JPH09185605A - Document printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a document printer with which plural pieces of document data can be smoothly printed at high speed while being linked. SOLUTION: A document extending part 12 investigates a printing designated document in a linked printing information storage part 10 and information stored in an extended document utilization information storage part 11 and extends that document in an extended document holding part 8. When the capacitance is lacked, a document erasing part 13 investigates information stored in the extended document utilization information storage part 11, retrieves the oldest unutilized extended document, erases that document and constitutes the extended document utilization information again later. A printing control part 14 outputs the document data to be printed to a printer 6.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a document printing apparatus for connecting a plurality of document data and printing them smoothly.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a document printing apparatus such as a word processor or a DTP is provided with a function of connecting a plurality of pieces of document data at the time of printing a document and continuously printing it as if it were one piece of document data. ing. Further, at this time, a function that can uniformly print the document formats such as the page number (page number) and columns (header / footer), which are part of the document data, for a plurality of document data to be linked Is also provided. As a result, it is possible to easily connect and print the document data that is created by dividing it into chapters or the like, or the document data that is created separately by a plurality of people. Also, by connecting existing document data, it is possible to effectively reuse the document data resource.

[0003]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional document printing apparatus, since a plurality of document data to be linked are collected at one time and expanded and processed in the auxiliary storage device, the number of linked documents is large. However, there was a problem that the expansion required a lot of time and a large amount of storage area.

In particular, even if a part of data is corrected and only the page of the corrected part is designated to be output, all the concatenated documents are expanded, so that even unrelated documents are expanded and 1 page is output. It takes time, corrective output takes time, and it is necessary to secure a large amount of free space in the auxiliary storage device at the time of printing. Was a factor that made the meaningless.

Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above problems.
An object of the present invention is to provide a document printing device that can smoothly print a plurality of document data at high speed regardless of the free space of the auxiliary storage device.

[0006]

A document printing apparatus according to the present invention includes a first storage unit for storing a document file having document data and format information for outputting the document data, and the first storage unit. Second storage means for storing linked print information for combining and printing a plurality of pieces of document data stored in, output means for outputting document data, and linked print information stored in the second storage means And the format information stored in the first storage means, and based on the result, the document data stored in the first storage means is processed, and a control means for outputting to the output means. Prepared

[0007]

According to the configuration of the present invention, there is an effect that speeding up of printing and printing that does not depend on the free space of the auxiliary storage device are possible.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. 1 is a hardware configuration diagram of a document printing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of the document printing apparatus, FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of the document file storage unit, and FIG. FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of the storage unit, FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of the expanded document utilization information storage unit, and FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the control procedure. In FIG. 1, 1 is CP
U, 2 are random access memories (hereinafter simply referred to as RAM), 3 are keyboards, 4 are bitmap memories, 5
Is a CRT, 6 is a printer, 7 is an auxiliary storage device such as a hard disk, 8 is a developed document holding unit for holding a developed document after expanding a connected document, and 9 is a document file storage for storing a plurality of document files Reference numeral 10 denotes a linked print information storage unit that stores linked print information for linked printing of document files stored in the document file storage unit 9, and 11 decompresses document usage information stored in a decompressed document storage unit. A document usage information storage unit.

The expanded document holding unit 8 is composed of a directory for each document and data files such as character data, graphic data, table data, and image data which compose the document in the directory. As shown in FIG. 3, the document files stored in the document file storage unit 9 include, for each document file, a document name given by the user, format information for printing the document, character data, table data, It is composed of document data such as graphic data and image data. Here, the format information includes paper size (vertical length, horizontal length), character size, character feed size, line feed size,
It is composed of a typeface name, a set direction (vertical writing or horizontal writing), header footer information, page number information, and the like.

As shown in FIG. 4, the linked print information stored in the linked print information storage unit 10 is composed of unified format information for printing a plurality of documents in a unified format and target document information. There is. Uniform format information includes paper size (vertical length, horizontal length), set direction (vertical writing or horizontal writing),
It is composed of header footer information and page number information.
In the target document information, the document name of the document file to be linked and printed and the page number in the document are set in the printing order.

As shown in FIG. 5, the expanded document usage information storage unit 11 is composed of a usage information table corresponding to a directory for each document held in the expanded document holding unit 8. This table is written with an access counter that is incremented every time the expanded document name and the printed document change.

