JPH1021018A - Print controller - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To shorten the time needed to expand print data at the time of insert printing in page units. SOLUTION: A PDL(page description language) storage part 106 and an image storage part 110 stores last received PDL data and its expanded image data in page units. Then, PDL data sent from a host device is received by a reception queue 102 and divided by a page division part 104 into data in page units. The divided PDL data is compared, page by page, by a PDL comparison part 112 with last data stored in the PDL storage part 106. As for a page where the both do not match each other as a result of the comparison, the received data is expanded into an image by an expanding process part 108 and the image is sent to a printer 20. As for a page where both the data match each other, on the other hand, the received data is not expanded and the last image data is taken out of the image storage part 110 and sent to the printer 20.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a printing control apparatus for developing document data in a transmission format supplied from a host device into data in a printable format such as a raster image and outputting the data to a printing device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A document created by using application software in a host device such as a workstation is converted from a data format dependent on the application to a page description language (PDL) when printing.
It is converted to an application-independent data format such as Description Language) and transmitted to a print control device such as a print server. The print control device expands the data received from the host device from a data format at the time of transmission to a data format (for example, a raster image format) printable by the printing device, and supplies the data to the printing device to perform a printing process. .

[0003] At the site of document creation, there is a case where it is desired to sequentially replace a part of the contents of the document in page units and print a plurality of documents in which only some of the pages are different. As a method for easily realizing page-by-page insertion printing, a host device sequentially creates data including both a fixed portion page and a replacement page for each of the plurality of documents, and transmits the data to the print control device. There is a method that can be considered.

[0004]

As is well known, processing for expanding document data from a transmission format to a printable format is performed by:
This is one of the most time-consuming steps in a series of printing processes. In particular, in color printing, it may take several minutes to several tens of minutes to develop one page. In order to speed up the printing process, it is desirable to shorten the time of this developing process as much as possible.

[0005] However, when page insertion processing is performed on the host device side as described above, the print control device performs data expansion processing for all pages for each document received from the host device. There has been a problem that it takes time to perform the expansion process.

[0006] Further, when correcting some pages of a document once printed, conventionally, the host device makes corrections, transmits the data of the corrected document to a print control device, and prints again. However, this method has a problem in that it is necessary to perform expansion processing on data of all pages of one document even when only a small portion of correction is required, and it takes time for processing.

The present invention has been made in order to solve such a problem, and in printing a plurality of documents in which only some of the pages are different, it is possible to reduce the time required for developing the data of the document and to improve the efficiency. It is an object of the present invention to provide a print control device capable of performing various printing.

[0008]

In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, a printing control apparatus according to the present invention has a developing means for developing transmission format data received from a host device into a printable format. A print control device for outputting printable format data obtained by the printing device to a printing device, wherein reference transmission means for storing transmission format data and printable format data of a reference document in association with each other in page units; A page division unit for dividing the transmission format data received from the host device into page units; a page unit comparison for comparing the division result of the page division unit with the transmission format data stored in the reference storage unit for each page Means, and for a page that matches as a result of the comparison, printable format data of the page in the reference storage means is output to the printing apparatus. And, for the pages that they do not match, characterized in that and an output control means for outputting to the printing device and developed by the developing means data of the division result.

In this configuration, the reference storage means stores data in both a transmission format such as PDL and a printable format such as a raster image for each page of a document serving as a reference for insertion processing and correction processing. You. In the reference storage unit, the transmission format data and the printable format data are associated with each other for each page. And
When the data of the inserted or corrected document is transmitted from the host device to the print control device, the print control device
The received transmission format data is divided into page units, and the division result is compared for each page with the transmission format data of the reference document in the reference storage unit. Then, for the page in which the received data matches the data of the reference document in this comparison, without performing the expansion processing of the received data, the printable format data of the page stored in the reference storage unit is extracted and sent to the printing apparatus Supply.

[0010] According to this configuration, of the data received from the host device, the page that matches the reference document does not need to be expanded, so that the time required for the expansion processing can be greatly reduced.

