JPS6041089A - Graphic generator - 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 is a graphic generation device, in particular, generates a graphic that is visually output to a graphic output device such as a display device or a printing device according to input data supplied from a host machine. This invention relates to a graphic generation device.

Figure generation devices that generate line figures such as graphs in response to instruction data from a host machine typically include those that form figures using a large number of dots, and those that form figures using line segment vectors, that is, strokes. There are things that form figures.

A dot-based graphic generation device generates graphic data in accordance with instruction data from a host, and temporarily stores the graphic data in a memory or buffer by dividing it into output lines each consisting of n (natural number) dots. This stored data is read out at the timing requested by the output device and displayed or printed on the output device.

For example, in the case of a line graph shape as shown in Figure 1,
Graphical data showing an output row 12 of n dots as shown in FIG. 2 is formed. As you will see from now on, broken line 10
The part constitutes a black dot, and the other part is a white dot. Therefore, even though the polygonal line 10 forms a small portion of the entire screen and most of it is blank space, the graphic generation device must handle a large amount of graphic data including a large number of white dots. Therefore, a large capacity memory or buffer must be used, which has the disadvantage that processing or outputting the entire screen takes a very long time.

In order to avoid this drawback, efforts have been made to compress data and improve processing speed, but no significant improvements have been seen. On the contrary, the circuit configuration and processing program become more complicated, resulting in lower reliability of the entire device.

On the other hand, vector-based graphic generation devices require a circuit for vector analysis on the output device side, which complicates the configuration of the device. In addition, in addition to figures, there are often requests to output characters, but the vector-based figure generation function alone cannot handle such cases, so we had to add a vector-based character generation function. .

Therefore, the structure of the device as a whole becomes complicated, and the reliability also decreases.

An object of the present invention is to eliminate such drawbacks of the prior art and to provide a graphic generation device with a relatively simple configuration that can transfer graphic data to a graphic output device in a short amount of time.

The configuration of the present invention will be described below based on embodiments.

First, the basic principle of the present invention will be explained. In the present invention, in a diagram 3Pli such as a graph, significant dots (for example, black dots) are replaced by unimportant dots (in this example, white dots).
・We are focusing on the fact that the number is much smaller. In other words, the graphic data constituting a line graphic image does not indicate all the lines on the screen, but basically only indicates the position of the vertex of the line and the direction in which the vertex transitions for each output line. do not have.

Here, "vertex" means, for example, in an orthogonal coordinate system, that an image including a line figure is located on one coordinate axis of the orthogonal coordinate system, for example,
Consisting of many rows of dots parallel to an axis, each line such as a line segment or arc that is a constituent unit of the line figure has the smallest coordinate value of the other significant dot that forms that line. A dot, for example, a dot with the smallest Y coordinate value.

Taking the polygonal line 10 shown in FIG. 1 as an example, as shown in FIG. 3, the screen is divided into dot row units, and first, data indicating the dots at the vertices is created.

For example, in the m-th line of the dot row 20,
Assume that the leftmost vertex 14 of is included. The data of the m-th dot row indicates the position of the vertex 14 in that row, and sets the vertex 14 as a.

The data in the (m+1)th line following the mth line indicates the amount of change in dot a. That is, in the case of broken line 1o, dot a
Instructs to shift 1 dot to the left. This is indicated by a+l in FIG. m+2nd line and below,
Similarly, a change in dot a is instructed. If one row contains other vertices, the other vertices are set in that row along with a change instruction. For example, assume that another vertex 16 is included in the t51st row. This vertex 16 changes in both the left and right directions, so here there are two dots b.
and C. In the next 1+1st row, dot a is shifted one dot to the left, dot b is shifted one dot to the left, and dot C is shifted one dot to the right. Hereinafter, changes are indicated for the three drums a, b, and c in the same manner.

If the slope of the polygonal line 10 is small, it may be shifted by two dots in one line of 1Fy, and in that case, as shown in FIG. Depending on the gradient, these two dots may move in the same direction, or they may appear alternately with a single dot every other dot row as shown.

Referring to FIG. 5, there is shown an embodiment of a graphic generation device that implements the principles described above. This device is interposed between a host machine (not shown) and the graphic output device 100, and instruction data is input from the host machine to the input 52 of the graphic data generation section 50. The graphic output device +00 is, for example, a display device or a printing device that visually outputs a graphic instructed by the host machine. This instruction data is, for example, basic data for creating a graph of a broken line IO, and is input data in the form of computer commands. - For example, if it is a line segment, an indication that it is a straight line, a rectangular coordinate system X, Y (
It includes instructions for the coordinates of the starting point and ending point of the line segment in Figure 1). If it is a circular arc, it includes an indication that it is a circular arc, the center coordinates of the circular arc in the orthogonal coordinate system, the radius, and the expansion angle of its starting point and ending point.

The graphic data generation section 50 accumulates 111 pieces of these instruction data and generates straight line or arc graphic data from this data. First, the above-mentioned dot displacement information tVJ.

That is, shift information is generated and transferred to the shift information storage section 54.

More specifically, as shown in the flowchart of FIG. 6, when the graphic data generation unit 50 receives instruction data from the host machine (200), it determines whether it is a circle or a line segment. 202). If it is a line segment, the slope of the line segment is calculated (204). A shift information storage section 54 that stores shift information for each dot forming the line segment based on this calculation result.
Please calculate the address of 20B).

