JPH11146177A - Communication terminal equipment with electronic mail function and recording medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent the use of a large capacity of a picture memory for reception by receiving identification information showing the encoding system of an electronic mail and identification information of an electronic mail including an electronic mail main body, selecting the electronic mail of a prescribed encoding system based on the identification information and receiving the selected electronic mail main body. SOLUTION: At the time of receiving an electronic mail, a main control part 1 of communication terminal equipment with an electronic mail function such as facsimile equipment judges the encoding system of this electronic mail from the header of the electronic mail and additional information of a message main body to allow a user to receive only the electronic mail of a desired encoding system. Transmitted picture data is read as dot data by a reading part by the unit of a page, is converted to encoded image data by software according to various kinds of encoding system fixed by the regulation of facsimile communication and is outputted as a hard copy from a recording part 3.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a communication terminal device having an e-mail function such as a facsimile device having a function of connecting to an e-mail, and a recording medium readable by the device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, a computer communication network which connects a local computer communication network with a communication line and distributes e-mail via a networked Internet or the like has become widespread. The computer communication network is excellent in error correction function, and the user only has to pay the communication cost (line usage fee and connection cost to the provider) to the nearest provider (connection company to the computer communication network) in Japan. Not only can it communicate with computers all over the world.

[0003] The conventional facsimile communication procedure is different from that of the computer communication using the computer communication network as described above, so that the facsimile apparatus cannot directly communicate with the computer communication network. However, even for image data such as a transmission manuscript normally transmitted / received by facsimile communication, by converting it to an e-mail format, specifically, by converting it to text,
It can be transmitted and received via a computer communication network.

[0004] Under such circumstances, facsimile messages can be transmitted and received as electronic mail via Internet communication, and communication terminals with an electronic mail function, particularly facsimile apparatuses, used for such purposes have been developed. .

[0005] When a facsimile apparatus having an e-mail communication function receives an e-mail, it logs in to a network and checks a mailbox assigned to each mail address in a mail server for storing transmitted mail. If there is an e-mail such as a facsimile message that can be received, it is downloaded.

[0006]

By the way, all e-mails distributed via the Internet are text data converted into text as described above, and this text data is in a format such as voice, application, or JPEG. This includes binary data such as images converted to text using encoding methods such as MIME and uuencode commonly used on the Internet. The facsimile apparatus as described above does not have a function for decoding the binary data converted into text in this way, so that the user can understand the meaning even if it is printed out like ordinary text data. Can not. Therefore, there is a problem that not only the large capacity of the image memory is used to receive these unreadable e-mails, so that other e-mails cannot be received, but also that communication costs increase unnecessarily. .

The present invention has been made in view of such circumstances, and when receiving an electronic mail, confirms the encoding method of the electronic mail, and the encoding method can be decoded by the present apparatus. A communication terminal device with an e-mail function such as a facsimile device which receives only an e-mail including text data as a document and which can be read by a user without using a large capacity of an image memory for reception And a recording medium readable by the apparatus.

[0008]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a communication terminal device having an electronic mail function, comprising: a first receiving unit that receives identification information indicating an encoding method of an electronic mail and identification information of an electronic mail including an electronic mail body; Means, a selecting means for selecting an e-mail of a predetermined encoding method based on the identification information,
Second receiving means for receiving the selected electronic mail body.

A communication terminal device with an electronic mail function according to a second invention is the communication terminal device with an electronic mail function of the first invention, wherein the first receiving means receives the header of the electronic mail in addition to the identification information. Means for adding information indicating that the e-mail is undecodable to a header of the e-mail other than the predetermined encoding method, and output means for outputting an addition result. I do.

[0010] A storage medium according to a third aspect of the present invention is a means for causing a communication terminal device with an e-mail function to receive identification information indicating an encoding method of an e-mail and identification information of an e-mail including an e-mail main body; A program is recorded which includes means for selecting an e-mail of a predetermined encoding method based on the information and means for receiving the selected e-mail body.