In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the print control device has a reception queue generating means for generating a reception queue for receiving transmission format data from the host device,
In the reference storage unit, transmission format data and printable format data of the reference document are stored for each of the generated reception queues, and the transmission format data received in each reception queue stores the reference document corresponding to the reception queue. Is compared with the transmission format data.

With this configuration, when performing insertion printing or modified printing, a reception queue for the print job is generated in the print control device, and the transmission format and printable format of the reference document corresponding to the reception queue are generated. The data is stored in reference storage means. Then, when data is transmitted from the host device to the reception queue, the data is compared with the transmission format data of the reference document corresponding to the reception queue, and whether the data is expanded or printable format data in the reference storage unit is used. Is determined for each page. According to this configuration, a plurality of insertion printing processes and correction printing processes can be performed in parallel.

In this configuration, the transmission format data first received in the reception queue generated by the reception queue generation means and the printable format data expanded from the transmission format data are stored in the reception queue.
If the configuration is such that data of the reference document corresponding to the reception queue is stored in the reference storage unit, the reference document can be easily registered.

In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the print control device is configured to transmit the divided transmission format data and the printable data obtained by expanding the transmission format data for each non-matching page that does not match in the comparison by the page unit comparing means. A mismatched page storage means for storing format data;

According to this configuration, among the data received from the host device, the data of the mismatched page that did not match the reference document is stored in the mismatched page storage means. It is possible to print out each of them and compare the differences between them, which is useful for confirming a corrected portion when a document is corrected.

Further, in this configuration, among the mismatched pages stored in the mismatched page storage means, the transmission format data and the printable format data of the page specified by the user are stored in the corresponding page in the reference storage means. It is also possible to provide a reference replacing means for replacing the data with the transmission format data and the printable format data. According to this configuration, the data of the reference document held by the reference storage unit is
It is possible to replace the data of the received document later on a page-by-page basis, and it is possible to dynamically change the reference for insertion or correction.

In another aspect, the printing control device includes:
Unmatched dot extraction for comparing, for each dot, the printable format data of each mismatched page stored in the mismatched page storage means with the printable format data of the corresponding page in the reference storage means, and extracting dots that do not match each other. Means and a mismatched page synthesizing means for synthesizing the extracted information of the mismatched dots with the printable format data of the corresponding page stored in the mismatched page storage means or the reference storage means and outputting the combined information. According to this configuration, for the mismatched page, the printable format data is compared with each other, and the mismatched portion is extracted in dot units, and the information of the extraction result is combined with the printable data of the page, whereby the mismatch in the page is determined. It can be printed with the location specified.

[0018]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Preferred embodiments of a print control apparatus according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. Hereinafter, a case will be described as an example where print data transmitted from the host device to the print control device is described in PDL such as PostScript (trademark). However, the application range of the present invention is that the transmission format of the print data is PDL. It is not limited to certain cases.

[Embodiment 1] FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of a print control apparatus according to the present invention.

In FIG. 1, print data described in PDL is input to a print control device 10 from a host device. This print data is received by the reception queue 102. The reception queue 102 is created according to a user's input when printing is started. That is, when starting printing, the user inputs a reception queue creation command from the input device 40. Upon receiving this command, the system control unit 120 secures a predetermined area on the memory and sets it as the reception queue 102. The reception queue 102 is created at the time of starting insertion printing, test printing, or the like.

The page dividing section 104 receives the reception queue 102
The print data stored in the PDL is sequentially retrieved, and the PDL description is pre-scanned to divide the print data into page units. For example, PostScript (trademark), which is originally page independent, defines a description method for expressing page independence in a recently proposed DSC (Document Structuring Convention) comment convention. According to this rule, a comment statement indicating page independence (“%% Page: label ordinal”; label is arbitrary text, ordinal is a number indicating a page number) is described on each page, and indicates a page break. Therefore, in this case, the page division unit 104 can detect a page break by detecting this comment sentence from the PDL description of the print data. Most major application software these days conforms to this convention. If the document is created by such an application, the print data can be divided by the page division unit 104 into pages. Also, the page-independent P
In the case of DL (for example, Interpress), page division is possible by the processing function of the language itself.

