JPS604087A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable to restrict a rise in the overall manufacturing cost while adding only a few pieces of hardware to a conventional printer, by a method wherein a means for appropriate proportional spacing of plural kinds of type groups differring in type size is constituted of simple hardware. CONSTITUTION:When a type group of the 12 pitch as a reference pitch is fitted to the carriage, a selecting switch SEL is set to the position of a graduation of 12. At this time, the logical value of an output from the switch SEL becomes 0, and the logical value impressed on an adder ADD becomes 0. When a micro- processor MPU gains access to a pitch table PSM through an address bus AB in order to know the displacement of the carriage for a desired type in the type group, e.g., a type ''a'', a desired displacement value is read from the table PSM, and is impressed on the adder ADD.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Technical Field) The present invention relates to a printing device such as an electronic typewriter having a microprocessor, and in particular to one in which the amount of movement of a carriage can be changed for each character.

(Prior art) In recent years, with the development of microprocessors, printing devices such as typewriters have changed from conventional mechanical or electromagnetic mechanical types to electronic ones, and there are many so-called electronic typewriters. Proposed. Electronic typewriters have a right margin alignment function and a professional special spacing function, but these functions have been difficult to realize with anything other than electronic typewriters.

The proportional spacing function, which is directly related to the present invention, will now be described. Conventional mechanical typewriters have always been designed to print 70 characters per inch (so-called /θ pitch) or 1λ characters per inch (so-called /2 pitch). Regardless of the character, the amount of carriage movement immediately after printing is fixed at either 6 inches or 747 inches. However, with electronic typewriters, the amount of movement of the carriage can be changed according to each character using proportional spacing, so that the characters in the printed document are beautifully arranged.

Early electronic typewriters provided only one proportional spacing type set for each electronic typewriter.

However, in recent years, different proportional spacings have been desired for a plurality of typefaces. In other words, the conventional 10 characters per inch (/θ
Can be used for both proportional spacing for a group of type that is slightly larger than the type area based on the pitch), and proportional spacing for a group of type that is slightly smaller than the type area based on 72 characters per inch (/2 pitch). A new electronic typewriter is in demand.

(Objective) In view of the above-mentioned points, an object of the present invention is to configure, in particular, a means necessary for applying appropriate proportional spacing to a plurality of groups of typefaces having different sizes using hardware. The object of the present invention is to provide a printing device that can apply fine proportional spacing to each printed character simply by adding this hardware to a conventional printing device such as an electronic typewriter.

(Example) Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an example of a printing device of the present invention, such as an electronic typewriter, where SEL is a selection switch for selecting a reference pitch in proportional spacing, and P
SM is a read-only memory serving as a pitch table that stores in advance the amount of movement of a carriage (not shown) corresponding to each character of a group of characters of a printing font. Selection switch SEL
and the output of the pitch table PSM are supplied to an adder ADD, and the output of this adder ADD is supplied to the microprocessor MPU via a data bus DB.

The microprocessor MPU performs arithmetic operations and logical judgments for printing processing, and controls each component such as the pitch table P8M connected to the data bus DB and address bus AB via these buses. MIICM is a memory having a program memory and a work memory, I
lo is an input/output device such as a keyboard or a printer. Here, the microprocessor M in the electronic typewriter
Since the control method centered on the PU is well known, its explanation will be omitted.

FIG. 2 shows the contents of the pitch table PSM, and the basic unit of the amount of movement of the type is 740 inches.

For example, if the character width is J/60. In other words, the standard pitch of 7
A character with the same amount of movement as 2 pitches, such as the character “k”
For this, just print the letter “k” 12 times! ×/2=
60 and can move 1 inch in total, in this case the content =
Let it be j. Even narrower characters, such as the letter “i”
and "j" are set to 3/60 inch, and the amount of movement is smaller than the standard pitch.On the other hand, when the character width is wide, such as the character "m"
'' is set to 6/60 inches, and the amount of movement is made larger than the standard pitch.

For example, if a character group with /2 pitch is mounted on the carriage as a reference pitch, select switch S
Set the EL to the “/2” position on the scale.

At this time, the logical value of the output from the selection switch SEL is “
The logic value applied to the adder ADD is “O”.
becomes. The microprocessor MPU inputs a pitch table P via an address bus AB in order to know the amount of carriage movement of any desired character in the group of characters, for example "a".
When SM is accessed, the desired amount of movement is read from the pitch table PSM and applied to the adder ADD K.

Therefore, the desired movement amount stored in the pitch table PSM and the logical value "o" from the selection switch SEL+ are added by the adder ADD, and the added output is read into the microprocessor MPU via the data bus DB. It will be done.

Therefore, the microprocessor KPU adds
The carriage is controlled so that the amount of movement of the printed characters is obtained in accordance with the output value of the DD.

On the other hand, when a group of type characters having an IO pitch as a reference pitch is mounted on the carriage, K sets the selection switch SEL to the position of the scale "lθ". For this color, the logical value of the output of the selection switch SEL is "l", and when the microprocessor MPU accesses the pitch table PSM as described above, the output of the adder ADD is relative to the output of the pitch table PSH. The value becomes older by “/”.

Next, the microprocessor MPU reads the output of the above-mentioned adder ADD and controls the carriage so that the type can move according to the output value. Note that regarding the movement of the carriage itself, a conventional technique can be applied, so a description thereof will be omitted here.

In this example, the selection switch SEL is used as a selection means for selecting the typeface of the typefaces mounted on the carriage, but instead of this, a sensor can be used to automatically determine the typeface of the typefaces mounted on the carriage. However, the determination output may be supplied to the adder ADD. Furthermore, in this example, the case of one type of font has been described, but the font can of course be easily extended to 3-type term and 1-type head.

(Effects) As explained above, according to the present invention, unnecessary means for applying appropriate proportional spacing to a plurality of types of typeface groups having different typeface sizes can be configured with simple hardware. be able to. As a result, this no--
By adding doware to a conventional printing device, such as an electronic typewriter, the result is a printing device that can provide fine proportional spacing to each character.

Furthermore, since the printing device of the present invention requires only a small amount of hardware to be added to the conventional printing device, the increase in overall manufacturing costs can be kept low.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of the printing apparatus of the present invention, and FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of the contents of the pitch table shown in FIG. SEL...selection switch, PSM...pitch daple (read only memory),
ADD...adder, MPU...microprocessor 1 AB...address bus, DB...data bus, HEM...memory, 1 110...input/output device.

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a printing device having a carriage capable of moving a group of type, a storage means for storing a reference amount of movement of the carriage corresponding to each character for the group of type, and an amount of movement of the carriage for each of a plurality of types of groups of type. a specifying means for specifying the amount of movement relative to the reference movement amount, and calculating the movement amount of the carriage from the reference amount read from the storage means and the output from the specifying means for each character of the selected character group. 1. A printing device characterized by comprising a calculation means for calculating.