JPS58107591A - Overlapping character pattern generation system - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method for generating dot patterns of characters in an apparatus for printing characters in the form of a dot matrix, and in particular to a method for generating dot patterns of characters in an apparatus for printing characters in the form of a dot matrix, and in particular to a method for generating dot patterns of characters in the form of a dot matrix. Regarding the method of generating.

With a wire dot type printer or the like, it is possible to print overlapping characters by printing overlapping character patterns at the same position. However, in printers such as laser printers that create electrostatic latent images of characters on a photoreceptor and print them onto paper, it is not possible to print overlapping characters using the above method.

In order to print overlapping characters, it is necessary to generate an overlapping character pattern in advance and provide it to the printer device.

An object of the present invention is to provide a method for generating an overlapping character pattern for printing overlapping characters using a laser printer or the like.

However, in the overlapping character pattern generation method according to the present invention, character data for a plurality of characters is simultaneously read from a first storage device, and the second storage device is sequentially accessed using each read character data as address information, Character patterns corresponding to each character data are sequentially read out and stored in a register or the like. When this readout is completed, character patterns for a plurality of characters stored in a register or the like are ORed by an OR circuit or the like and sent out as a superimposed character pattern.

Hereinafter, one embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention.

In this embodiment, so-called proportional space printing is performed using a laser printer or the like. On the printer side, each character is printed by changing the character width in units called units according to the character type.

For example, "character type" is printed with a width of 6 units as shown in FIG. 4(a). Narrow characters such as a semicolon “;” are printed in three units as shown in Figure 4 (l17).
do. Although not shown, wide characters such as rMJ and "w" are printed in 8 units. Each unit of characters has
Unit numbers are assigned as shown.

Returning to FIG. 1, 102 is a text storage device in which printed character data is stored. This text storage device 102
Print character data transferred from a host device such as a word processor is edited and written by a processing circuit (not shown) in accordance with the print output format.

The word structure of the print character data written to this
As shown in the figure. One word consists of a field F for specifying the font, a field U for specifying the unit number, as shown in the figure.
, field CC1 specifying the first character code, second
It consists of a field that specifies the character code of , and CC2.

Referring again to FIG. 1, 100 is a text storage device 102.
This is an address control circuit. This circuit reads necessary words from the text storage device 102 in synchronization with the print scan of the printer device based on the main scanning clock CLOCK and sub-scanning clock 5YNC of the printer device (not shown). address information, and controls the timing of latching the read word to the register 104.

The contents of fields F and U of register 104 are transferred as is to address register 108, but field CC
I and CC2 are selectively and sequentially transferred to the address register 108 through the selector circuit 106. Input selection of selector circuit 106 is controlled by a select signal from control circuit 110. The latch timing of address register 108 is also controlled by a timing signal from control circuit 110.

112 is a pattern storage device, usually a ROM (read only memory). This pattern storage device 112
stores the character patterns (dot patterns) of each character for different fonts. The address designation of the pattern storage device 112 is performed by the contents of the font designation field F, unit number designation field U1, character code designation field of the address register 108, and the line address given from the control circuit 110. In a printer device, characters are printed in a dot matrix using, for example, 48 scanning lines, and the line address specifies the number of the scanning line being scanned.

114 and 116 are shift registers that temporarily store character patterns for two characters successively read from the pattern storage device 112. The character patterns accumulated in the shift registers 114 and 116 are shifted to the right in accordance with the timing signal from the control circuit 110, and then transferred to the OR circuit 11.
After being logically summed in step 8, it is sent to the printer device.

Next, the operation of generating an overlapping character pattern will be explained, taking as an example the case where overlapping characters of the character rAJ and the letter "V" as shown in FIG. 5 are printed. Note that both A and V are characters printed in 6 units, and the corresponding character codes are (21) 16 e (36) 16.

When the printer device starts scanning a character line including the overlapping character and the scanning point passes through the printing position of the character immediately before the overlapping character, the word WO for unit O of the overlapping character is stored in the register from the text storage device 102. 10
4. The contents of each field of this word WO are as shown in FIG.

Fields F and U of this word WO are directly transmitted, and the first character code field CC1 is transmitted to the address register 1 of the pattern storage device 112 through the selector circuit 106.
It is set to 08. Therefore, the current scanning line (specified by the line address from the control circuit 110) (=the dot pattern of the corresponding unit O) of the (letter rAJ from the turn storage device 112) screen is read out. and set in the shift register 114. Since the feed F of word WO is (0)16, the character pattern read out is that of the font.

Then, the selector circuit 106 selects the second
The contents of character code field CC2 are selected and set in address register 108. Therefore, the letter r
Unit 0 of the VJ character pattern, the dot pattern for the current scanning line, is read from the pattern storage device 112 and set in the shift register 114. At this time, the character r previously set in the shift register 114
The AJ dot pattern is the lower shift register 116.
are transferred in parallel. After 7, the shift registers 114 and 11 shift according to the shift timing from the control circuit 110.
The contents of 6 are sequentially shifted to the right. Both shift registers 11
The two dot patterns shifted out from 4 and 116 are ORed for each corresponding bit by an OR circuit 118, and sent to the printer device d as overlapping character pattern data.

Subsequently, the word Wl (FIG. 3) for the next unit 1 is read out from the text storage device 102,
As before, i2 and the characters rl, r' for unit 1
The dot patterns for the current scanning line of the VJ character pattern are sequentially read out from the pattern storage device 112, logically summed, and sent to the printer device.

Thereafter, words W2 to W5 are sequentially read from the text storage device 102 in the same manner, and dot patterns for units 3° 4.5 are sequentially generated.

Similar operations are repeated until the last scanning line of the character line, and the entire overlapping character pattern of characters rAJ and rVJ is generated. In this way, overlapping characters as shown in FIG. 5 are printed.

It is clear that when printing ordinary characters that are not overlapping characters, it is sufficient to specify a blank character in one of the fields CCI and CC2 in the word of the text storage device 102.

Although one embodiment of the present invention has been described, the present invention is not limited thereto, and various modified embodiments are allowed without departing from the gist of the present invention.

For example, if a word in the text storage device has three or more character specification fields, a pattern of overlapping characters of three or more characters can be generated. Regarding the word structure in the text storage device, if there is only one type of font, field F is unnecessary, and if printing is done with a uniform character width rather than proportional space printing, field F is unnecessary. Only one word per character need be stored in the text storage device. In addition, proportional
Even in the case of space printing, the number of units is specified in the field U of the word in the text storage device, a unit number is generated separately within the device and given to the +turn storage device, and the character address of the text storage device is updated. If it is arranged to be performed according to the number of units, it is only necessary to store one word per character in the text storage device.

As detailed above, according to the present invention, it is possible to generate overlapping characters and turns of two or more characters, so it is possible to print overlapping characters even with a laser printer device, etc. becomes.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the word structure of a text storage device, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the word structure of a text storage device. Figure 4 is an explanatory diagram of the character tuktan in proportional space printing, Figure 5 is the character rAl,
It is a figure which shows the overlapping character pattern of rVJ. 100... Address control circuit, 102-... Text storage device, 104... Register, 106-... Selector circuit, 108... Address register, 110...
- Control circuit, 112... Pattern storage device, 114
, 116...shift register, 118...OR circuit.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Read character data for multiple characters simultaneously from a first storage device, sequentially access a second storage device using each read character data as address information, and sequentially read character patterns corresponding to each character data. , an overlapping character pattern generation method characterized in that an overlapping character pattern is generated by ORing character patterns for a plurality of characters.