides a bar code printing system for converting character information into a bar code pattern and printing the bar code on a predetermined printing object. When converting to a barcode pattern, the barcode pattern is assigned in consideration of the appearance frequency of the character information.

That is, in the first bar code printing system according to the present invention, when the character information is converted into the bar code pattern, the bar forming the bar code is arranged in the central portion of the object to be printed as the character information having the higher appearance frequency. A feature is that a bar code pattern is assigned to each character information so that it is printed at a distant position.

In the second bar code printing system according to the present invention, when the character information is converted into the bar code pattern, the bar information forming the bar code becomes smaller as the character information having a higher appearance frequency becomes smaller. A feature is that a barcode pattern is assigned to the character information.

In the first bar code printing system, the bar code corresponding to the character information having a high appearance frequency is composed of the bar located far from the central portion of the print object, and conversely corresponds to the character information having a low appearance frequency. The barcode to be printed includes a bar near the center of the print target. For example, if the print target is a postal item, the bar code indicating the postal code or address display number is printed near the end of the print target, and other characters such as the addressee are printed from the end of the print target. It is written in the position near the center. Therefore, since the bar forming the bar code is less likely to overlap with other characters as it is farther from the center, if the bar of the bar code corresponding to the character information with high frequency of appearance is placed at this position, the frequency of appearance Considering the above, when viewed as the entire barcode, the barcode is less likely to overlap with other characters on the print target.

In the second bar code printing system, a bar code corresponding to character information having a high appearance frequency is composed of a small number of bars, and a bar code corresponding to character information having a low appearance frequency is composed of a large number of bars. To be done. Therefore, when the barcode is viewed as a whole in consideration of the appearance frequency, the barcode rarely overlaps with other characters such as the destination on the print target.

As described above, according to the present invention, since the bar code is less likely to overlap with other characters, the bar code cannot be read or is erroneously read even if error correction encoding / decoding is performed. Is less likely to occur.

[0012]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to, for example, a postal service system used in a central office. In FIG. 1, the image reading unit 1 scans the postal code entered in the postal code entry field of a postal matter (print object) such as a postcard or a letter of mail, and the address display number entered in the address display field with a scanner. Output as an image signal. This image signal is input to the character recognition unit 2 and extracted as character information (character code) by a known handwritten character recognition process.

The character information output from the character recognizing unit 2 is input to the bar code processing unit 3, converted into a bar code pattern as described later, and then input to the print output unit 4. In the print output unit 4, a bar code representing a postal code and an address display number is printed, for example, with fluorescent ink at a predetermined position on the address display surface of the mail read by the image reading unit 1 according to the bar code pattern.

FIG. 2 shows the configuration of the bar code processing section 3. The barcode processing unit 3 includes a character / symbol conversion unit 11, a Reed-Solomon encoding unit 12, a symbol / barcode conversion unit 13, and a start / stop code addition unit 14.

The character / symbol conversion unit 11 expresses the character information input from the character recognition unit 2 of FIG. 1 in units of characters according to a predetermined rule and outputs it by combining a plurality of information symbols. This character / symbol converter 1
The information symbols output from 1 are input to the Reed-Solomon encoding unit 12 and subjected to Reed-Solomon encoding, which is a kind of error correction encoding, and output as a symbol sequence to which a parity symbol is added.

In the present embodiment, the Reed-Solomon coding unit 12 performs Reed-Solomon coding with a minimum Hamming distance of 3. The Reed-Solomon code with the minimum Hamming distance of 3 is capable of 1-symbol error correction, and the erasure correction using the erasure flag is capable of 2-symbol erasure correction. For details on encoding and decoding of Reed-Solomon code, see, for example, "Code Theory", edited by The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, by Hideki Imai.

The Reed-Solomon-encoded symbol is input to the symbol / barcode conversion unit 13 and converted into a bar code pattern to be printed on a mail matter according to a predetermined rule. This bar code pattern is input to the start / stop code adding section 14, and the start bar and stop bar information of a specific pattern indicating the start and end of the bar code of the postal code or address display number is added for printing. After being the final barcode pattern of
It is sent to the print output unit 4 in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a mail item under the new postal code system of the future, which is the object of this embodiment. In the figure, a zip code representing the destination place name information is entered in the zip code entry field 31 by the sender. Taking a large city such as Tokyo as an example, this zip code is a number that identifies the place name of the destination from the unit of the current zip code to the subdivision of the town. For example, a 7-digit character (number) Expressed. On the other hand, a destination (address, address) is entered in the destination display field 32 by the sender, and a postal code bar code 33 and a destination lot number representing a postal code are displayed in a predetermined bar code printing field to the right of the destination display field 32. An address display number bar code 34 representing information (chome, number, number) is printed. A start bar 35 and a stop bar 36 are printed before and after the postal code barcode 33, and a start bar 37 is provided before and after the address display number barcode 34.
And the stop bar 38 is printed.