The print data divided in page units by the page division unit 104 is stored in the PDL storage unit 106. Note that the PDL storage unit 106 also stores PDL data of a document (hereinafter, referred to as a reference document) serving as a reference for a comparison process described later. In the present embodiment, the reception queue 10
In step 2, the previously received document is used as a reference document. The expansion processing unit 108 receives the P
The DL data is developed into a raster image, and the resulting image data is stored in the image storage unit 110. PDL
The storage unit 106 and the image storage unit 110 can be configured in, for example, an internal memory of the print control apparatus 10. Further, one or both of them can be configured in the external storage device.

The PDL comparing unit 112 reads out the PDL data of the received document and the reference document from the PDL storage unit 106 in page order with reference to a management table of the data management unit 114 described below, and writes the description of each page for each page. Compare to The data management unit 114 creates and manages a management table in which information such as the storage address of the PDL data and image data of each page in the PDL storage unit 106 and the image storage unit 110 is described. The data management unit 11
4 refers to the management table and refers to the PDL storage unit 10
6 and the image storage unit 110 are controlled. For example, the data management unit 114
If the comparison unit 112 does not agree with the PD,
Control is performed such as transmitting the PDL data in the L storage unit 106 to the expansion processing unit 108, and transmitting the image data in the image storage unit 110 to the data transmission unit 116 when they match. The data transmission unit 116 outputs the image data received from the data storage unit 106 to the printing device 20, and the printing device 20 prints the image data on a medium such as paper.

The system control unit 120 performs overall control of the processing operation of the print control device 10, such as the above-described process of generating the reception queue 102 and control of each component of the print control device 10.

Next, the configuration of the management table in the data management unit 114 will be described with reference to FIG. As shown in FIG. 2, the data management unit 114
0 manages the address of the management table (reception queue table 210) of each reception queue in the print control apparatus 10. Each reception queue table 210 holds an address of a management table (page table 222) of each page of a document handled by the reception queue and a management table of data common to all pages (common table 220). The header of the PDL data and the storage address of the trailer in the PDL storage unit 106 are registered in the common table 220. Note that the header and the trailer are parts that describe definition information common to all pages in PDL data. In each page table 222, the page number of the page, the storage address of the PDL data, and the storage address of the image data are registered. Since the header, the trailer, and the PDL data and image data of each page are of variable length, their storage addresses are indicated by a start address and an end address. In each table, a storage location such as a header, a trailer, or each page may be described using a file name instead of an address. These tables are created when the first print data is received in the reception queue, and are updated as needed thereafter.

Next, the processing procedure of this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In the following, the processing procedure of the present embodiment will be described by taking as an example the case of performing insertion printing in page units.

When performing the insertion printing, the user creates the reception queue 102 for the insertion printing in the print control apparatus 10. Then, the user transmits the PDL data of the merge printing from the host device to the reception queue. In the present embodiment, the insertion process is performed in the host device, and the result of the insertion process is sequentially transmitted from the host device to the print control device 10 one document at a time.

FIG. 3 shows the processing of the print control device 10 when PDL data is received. The PDL data transmitted from the host device is stored in the reception queue 1 in S10.
02. The received PDL data is stored in S12
Are sequentially sent to the page division unit 104 and are divided into data in page units. Next, in S14, the page division unit 1
04 indicates to the data management unit 114 that the reception queue 1
It inquires whether there is a management table for 02. When the reception queue 102 receives the first PDL data, the result of this determination is No because no management table has been created. On the other hand, for the second and subsequent PDL data received by the reception queue 102, the result of this determination is Yes.

If the result of determination in S14 is that there is no management table, a management table for the reception queue is created in the data management unit 14 in S16. More specifically, a common table 220 and a page table 222 for the number of pages are created, a reception queue table 210 in which addresses of these tables are registered is created, and the addresses of the reception queue table 210 are registered in the route table 200. Is done. Note that information on the number of pages when creating the page table 222 can be obtained from the page division unit 104.