According to the communication terminal device with an e-mail function and the recording medium according to the first and third inventions, identification information indicating an encoding method of the e-mail, for example, a MIME (Multipurpose Int)
ernet Mail Extensions) format, "Content-Description", "Content-Typ"
e ”, identification information indicating an encoding method such as“ Content-Transfer-Encoding ”is first received, the encoding method is determined based on the identification information, and an e-mail of a predetermined encoding method, for example,“ Content ” -Transfer-Encoding ”is configured to selectively receive only Base64-encoded e-mails described as“ Base64 ”in the header line. It is possible to receive only e-mail in the format that can be
There is no fear that the large capacity of the image memory is used to receive an e-mail that cannot be read by the user and that another e-mail cannot be received, and the communication cost can be reduced.

Further, in the above invention, an example is described in which the present invention is applied to transmission and reception of electronic mail using the Internet. However, the present invention is not limited to this. For example, electronic mail using the Internet via personal computer communication, or personal computer It goes without saying that the present invention can be applied to transmission and reception of electronic mail using only communication.

According to the communication terminal device with an e-mail function according to the second invention, in the communication terminal device with an e-mail function of the first invention, for an e-mail other than a predetermined encoding method, for example, RFC (Request For Comments) ) “Date:”, “From:”, “To:
Only the mail header consisting of items such as "", "Subject:" and "Cc:" is received, and information indicating that the e-mail cannot be decrypted is added to this mail header, and the display device,
By providing a configuration for outputting to a printing device or the like, it is possible to notify the user of the presence of an e-mail that cannot be received.

[0014]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings showing the embodiments. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a facsimile apparatus (hereinafter, referred to as the present invention apparatus) as a communication terminal apparatus with an e-mail function according to the present invention.

The main control unit 1 is composed of an MPU. The main control unit 1 not only controls each unit of the hardware of the apparatus of the present invention through the bus 13 but also converts the image data of the original into MH based on the software stored in the ROM 6. Includes encoding / decoding that encodes or deciphers using encoding methods such as, MR, MMR, etc., image (TIFF) conversion, binary text conversion, mail editing, modem switching, control of RS232C by AT commands, etc. Execute software such as communication procedures.

In this embodiment, when receiving an electronic mail, the main control unit 1 determines the encoding method of the electronic mail from the header of the electronic mail and the additional information of the message body,
Only the e-mail of the encoding system desired by the user can be received.

The reading section 2 reads an original with a scanner using a CCD or the like, and outputs dot image data converted into binary black and white. The recording unit 3 includes a printer device of an electrophotographic system or the like, and prints out and records image data received from another facsimile device by facsimile communication and image data or text data received by Internet communication.

The display unit 4 includes a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a CR.
T It is a display device such as a display, which displays the operation state of the device of the present invention, and image data of a document to be transmitted,
The received data such as image data and text data is displayed.

The operation unit 5 includes character keys, numeric keys (numerical keys), speed dial keys, one-touch dial keys, various function keys, and the like necessary for operating the apparatus of the present invention. In addition, by using the touch panel type as the display unit 4, some or all of the various keys of the operation unit 5 can be substituted.

The ROM 6 stores various software programs necessary for the operation of the apparatus of the present invention in advance. RAM 7
Is composed of an SRAM or a flash memory and stores temporary data generated when executing software. If a flash memory is used as the RAM 7, the stored contents will not be lost even if the power is cut off due to a power failure, movement of the apparatus of the present invention, or the like.

The RAM 7 is provided with a user table in which user ID and password settings can be registered for each user code assigned to a plurality of users of the apparatus of the present invention. Also, this user table can be set to receive only e-mails containing TIFF image data by Internet communication, and by setting a predetermined position of the user table to “1” or “0” in advance, respectively. The reception setting can be set to “ON” or “OFF”.

The image memory 8 is constructed using a DRAM or the like, and stores data such as image data to be transmitted and received image data.