In FIG. 2, reference numeral 12 indicates whether or not the print document has been expanded based on the target document information in the linked print information storage unit 10 and the table information in the expanded document usage information storage unit 11. Document expansion unit to expand, 1
Reference numeral 3 denotes a document deletion unit that determines and deletes a document to be deleted from the table information in the expanded document usage information storage unit 11 if the capacity is insufficient during document expansion, and 14 is print data (bitmap).
Is a print control unit that creates and outputs to the printer 6.

The document expanding unit 12 and the document deleting unit 13 are CPs.
It is processed and executed by a software program such as a control program according to the flowchart of FIG.

The operation of the document printing apparatus of the present embodiment configured as above will be described below. First, the keyboard 3 sets the linked print information in the linked print information storage unit 10. The items to be set are the document name of the document file already existing in the document file storage unit 9, the concatenation order of the document files, and the unified format information of the entire document after the concatenation. Next, the document expansion unit 12 expands the document based on the set concatenated print information, and if there is insufficient space, the document deletion unit 13 deletes the document,
Otherwise, the print controller 14 sets the bitmap memory 4
The output image data is expanded on the upper side and output to the printer 6.

The output process is illustrated in the flow chart of FIG. 6, which will be described below in accordance with the flow shown in the drawing. In step S1, the access counter is initialized. The access counter is set to 1.

In step S2, the name of the document to be printed is acquired, and in step S3 it is checked whether the document of the page to be printed has been developed on the hard disk. Specifically, it checks all in the expanded document usage information to see if it has the same document name as itself. If there is no same document name as itself, a directory corresponding to the document is created in step S4, and the document is expanded in the directory. If there is the same document name as oneself, it is determined that the document has been developed and the process proceeds to step S10. After the document is expanded, it is determined in step S5 whether the expansion is normally performed or abnormally terminated due to insufficient capacity. If the document is normally terminated, the process proceeds to step 9, and if it is abnormally terminated, the file to be deleted is searched in step 6. In the search for the deleted file, the file with the smallest usage counter in the usage information table is searched and the file directory is deleted in step S7. After the deletion, the expanded document use information is reconfigured in step S8, and the process returns to step S4.

In step S9, a usage information table corresponding to the expanded document file is created. Next, the access usage counter is incremented by 1 in step S10, and is written in the usage counter of the expanded document usage information of the target document in step S11. Next, in step S12,
According to the format information of the document file, write the image data of the document in the print area in the bitmap memory 4,
The header footer and page number are expanded in step S13, and printed in step S14. Next, in step S15, the presence or absence of the next page is determined.
Return to 2.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, the document file of the page to be printed of the concatenated document is expanded as necessary, and the expanded document is managed so that a smooth response can be taken even when a capacity shortage occurs. It is possible to speed up the output of an arbitrary page in a connected document and to print when connecting multiple documents.

[0019]

According to the document printing apparatus of the present invention, when the document file of the page to be printed is expanded as necessary, the individual document data to be linked are expanded, and the expanded document is managed to ensure sufficient capacity. It becomes possible to speed up the output of an arbitrary page in a linked document and print a linked print target document in which multiple documents are linked without requiring a large capacity.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a hardware configuration diagram of a document printing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of the document printing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of a document file storage unit according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a linked print information storage unit according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a developed document usage information storage unit according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a control procedure in the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 CPU 2 Random Access Memory 3 Keyboard 4 Bitmap Memory 5 CRT 6 Printer 7 Auxiliary Storage Device 8 Expanded Document Storage Section 9 Document File Storage Section 10 Linked Print Information Storage Section 11 Expanded Document Usage Information Storage Section 12 Document Expansion Section 13 Document Deletion Section 14 Print control section

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A first storage means for storing document data and a document file having format information for outputting the document data, and a plurality of pieces of document data stored in the first storage means are combined to perform linked printing. Second storage means for storing linked print information for outputting, output means for outputting document data, linked print information stored in the second storage means, and a format stored in the first storage means. A document printing apparatus, comprising: a control unit that compares the information with information, processes the document data stored in the first storage unit based on the result, and outputs the processed document data to the output unit.