When the management table has been created, in step S18, the PDL data of each page divided into pages is stored in the PDL storage unit 106 for each page. Next, S
At 20, the addresses (the start address and the end address) where the PDL data of each page are stored are registered in the corresponding PDL data storage addresses of the page tables 222. In S22, the PDL data of each page is sequentially sent from the PDL storage unit 106 to the development processing unit 108,
Expanded to image data. At this time, the expansion processing unit 10
Reference numeral 8 generates image data of each page by developing PDL data of each page in combination with header data and trailer data. The image data of each page obtained by the development is stored in the image storage unit 110. Then, in S24, the addresses (the start address and the end address) at which the image data of each page are stored are registered in the corresponding image data storage addresses of each page table 222.

The image data of each page is S
At 26, the data transmission unit 1 is sequentially transmitted from the image storage unit 110.
16 to the printing device 20. Printing device 20
Prints the received image data sequentially.

On the other hand, if the result of determination in S14 is that there is a management table, first in S26, the value of a variable k indicating a page number is initialized to k = 1. Thereafter, the following processing is repeated from the first page to the last page.

That is, first, in S30, the k-th page as a result of the page division in S12 and the PDL storage unit 10
And the k-th page of the PDL data stored in P6
The comparison is performed by the DL comparison unit 112. At the time of this comparison, the PDL comparison unit 112 extracts the PDL data from the PDL storage unit 106 based on the address information of the data management unit 114. As a result of this comparison, if they match, in S32, the image data of the k-th page is extracted from the image storage unit 110 based on the address information of the data management unit 114, and in S34, the data transmission unit 116
To the printing device 20.

If the page division result does not match the storage data, the k-th page of the page division result is stored in the PDL storage unit 106 in S40. At this time, the PDL data stored up to that point is deleted. In S42, the PDL data storage address of the page table of the k-th page in the data management unit 114 is changed to S40.
Is rewritten with the address value at which the division result is stored. Thereafter, in S44, the PDL storage unit 106 is newly added.
The PDL data of the k-th page stored in the
In step S <b> 08, the image data is expanded into image data, and the image data is stored in the image storage unit 110. At this time, the image data of the k-th page stored up to that point is deleted. Then, in S46, the data management unit 1
The image data storage address of the page table of the k-th page in 14 is rewritten to the value of the address where the image data is stored in S44. As described above, in the present embodiment, the PDL storage unit 106 and the image storage unit 1
10 stores the PDL and the image of the latest received data, which are used as a reference for comparing the PDL data to be processed next.

Thereafter, in S48, the data management unit 114
, The image data of the k-th page is extracted from the image storage unit 110 and transmitted to the printing apparatus 20 in S34.

After transmitting the page image to the printing device 20, it is determined in S36 whether the printing process for all pages has been completed. If all pages have not been printed,
In S38, the page number k is incremented by 1, and the process returns to S30, and the above processing is repeated. When the page number k becomes equal to the total number of pages obtained in the page division process (S12), the result of this determination is Yes, and the process ends.

As described above, in the present embodiment, the second and subsequent PDL data transmitted from the host device are compared with the PDL data transmitted last time, and the pages having the same PDL description are developed. , The image data of the page already stored is transmitted to the printing apparatus. Therefore, in the present embodiment, since the expansion processing is performed only on the page replaced with the previous transmission, the time required for the expansion processing is greatly reduced.

The present embodiment is also effective in a case where test printing is performed once, and the result is corrected based on the result. In such a case, similarly to the above-described insertion printing, a reception queue for trial printing is generated in the print control device 10, data for trial printing is transmitted from the host device to the reception queue, and processing is performed according to the above-described processing procedure. To print. Then, the user performs a correction process on the host device while seeing the result of the test printing, and transmits the data of the correction result to the same reception queue. The image data at the time of the trial printing is reused without performing the developing process. By such processing, the development time can be reduced even in the case of correction.

In this embodiment, the print control device 10
Can be provided with a plurality of reception queues, and a plurality of insertion processes and correction processes can be processed in parallel.

[Second Embodiment] In the first embodiment, for a page in which the data received this time does not match the previous data, the current data is stored and the previous data is deleted. , And the comparison output of the mismatched page is performed.