The modem 9 is for normal facsimile communication.
It is a fax modem. The data modem 10 is a modem for data communication for performing Internet communication,
It is connected to the bus 13 via the I / F 12. NCU (Network
The control unit 11 is hardware for closing and opening the analog line L, and connects the modem 9 or the data modem 10 to the analog line L as necessary.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral M denotes a flexible disk as a recording medium, and reference numeral 16 denotes an external storage reading unit such as a flexible disk drive, which is recorded by inserting the flexible disk M. Read a computer program and RA
It can be stored in M7.

A DSU (Digital Subscriber Line Terminator: Digital)
Service Unit) to connect to a digital line of the baseband transmission system.

The apparatus of the present invention has the above-mentioned hardware configuration, and has not only a facsimile communication function of a general G3 system or the like but also a MI
In addition to having the function of sending and receiving e-mail as image data coded (encoded) in ME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) format, it also receives e-mail as documents created by word processors, personal computers, etc. It has the function to do. However, since the function for that is stored in the ROM 6 as a software program, such a function will be described below.

Image data to be transmitted via the Internet is read as dot data by the reading unit 2 in units of one sheet, in other words, in units of pages, and MH, MR, MMR, etc. defined in the standard of facsimile communication. Is converted into encoded image data by software in accordance with the encoding method described above, and conversely, encoded image data received from the outside is also compounded into dot data by software and output from the recording unit 3 as a hard copy. The image memory 8 stores the encoded image data as needed,
Conversely, the stored encoded image data is output as needed.

The encoded image data is converted by software into a TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) format which is a general image format used by a computer at the time of transmission, and is converted from the TIFF format by software at the time of reception. It is converted to G3 format encoded image data. The specifications of TIFF are published by Adobe Systems, Inc. of the United States.
In order to handle various data such as full color, Class corresponding to each is defined. CLASS which is one of them
F defines G3 format encoded image data.
Therefore, the encoded image data in G3 format has
It can be converted to TIFF format by performing relatively easy processing such as adding CLASS F TIFF header information.

Since the TIFF image data thus obtained is binary data, it is necessary to convert it to text data by software at the time of transmission, and vice versa, ie, to convert text data to binary data at the time of reception. There is. This is because computers that cannot handle binary data e-mail are also connected to the Internet. For this reason, in order to ensure that the e-mail reaches the destination, when transmitting binary data such as TIFF image data, it is once converted to text data and then transmitted. Text data handled on the Internet is IE
It is defined as a 7-bit code in RFC (Request For Comments) 822 which is a document issued by TF (Internet Engineering Task Force).

Thus, as an example, when conversion to text data is performed using Base64, which is one of the MIME encoding types, binary data is converted into 6-bit units.
It is converted into text data by being replaced by one of 64 types of characters (upper and lower case alphabets, numbers, +, /). For MIME, RFC1
521, for example, besides the above Base64, "7
Encoding types such as “bit”, “8bit”, and “binary” are defined.

The file of the data converted into text in the MIME format to be transmitted (hereinafter referred to as “MIME data”) obtained as described above is added with communication management information (mail header) by using the file as a main body by software, and the file of the electronic mail is transmitted. The electronic mail that has been edited in the format, and conversely, the received electronic mail, the main body, that is, the MIME data and the mail header are separated by software, and only the MIME data is extracted.

The mail editing processing by such software is indispensable because it is necessary to add a predetermined mail header to an electronic mail on the Internet and send it together with the text. Specifically, at the beginning of the TIFF image data at the time of transmission, “Date:” (date and time of e-mail transmission), “From:” (sender of e-mail), and “To:” (electronic Email address), “Subject:”
A mail header including items such as (additional information such as the title of the e-mail) and "Cc:" (e-mail copy destination, carbon copy) is added, and these mail headers are separated at the time of reception.