The maximum number of bar codes used in this embodiment is four.
A book bar represents 16 states. That is, since two states can be represented by the presence or absence of each bar, the bar code as a whole is 2 × 2 × 2 × 2.
= 16 states can be represented.

In the present embodiment, the Reed-Solomon encoding unit 12 performs encoding using the Galois field on GF (2 ⁴ ). One symbol of the Reed-Solomon code obtained by this encoding is represented by 4 bits. Therefore, one symbol can be represented by two bars. The 4-bit bit pattern has 16 patterns from "0000" to "1111", and the bar codes are assigned to 15 patterns except "0000". The Reed-Solomon encoding unit 12 performs Reed-Solomon encoding with a code length of 9, an information length of 7, and a minimum Hamming distance of 3, for a postal code, and a code length of 1 for an address display number.
5, Reed-Solomon coding with an information length of 13 and a minimum Hamming distance of 3 is performed.

FIG. 4 shows the arrangement of symbols in the case where the postal code and the address display number are Reed-Solomon encoded in this way. In the figure, is1 (i = 0 to 6 for postal code, i = for address display number)
0 to 12) represent information symbols, psj (j = 0 to 0)
1) represents a parity symbol. That is, the Reed-Solomon code corresponding to the postal code is composed of 7 information symbols and 2 parity symbols, and the Reed-Solomon code corresponding to the address display number is composed of 13 information symbols and 2 parity symbols. It

By the way, as shown in FIG. 3, depending on how the sender fills in the address display field 32, for example, when the address is too far to the right, the zip code and the address display number bar are displayed. The code may partially overlap with the destination character. In such a case, the barcode may become unreadable or may be erroneously read. In order to reduce the possibility that the bar code cannot be read or the bar code is erroneously read, the present invention employs the following bar code pattern allocation method.

The first bar code pattern allocation method uses character information so that the bar forming the bar code is printed at a position farther from the center of the mail object, which is the object to be printed, as the character information having a higher appearance frequency. A bar code pattern is assigned to it. Here, the first barcode pattern allocation method is referred to as a "protrusion number priority type" in order to prioritize and determine the number of bars protruding toward the center of the print target with respect to the appearance frequency.

The second bar code allocation method is to allocate a bar code pattern to each character information so that the character information having a higher appearance frequency has a smaller number of bars constituting the bar code. Here, the second bar code pattern is referred to as "total number priority type" in order to prioritize and determine the total number of bars constituting the barcode with respect to the appearance frequency.

FIG. 5A is a diagram showing the relationship among the total number, the number of protrusions, and the bar code. The bar code shown in FIG. 5A is composed of a maximum of four bars as described above, and is formed on two parallel straight lines. Two bars of the same length can be formed on each straight line. In this bar code, the upper side in the figure is the central portion side of the print target, and the number of bars that are near the upper side represents the number of protrusions. A bar code having a total number of bars of 2 has a pattern in which the two bars are on the same straight line and a pattern in which the two bars are on different straight lines. A bar code with a total of 3 bars is 2
One bar is on the same straight line and the other bar is on another straight line. Two bars are collinear with two bars having a total of four bars.

Further, the bars constituting such a bar code are grouped into 9 groups A to I by the combination of the total number and the protruding number. That is, the total number of 1s and the number of protruding lines 0 is group A, the total number of 1s is 1 group B, the total number of 2s is 0 and the protruding number is group C, and the total number of 2s.
The grouping is performed such that the protruding number 1 is group D, the total number 2 is protruding, and the protruding number 2 is group E.

Further, in the protruding number priority type, FIG.
As shown in (b), in order from the appearance frequency of the character information, A (the number of protruding 0) → C (the same 0) → B (the same 1) → D (the same 1) → F (the same 1) → E (the same) 2)-> G (same 2)-> H (same 2) is assigned. In the total number priority type, as shown in FIG. 5C, A (total number 1) → B (same 1) →
C (same 2) → D (same 2) → E (same 2) → F (same 3) → G
A bar code is assigned as (Same 3) → H (Same 4).

The protruding number priority type will be described in more detail. FIG. 6 is a character (information symbol) / bit pattern / barcode conversion table used when allocating a barcode pattern based on the protruding number priority type, that is, the character / symbol conversion unit 11 and Reed-Solomon encoding of FIG. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an input / output relationship between a unit 12 and a symbol / barcode conversion unit 13. cc1 to cc3 are control codes, and alphabets A to Z can be expressed using the numbers cc1 to cc3 and 0 to 9.
cc4 is a null code. When the address display number is Reed-Solomon encoded, the number of digits may be less than the maximum of 13 digits. In that case, the null code cc4 is added so that the number of digits becomes 13 and encoding is performed. When the Reed-Solomon code of the address display number exceeds 13 digits, the address display number is truncated after the 14th digit.