The configuration of this embodiment is basically the same as the configuration of the first embodiment shown in FIG. This embodiment is different from the first embodiment in the management items of the page table in the data management unit 114 and the processing procedure using the page table.

FIG. 4 shows management items of the page table 230 of the data management unit 114 in this embodiment. As shown in FIG. 4, in this embodiment, in addition to the management items of the first embodiment, a replacement flag, a replacement PDL data storage address, and a replacement image data storage address are managed. If the current reception data does not match the previous data, the replacement flag is set to True (true), and the storage address of the current data is registered in the replacement PDL data storage address and the replacement image data storage address. The other tables of the data management unit 114 are the same as in the first embodiment.

Next, the procedure of the basic processing of this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In FIG. 5, steps indicating the same processes as those in FIG. 3 are denoted by the same reference numerals, and description thereof will be omitted or simplified. In this embodiment,
The subsequent processing procedure when the determination in S14 is No is
Since it is completely the same as the first embodiment (FIG. 3), its description is omitted in FIG.

In this embodiment, the page division result is
Before comparing with the stored data of the description part (S30), S50
Check the replacement flag of the page. As a result, if the replacement flag is True, the replacement PDL data storage address and the replacement image data storage address are written to the PDL data storage address and the image data storage address in the page table of the page, and the replacement flag is set to False. Reset to (false) (S
52).

The comparison process in S30 is performed based on the PDL data stored at the PDL data storage address. As a result of this comparison, the processing when they match is the same as in the first embodiment. If they do not match, the PDL of the k-th page of the page division result
The data is stored in the PDL storage unit 106 (S40).
At 42a, the storage address is the replacement PD of the page table.
The replacement flag is set to True while writing to the L data storage address. Then, the PDL data of the k-th page stored at the replacement PDL data address is expanded, and the image data resulting from the expansion is stored in the image storage unit 110 (S44). In S46a, the storage address of this image data is written to the replacement image data storage address of the page table. And
In S48a, the image data of the k-th page stored in the replacement image data storage address is stored in the image storage unit 1.
10 and transmitted to the printing device 20 in S34.

According to the present embodiment, the same function as that of the first embodiment can be realized by such a processing procedure.

The present embodiment has, in addition to such a function, a function of outputting a page in which the PDL data did not match in the comparison. FIG. 6 shows a procedure of the output process of the mismatched page.

The output process of the mismatched page is started when the user inputs an instruction command from the input device 40. In the present embodiment, three modes are provided as modes for outputting mismatched pages. That is, there are three modes: a mode for outputting data received this time (new data), a mode for outputting data received previously (old data), and a mode for outputting both. The user designates the output mode together with the instruction for outputting the mismatched page.

The print control device 10 determines which output mode has been designated in S60.

When output of new data is designated, S
The page number k is initialized at 62a, and the following processing is repeated from the first page to the last page. That is, first, S
At 64a, it is checked whether or not the replacement flag of the page table of the k-th page is True. If the result is Yes, the old data and the new data do not match on the k-th page. Accordingly, in S66a, the image data of the new data is extracted from the replacement image data storage address in accordance with the mode designation, and in S70a, the printing apparatus 2
Send to 0. Then, in step S72a, the page number k is incremented by one, and it is checked in step S74a whether processing of all pages has been completed. If the processing has not been completed, the process returns to step S64a to repeat the above processing. On the other hand, if the determination result in S64a is No, it means that the old data and the new data match in the k-th page, and the process proceeds to S72a without performing any operation. When such processing is completed for all pages, a print result using new data for all mismatched pages is obtained.

If the output mode is specified to output both new and old data, the page number k is initialized in S62b.
The following processing is repeated from the first page to the last page.
That is, in S64b, it is determined whether or not the replacement flag of the page table of the k-th page is True. This result is Y
In the case of es, the new data image data is extracted from the replacement image data storage address in S66b according to the mode designation, and the old data image data is extracted from the image data storage address in S68b.
The data is transmitted to the printing device 20 at 70b. On the other hand, if the determination result in S64b is No, nothing is performed and S72b
Proceed to. Then, in S72b, the page number k is incremented by 1, and it is checked in S74b whether the processing of all pages has been completed. If the processing has not been completed, the flow returns to S64b to repeat the above processing. By such processing, a comparison output of both new and old data can be obtained for all mismatched pages.