In a facsimile apparatus such as the apparatus of the present invention, when performing facsimile transmission via the Internet, the contents of the "Subject:" item include a code "IF" indicating that facsimile transmission is performed using the Internet.
AX ”is set.

Also, when an electronic mail as a document created by a word processor, a personal computer, or the like is received, it is also received as text data encoded into characters specified in Base64 in the same manner as described above.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of an electronic mail in the MIME format. According to RFC 822, MIME data consists of blank lines (CRLF: ASCII code, followed by “CR” and “L”
F)) followed by a “header line” and a “message body.” MIME adds the following header,
The definition of RFC822 was expanded.

"MIME-Version" indicates a MIME version number such as "1.0". "Content-Description"
Provide additional instructions that can be read by the user. ”Cont
“ent-Type” specifies the type of data included in the message. “Content-Transfer-Encoding” specifies “Basic
Specifies how to encode the data into a 7-bit text code, such as "se64" or "uuencode".

In MIME, "Content-Type" and "Content-Type"
Transfer-Encoding ", which is defined to specify the format of the message body in three layers.
The layers are the rough types that identify the general types of data: "text", "audio", "image", "video".
"," Application "," message "," multipart "
Specify with. Layer 2 describes the exact type of data in the message in addition to the type specified in Layer 1, as "text / plai
n "," audio / basic "," image / tiff "," video / mpe
g "," application / octet-stream ", etc. In the third layer, for example, when the second layer is" text / plain ", the type of character code is" us-ascii (alphabet) ","
iso-2022-jp (Japanese) "," Latin / Hebrew (Latin / Hebrew) ", etc.

Using the "multipart" type of the first layer,
A plurality of data of different formats can be assembled as one message. The most common "mu" of this type
ltipart / mixed ”consists of multiple parts, each with its own Content-Type header line. Each part is a string defined by a boundary (“ boundary ”) (preceded by a hyphen The end of the message is indicated by "-" following "-(boundary character string)".

Although the figure shows an e-mail using the Internet, a multipart message including text data (Japanese) and data encoded with uuencode is shown. For example, in the case of e-mail using the Internet via personal computer communication, a mail header for personal computer communication is further added before the mail header specified in RFC822, and after the mail header specified in RFC822, Is appended with a blank line. Also, in an e-mail using only PC communication, only a mail header for PC communication is used, and a mail header specified by RFC822 is not added.

Next, in the operation of the apparatus of the present invention having the above configuration, the control procedure by the main control unit 1 when the apparatus of the present invention receives an e-mail will be described with reference to the flowcharts shown in FIGS. It will be described with reference to FIG.

First, the control procedure involved in the mail check will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. RAM 7
Log in to the network using the user ID and password registered in the user table (step 1). E-mail list of the e-mail addressed to the machine arriving at the mailbox (“Date:”, “From:”, “To:
"," Subject: "," Cc: "etc.) are sent out to the network by sending a predetermined command (step 2), and the presence or absence of the received mail is confirmed (step 3). On the other hand, if there is an incoming e-mail in step 3, "Dat" is sent from the first e-mail in the mail list.
e: ”,” From: ”,” To: ”,” Subject: ”,” Cc:
A character string (mail header) compliant with RFC822 such as "" is received (step 4).

In the case of an electronic mail using only personal computer communication, a personal computer communication header, for example, “sender”, “ID”, “title”, “title” in NIFTY-Serve instead of the RFC822 mail header. After the date "and a blank line, a mail message encoded by an encoding method such as uuencode is received. In the case of an electronic mail using the Internet via personal computer communication, a MIME header is received following the personal computer communication mail header, blank line, RFC822 mail header, and blank line.

Then, TI using Internet communication
Check the user setting indicating whether or not to receive only the FF file (step 5). If the user setting is “OFF”, the “Subject:” line of the received mail header is displayed as “Subject:”.
It is confirmed whether or not there is "IFAX", that is, whether or not the communication is facsimile communication using the Internet communication (step 6). If it is determined that there is, download it (step 7) and repeat the processing from step 3 to shift to the processing of the next e-mail.If there is no "IFAX", step to shift to the processing of the next e-mail The process from 3 is repeated.