As an example, as shown in the upper part of FIG. 7, the postal code is "2105012" and the address display number is "12-2."
In addition, it is assumed that the appearance frequency of 1, 2, 5 among the character information used for the postal code and the address display number is higher than that of other character information. The bias is statistically obtained, and the appearance frequency for each character is shown in FIG.
Is registered in the symbol / barcode conversion unit 13.
At this time, if a bar code pattern is assigned to each character as shown in FIG. 6, and the postal code and the address display number shown in the above example are Reed-Solomon encoded and converted into a bar code and printed, FIG. The postal code bar code 33 and the address display number bar code 34 shown on the lower side are printed. In FIG. 7, the bar code of the parity symbol is shown by a broken line.

As shown in FIG. 7, in the bar codes corresponding to the frequently appearing 1, 2 and 5, the number of protruding bars is 0, which is opposite to the central portion of the postcard which is the printing object. It consists only of bars located on the side. Therefore,
Since the probability that the bar of the bar code overlaps with the destination character is small, the possibility that the bar code cannot be read or is mistakenly read is reduced as a whole.

Next, the total number priority type will be described in detail. FIG. 8 is a character (information symbol) used when allocating a barcode pattern based on the total number priority type.
It is a figure which shows / bit pattern / bar code conversion table. Similar to FIG. 6, cc1 to cc3 are control codes, and alphabets A to Z can be expressed using the numbers cc1 to cc3 and 0 to 9. When the Reed-Solomon code is used for the address display number, the maximum number of digits is 1,
It may be less than 3 digits. In that case, a null code cc4 is added so that the number of digits becomes 13, and encoding is performed. If the number exceeds 13 digits, the 14th and subsequent digits of the address display number are truncated and encoded.

As an example, assume that the address display number is "1-2-5-105" as shown in the upper part of FIG. Since this address display number has 9 digits including a hyphen (-), it is 13 digits by adding cc4 which is a 4-digit null code when performing Reed-Solomon encoding. Also in this case, it is assumed that the appearance frequencies of 1, 2, and 5 are high among the character information used for the postal code and the address display number. At this time, if a bar code pattern is assigned to each character as shown in FIG. 8 and the address display number shown in the above example is Reed-Solomon encoded and converted into a bar code and printed, the lower side of FIG. The postal code bar code 33 and the address display number bar code 34 shown in are printed. Similar to FIG. 7, the bar code of the parity symbol is indicated by a broken line.

As shown in FIG. 9, the bar codes corresponding to the frequently appearing numbers 1, 2, and 5 have the minimum total bar number of 1. Therefore, since the probability that the barcode overlaps with the destination character is small, the possibility that the barcode cannot be read or is mistakenly read is reduced as a whole, and the same effect as the protruding number priority type is obtained. In addition, it is also possible to assign the barcode pattern by combining the protruding number priority type and the total number priority type described above as another embodiment of the present invention.

[0034]

As described above, according to the present invention, in a bar code printing system for converting character information into a bar code pattern and printing the bar code on an object to be printed such as a mail piece, the character information is bar coded. When converting to a code pattern, the appearance frequency of the character information is taken into consideration, and the character information with a higher frequency appears in each character information so that the bar forming the barcode is printed farther from the center of the print target. By assigning a code pattern or assigning a barcode pattern to each letter information so that the number of bars that make up the barcode decreases as the letter information that appears more frequently appears, the barcode can identify the destination on the print target. Since it is less likely to overlap with other characters shown, the error cannot be corrected even with error correction encoding / decoding, and the barcode cannot be read. Can possibility that read incorrectly decreases, to provide a highly reliable barcode printing system.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a postal service system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a barcode processing unit in FIG.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a postal matter which is an object to be printed in the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a symbol arrangement of a Reed-Solomon-encoded zip code and address display number in the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a barcode pattern allocation method in the same embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a character / bit pattern / bar code conversion table for explaining the protruding number priority type bar code pattern allocation method in the same embodiment;

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of printing a bar code on a postal matter when a bar code pattern is assigned with a protruding number priority type.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a character / bit pattern / bar code conversion table for explaining the bar code pattern allocation method of the total number priority type in the same embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an example of printing a bar code on a postal matter when the bar code pattern is assigned with the total number of delivery priority type.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Image reading part 2 ... Character recognition part 3 ... Bar code processing part 4 ... Print output part 11 ... Character / symbol conversion part 12 ... Reed-Solomon coding part 13 ... Symbol / bar code conversion part 14 ... Start / stop code addition Part 31 ... Postal code entry field 32 ... Address display field 33 ... Postal code barcode 34 ... Address display number barcode 35, 37 ... Start bar 36, 38 ... Stop bar

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A conversion means for converting character information into a bar code pattern, and a printing means for inputting the bar code pattern output from the conversion means to print the bar code on a predetermined printing object. The converting means assigns a bar code pattern to each character information so that a bar forming a bar code is printed at a position farther from the central portion of the print target as the character information having a higher appearance frequency. Code printing system. 2. A conversion means for converting the character information into a bar code pattern, and a printing means for inputting the bar code pattern output from the conversion means and printing the bar code on a predetermined printing object. A bar code printing system, wherein the conversion means assigns a bar code pattern to each character information so that the number of bars forming a bar code decreases as the character information having a higher appearance frequency.