If the output mode specifies only old data, the page number k is initialized in S62c, and the following processing is repeated from the first page to the last page. That is, in S64c, it is checked whether or not the replacement flag of the page table of the k-th page is True. If the result is Yes, the image data of the old data is extracted from the image data storage address in S68c according to the mode designation.
In S70c, it is transmitted to the printing device 20. On the other hand, S64c
If the determination result of No is No, nothing is performed and S72 is not performed.
Proceed to c. Then, in S72c, the page number k is incremented by one, and it is checked in S74c whether the processing of all pages has been completed. If the processing has not been completed, the flow returns to S64c to repeat the above processing. By such processing, a print output of old data is obtained for all mismatched pages.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, a page in which the data received last time and the data received this time do not match is printed out in three modes of new data, old data, and both. can do. By using this function, it is possible to easily confirm the difference between the test printing plate and the corrected plate.

[Embodiment 3] This embodiment is similar to Embodiment 2
This is a modified example. As can be seen from FIG. 5, in the second embodiment, for a page whose replacement flag is True, S52
To replace the replacement PDL / image data storage address with PDL
Since the data was written to the / image storage address, every time the contents of the page were changed, the reference data of the PDL comparison processing in S30 was replaced with the changed data. On the other hand, in the present embodiment, the data serving as the reference for comparison is not changed unless a change instruction is input from the user. Note that this embodiment can be realized by the configuration shown in FIG. 1 using the page table shown in FIG.

In this embodiment, the processes of insertion printing and test printing / correction can be realized by slightly changing the contents of the process of S52 in the basic process of the second embodiment (see FIG. 5). That is, in the present embodiment, the replacement flag is Tr
Even in the case of ue, the PDL data storage address and the image data storage address are not changed in S52, and the replacement flag is simply reset to False. Due to such a change, in S30, the comparison process is performed using the same reference data unless changed by the reference data replacement process described later.

Next, the processing procedure for replacing the reference data will be described with reference to FIG. In the present embodiment, the change of the comparison standard is performed by changing a page to be changed in the data of the standard until then.
This is performed by replacing the data with the replacement PDL / image data storage address data which is the current latest data.

For this processing, the user inputs an instruction to replace reference data from the input device 40 of the print control device 10. This instruction can be input, for example, by selecting an icon or the like indicating a reference data replacement operation on the operation selection screen displayed on the display device 30 by the system control unit 120. In this case, in response to the user's selection of the reference data replacement operation, the system control unit 120 lists the reception queues currently held by the print control apparatus 10 (each reception queue is, for example, a list of documents handled by the queue). (Represented by a name) is displayed on the display device 30, and the user selects an object of the replacement operation therefrom. When the reception queue to be replaced is selected, the system control unit 120 sets the data management unit 11
Reference is made to the management table of the reception queue concerned in 4 to find pages whose replacement flag is set to True and display them on the display device 30. In this case, for example, only the page number may be displayed, or a reduced image of the current reference data and its replacement data may be generated and displayed based on the image data in the image storage unit 110. The user selects a page whose reference data is to be replaced from this display.

The print control apparatus 10 which has received the instruction input of the reference data replacement processing replaces the reference data according to the procedure shown in FIG. That is, first, in S80, a user's instruction is fetched from the input device 40, and in S82, it is determined whether the instruction is a reference data replacement instruction. If the instruction is to replace the reference data, the page number k is determined in S84.
, And the following process is repeated for each page until the last page is reached. That is, it is determined whether or not the user's instruction specifies replacement of the reference data of the page in S86. If the determination result is Yes, in S88, the data management unit 114 stores the page table (see FIG. The values of the PDL data storage address and the image data storage address are replaced with the values of the replacement PDL data storage address and the replacement image data storage address, respectively. Then, the replacement flag is reset to False, and the registered values of the replacement PDL data storage address and the replacement image data storage address are invalidated. Also, S8
If the determination result of No. 6 is No, the address is not replaced. When the processing on the k-th page is completed in this way, it is determined in S90 whether the processing on all the pages has been completed. Of the page. By performing such processing for all pages of the document, the data of the comparison reference can be changed.