On the other hand, if the user setting is "ON", it is confirmed whether or not "IFAX" is present in the "Subject:" line of the received mail header, as in step 6. Step 8) If "IFAX" is present, this electronic mail is determined to be facsimile communication using the Internet communication, and step 7 is performed to download the electronic mail. Then, the process proceeds to the next electronic mail processing. The process from step 3 is repeated as needed. If "IFAX" does not exist, it is determined that the e-mail is an e-mail other than facsimile communication using the Internet communication, and a "text mail reception processing subroutine" is performed (step 9). Step 3 to move to the processing of
Is repeated.

Next, a control procedure associated with the text mail receiving process will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. First, in order to ignore the mail header of the personal computer communication, an e-mail is received line by line and a continuous blank line (CRLF) is detected (step 901), and this is repeated until it is detected. When CRLF is detected, the process moves to the next line (step 902). Step 901 is omitted in the case of an electronic mail that does not go through personal computer communication. Next, to ignore the mail header of the PC communication again
The CRLF is detected (step 903).

Steps 902 to 904 (described below) are procedures for detecting the mail header of RFC822. If a blank line (CRLF) is detected without detecting this, the process proceeds to step 903. Shift to "YES".

If CRLF is not detected in step 903, “Date:”, “From:”, “To:”, “Subjec
Character strings (mail headers) conforming to RFC822 such as t: ”and“ Cc: ”are detected in order (step 904), and after all mail headers are detected, CRLF is detected again (step 905). , Repeat until this is detected.CRLF
Is detected (step 906), and it is confirmed whether or not there is a MIME header in this line (step 9).
07). Step 905 is omitted when no personal computer communication is performed.

If there is a MIME header in this line, the process proceeds to the next line (step 908), and a character string containing "Content-Type:" is detected (step 909).
If the character string following “Type:” is “multipart”, a character string containing “boundary =” is detected (step 910), and at the point of detection, the boundary is a character string following “boundary =”. The code is stored in a table provided in the RAM 7 in advance (step 911).

After step 911 or step 909
If the string following “Content-Type:” is “text / plain”, then “charset” usually follows “text / plain”
Is detected (step 912), and when "charset" is detected, it is further confirmed whether or not the character indicating the subtype following "charset" is "us-ascii" (step 9).
13) If it is not “us-ascii”, further “charset
The character indicating the subtype following "" is "iso-2022-jp"
(Step 914) and confirm that "iso-2022-j
If p ", the entire mail message is downloaded as plain text containing the Japanese character set (step 915).

Then, it is confirmed again whether or not it is "multipart" (step 916). If it is "multipart", the character string of the boundary code stored in the table in step 911 is detected (step 917). ). It is detected whether or not "-" follows the detected boundary code (step 918). If there is "-", or if it is not "multipart" in step 916, return to the main routine. I do. If there is no "-" in step 918, the process returns to step 908 and the next part (multipart
Process of the mail message divided by.

When CRLF is detected in step 903, it is checked whether or not it is "uuencode" (step 9).
19) If it is not "uuencode", the user environment is further confirmed (step 920). In step 920, if the user does not support Japanese and only supports "us-ascii", the entire mail message is
download as us-ascii ”text data (step 921) and jump to step 916. If there is no MIME header in step 907,“ c
If "harset" is not detected, enter "us-asci" in step 913.
Even if it is "i", the process jumps to step 916 after executing step 921 to download as "us-ascii" text data.

If it is “uuencode” in step 919, if it is not “iso-2022-jp” in step 914, or if the character following “Content-Type:” is “au” in step 909,
In the case of Content-Type such as “dio”, the message “Unreadable” is added after the mail header and the e-mail is printed out (step 92).
2) Jump to step 916.