In the above description, replacement is specified in page units. However, batch replacement of all pages may be specified. In this case, when the print control apparatus 10 detects an input instruction for batch replacement of the reference data for a certain reception queue, for example, the data management unit 114 sets the replacement flag to True from each page table related to the reception queue. May be detected, and the value of the replacement PDL / image data storage address may be written into the PDL / image data storage address. Also,
An instruction to replace reference data may be input from the host device.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, the criteria for insertion printing and correction can be dynamically changed in page units.

[Embodiment 4] This embodiment corresponds to Embodiment 2
This is a development of the above, in which, for a page that did not match in the comparison between PDL data, it is further detected which part of the page has been changed, and that part is characterized and displayed.

FIG. 8 is a functional block diagram showing the device configuration of this embodiment. 8, the same components as those in FIG. 1 are denoted by the same reference numerals, and description thereof will be omitted.

The configuration of FIG. 8 is different from the configuration of FIG. 1 in that the image comparison unit 130, the first page buffer 132, the mismatch area calculation unit 134, the second page buffer 136, and the third
The page buffer 138 is added.

When an instruction to display an inconsistent portion with respect to a document in a certain reception queue is input from the input device 40, the system control unit 120 reads each page table related to the reception queue from the data management unit 114, and reads the table. By operating the image comparison unit 130 and the like in accordance with the information, a printout displaying the mismatched portion is generated. FIG. 9 shows the procedure of this processing.

When an instruction to display a mismatched portion is input, the system control unit 120 initializes a counter for the number of pages k in S100, and repeats the following processing for each page from the first page to the last page.

First, the system control unit 120 executes S102
To check the page table of the k-th page, and if the replacement flag is T
judge whether it is true. If the result of this determination is No, it is determined in S120 whether or not the processing for all pages has been completed, and if not, the counter for the number of pages is incremented by 1 and processing proceeds to the next page. If the result of the determination in S102 is Yes, the system control unit 120 gives the image data storage address and the replacement image storage address registered in the page table to the image comparison unit 130. Then, in S104, the image comparison unit 130
Extracts the image data of the old data and the new data based on those two addresses, and compares the two data in dot units. This comparison is, for example, in the case of a binary image,
This can be done by taking EXOR (exclusive OR) of both values. In this case, the value of the dot that matches both is 0, and the value of the dot that does not match is 1. The result of such a comparison process is drawn in the first page buffer 132 in S106. The result of the comparison process is performed, for example, by writing a value indicating white to a matching dot and writing a value indicating black to a mismatching dot in the first page buffer 132.

FIG. 10 shows a simple concrete example of the comparison in dot units. When the old data shown in FIG. 10A and the new data shown in FIG. 10B are compared by the image comparison unit 130, the unmatched dot portion is black in the first page buffer 132 as shown in FIG. The data to be displayed is formed.

Upon completion of the dot-by-dot comparison process, the mismatched area calculation section 134 is activated. Unmatched area calculation unit 1
34 analyzes the data of the first page buffer 132,
Find the smallest rectangular area surrounding the continuous portion of black dots,
A frame representing the rectangular area is drawn in the second page buffer 136 (S108). When there are a plurality of continuous portions of black dots, a rectangular area frame is obtained for each continuous portion. This frame is drawn to be conspicuous with, for example, red dots. In the example of FIG. 10, the second page buffer 136 includes:
A rectangular frame as shown in (d) is drawn.

In this embodiment, the non-coincidence portion is displayed by superimposing the rectangular frame on the old data or the new data and printing. Therefore, in S110, it is determined whether the display base is new data. The user inputs a base designation when inputting an instruction for a mismatched portion display operation, and makes a determination based on the input in S110. If the result of this determination is that the base is new data, the system control unit 120 retrieves the image data at the replacement image data storage address from the image storage unit 110 in S112, and draws the image data in the third page buffer 138. If the base is old data, the image data at the image data storage address is extracted from the image storage unit 110 in S114, and drawn in the third page buffer 138.

Then, in S116, S112 or S1
The data of the rectangular frame of the second page buffer 136 is written into the third page buffer 138 on which the image data has been drawn in. FIG. 10E shows an example of data in the third page buffer 138. In this example, data (d) in the second page buffer 136 is superimposed on new data (b).

When the superposition processing is completed in this way, S
At 118, the data in the third page buffer 138 is transmitted to the printing device 20 via the data transmission unit 116. As a result, the printing apparatus 20 obtains a print result in which a mismatched portion in the page is surrounded by a rectangular frame for the mismatched page.

Then, it is checked in step S120 whether or not the processing of all pages has been completed. If the processing has not been completed, the page number k is incremented by one in step S122, and the flow returns to step S102 to move to the processing of the next page.

By repeating such a process for all pages, it is possible to obtain a print output in which a mismatch portion is clearly specified for each mismatch page in a specified document.

[0074]

As described above, according to the present invention,
The print control device holds the reference document in both the transmission format and the printable format, compares the data received from the host device with the transmission format data of the reference document for each page, and performs expansion processing for the matching page. Since the printable format data of the reference document is read out and used without performing it, it is possible to greatly reduce the time required for the expansion processing in the page-by-page insertion printing or the printing of the corrected version.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram illustrating a configuration of a print control apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a data structure of a management table in a data management unit.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of a process according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a data structure of a page table managed by a data management unit according to the second embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of a basic process of a print control apparatus according to a second embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of outputting a mismatched page according to the second embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of a reference data replacement process according to a third embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a functional block diagram illustrating a configuration of a print control apparatus according to a fourth embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure according to a fourth embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating a specific example of display of a mismatched part according to the fourth embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 print control device, 20 printing device, 30 display device, 40 input device, 102 reception queue, 104 page division unit, 106 PDL storage unit, 108 expansion processing unit, 110 image storage unit, 112 PDL comparison unit,
114 data management unit, 116 data transmission unit, 120
System control unit, 130 Image comparison unit, 132
1st page buffer, 134 mismatched area calculation unit, 13
6 Second page buffer, 138 Third page buffer.

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. A print control device, comprising: expansion means for expanding transmission format data received from a host device into a printable format, and outputting printable format data obtained by expansion to a printing device. Reference storage means for storing transmission format data and printable format data of a document to be associated with each other in page units; page division means for dividing transmission format data received from the host device in page units; A page unit comparing unit that compares the division result of the unit with the transmission format data stored in the reference storage unit for each page; and, as a result of the comparison, a page in which both match each other is stored in the reference storage unit. The printable format data of the page is output to the printing device, and the data of the division result is written for the page where the two do not match. Expand by opening means print control apparatus characterized by having the output control means for outputting to the printing device. 2. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: a reception queue generating unit configured to generate a reception queue for receiving transmission format data from the host device; Transmission format data and printable format data of the reference document are stored for each reception queue, and the transmission format data received at each reception queue is compared with the transmission format data of the reference document corresponding to the reception queue. A print control device characterized by the above-mentioned. 3. The apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the transmission format data first received in the reception queue and the printable format data expanded from the transmission format data are used as reference document data corresponding to the reception queue. A print control device, wherein the print control device stores the information in the reference storage unit. 4. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein, for each non-matching page in which both do not match in the comparison by the page unit comparing means, the division result and a printable expansion thereof are performed. A print control device comprising a mismatched page storage means for storing format data. 5. The apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the transmission format data and the printable format data of a page specified by a user among the mismatched pages stored in the mismatched page storage unit are stored in the reference storage unit. A print control device, comprising: a reference replacement unit that replaces transmission format data and printable format data of a corresponding page in the document. 6. The apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the printable format data of each mismatched page stored in the mismatched page storage unit and the printable format data of a corresponding page in the reference storage unit. A mismatched dot extracting unit that compares each dot and extracts a dot that does not match, and prints the information of the extracted mismatched dot on the corresponding page stored in the mismatched page storage unit or the reference storage unit. And a mismatched page synthesizing means for synthesizing and outputting the data.