If the user supports Japanese in step 920, step 920 is performed to download the entire mail message as Japanese text data.
Jump to 915.

Steps 901 to 908 are reception steps for evaluating a mail header (including a mail header of personal computer communication). These steps, and steps other than steps 915 and 921, are MIME. The receiving step (first receiving step) for evaluating the header and the steps 915 and 921 enclosed by double lines in FIG. 5 are the receiving step (second receiving step) for evaluating the mail message which is the body of the electronic mail. Receiving stage).

After downloading the e-mail, a command is sent to the network to delete the e-mail from the mailbox, or the e-mail which is not downloaded is displayed as "Your mail was not accepted. Please resend in plain text format. "

Also, the e-mail in a format that can be received is
The present invention is not limited to the one shown in the present embodiment. For example, by providing a conversion program corresponding to “uuencode”, it can be converted into text data that can be read by the user. In this case, step 919 Is omitted.

Although the format of the e-mail that can be identified by the user is automatically recognized in accordance with the user environment and the MIME header, for example, the user can respond to the description of each MIME header such as “Content-Type:”. It is also possible to adopt a configuration in which the type of text data to be received can be individually set.

[0058]

As described in detail above, according to the communication terminal device with an e-mail function and the recording medium readable by the device according to the present invention, identification information indicating an encoding method of an e-mail to be received, for example, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Ma
il Extensions) if the email is in the "
Content-Description ”,” Content-Type ”,” Conten
t-Transfer-Encoding ”and the like, determine the encoding method based on the identification information indicating the encoding method described in the header line,
E-mail of a predetermined encoding method, for example, "Content-Tran
By selecting and receiving only the Base64-encoded e-mails described as “Base64” in the “sfer-Encoding” header line, the user can read the e-mails in a format that can be decoded by the user and read by the user. It is possible to receive only e-mail, and there is no possibility that a large amount of image memory will be used to receive e-mail that cannot be read by the user and that other e-mails will not be received, thereby reducing communication costs. Can be.

For an electronic mail other than a predetermined encoding method, for example, RFC (Request For Comments) 822
“Date:”, “From:”, “T” as specified in
o: ”,“ Subject: ”,“ Cc: ”, etc. Only the mail header consisting of the items is received, and information indicating that the e-mail cannot be decrypted is added to this mail header, and the display device,
By outputting to a printing device or the like, it is possible to notify the user of the presence of an unreceivable e-mail.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a facsimile apparatus as a communication terminal apparatus with an e-mail function according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of an electronic mail in a MIME format.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a control procedure by a main control unit when the apparatus of the present invention receives an electronic mail (main routine).

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a control procedure by a main control unit when the apparatus of the present invention receives an e-mail (text mail reception processing subroutine).

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a control procedure performed by a main control unit when the apparatus of the present invention receives an electronic mail (text mail reception processing subroutine).

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 1 Main control unit 2 Reading unit 3 Recording unit 6 ROM 7 RAM 8 Image memory 10 Data modem 12 External I / F 16 External storage reading unit M Flexible disk

Claims (3)

[Claims] A first receiving means for receiving identification information indicating an encoding method of an electronic mail and identification information of the electronic mail including an electronic mail body, and transmitting an electronic mail of a predetermined encoding method based on the identification information. A communication terminal device with an e-mail function, comprising: a selection means for selecting; and a second receiving means for receiving the selected e-mail body. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first receiving unit receives the header of the electronic mail in addition to the identification information. 2. The communication terminal device with an e-mail function according to claim 1, further comprising: an adding unit that adds information indicating that there is a message, and an output unit that outputs an addition result. 3. A means for causing a communication terminal device with an e-mail function to receive identification information indicating an encoding method of an e-mail and identification information of an e-mail including an e-mail body, and a predetermined code based on the identification information. A recording medium readable by a communication terminal device, on which a program including means for selecting an e-mail in a coded format and means for receiving the selected e-mail body is recorded.