Store this at that address (208).

Along with this, the graphic data generation section 50 also includes a vertex calculation section 56
Then, the dot parallel number calculation unit 58 is activated. First, the vertex calculation unit 56 calculates the dot with the smallest Y coordinate in the line segment based on the shift information.In other words, the vertex 14 located at the higher position from the coordinates of the starting point and the end point of the line segment is calculated.
Calculate (210). Also, the dot parallel number calculation unit 58
ze takes in the shift information from the shift information storage unit 54 (212), determines the slope of the line segment based on this, and
The Y coordinate, that is, the number of dots that should coexist in the dot row 20 is calculated (214).

In this way, the information instructing the apex dot of the graphic data and the shift information are sequentially transferred to the generated liquid graphic data storage unit 60 while being corrected based on the above calculation results as the Y coordinate is incremented. stored in (2
1B). At this stage, the graphic data stored in the generated liquid graphic data storage unit 60 is still in the form shown in FIG. 3, but it is in the form that includes the dot position and shift information at the apex as shown in FIG. ing. As can be seen from FIG. 8, a plurality of dots developed in parallel are stored in storage locations at different addresses corresponding to the vertices and shift information. For example, in the example of FIG. 1, the vertex 18 is developed into two dots b and C, but as shown in FIG. 10, the vertex 18 is stored in two different storage locations in the produced liquid figure data storage section 60.

In the case of a circular arc, as shown in the flow on the right side of FIG. 6, the graphic data generation unit 50 identifies the radius and angle of the circular arc based on the instruction data, and calculates the storage address of the shift information storage unit 54 based on this. Do (220). Shift information is stored at that address (222). below,
The vertex calculation unit 56 calculates the vertices in substantially the same manner as in the case of a straight line (224), and the parallel dot number calculation unit 5B reads the shift information (22B) and calculates the number of parallel dots.

In this way, in the generated liquid graphic data storage section 80, graphic data of dot rows containing significant dots, for example, black dots, are sequentially stored at their storage locations. Therefore, the graphic data of the unexpected dot row, which includes only white dots in this example, is not stored in the generated liquid graphic data storage section 80.

Returning to FIG. 5, this device includes a produced liquid figure data storage section 6
The output of 0 is sent to the graphic output device 10 through the data output section 62.
Connected to 0. Data reading from the graphic data storage section 60 is controlled by the output control section 84.

Referring to the flow in FIG. 7, when a request for graphic data is received from the graphic output device 100 (300), the output control unit 64
The generated liquid figure data storage section 60 should be searched (302)
.

Find the dot row of the vertex at the highest position, that is, the dot at the lowest Y coordinate position (304),
The graphic data of the dot row is transferred to the graphic output device 100 through the data output unit 62 as part of the image data (306).

This is done for each dot row (308), and if that dot row contains another vertex (310), l”
y output information 314), if not, output shift I information 3]2), and repeat this.

Below 1. Through the operations described above, the graphic data of each dot row is rearranged in ascending order of Y coordinate, and those containing a plurality of vertices are combined, resulting in the final shape shown in FIG. 3. Note that this synthesis may be performed under the control of the output; The row data may be transferred to the output device 100 and processed there.

The graphic output device 100 to which the graphic data has been transferred expands the dot row data and converts the expanded dots into shift information t17.
By sequentially shifting each line according to the line shape, the image containing the line figure is visualized.

ADVANCED SECTION According to the present invention, focusing on the characteristic that a line figure such as a graph has relatively more meaningless dots than significant dots, the line figure is composed of 71 and 71 lines, and the dots forming the line figure are A line figure is expressed by F y 1 and change information corresponding to the row. Therefore, in the storage area for storing the generated graphic data, only the graphic data of dot rows containing significant dots are stored sequentially, and the graphic data of 1" dot rows that do not contain any meaningless dots is not stored. The data storage area does not require a large capacity.

Furthermore, since the number of graphic data to be transferred to the graphic output device is less than l-1, the time required to transfer all graphic data is short. In this manner, the present device can transfer graphic data to the graphic output device through the 1υ wire 111, and has a relatively simple configuration without requiring a complicated circuit.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a small diagram showing an example of a line figure to which the present invention can be applied; Figures 2 to 4 are explanatory diagrams for explaining the basic principle of the present invention; Figure 5 is a figure generation device according to the present invention. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 are flow diagrams showing the operation of the apparatus of the embodiment shown in Fig. 5. Fig. 8 is a diagram of the graphic data generated by the apparatus of Fig. It is a figure which shows an example. "Excellence of open part, -Pm theory 11 50,..., graphic data generation section 549. Shift information storage section 569. Vertex calculation unit 58, , , l・tuto parallel number calculation unit 604. Generated graphic data storage section 6414. Output control section +00. ,, Graphic output device patent applicant Ricoh Co., Ltd. agent Takashi Katori = 1 no'? 10 to J5, Ω To 辂−〜・・・・ −〜・・・ εεε month 44 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 a-+ 0- or-1 -1 b-+ One- C-+ - 1 C bond 1 1m) 7) Bamboo, C Hz dot row, C

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] Based on input data representing a line figure, image data for visualizing the line figure in 13F with a large number of tp lines and dot lines is generated, and the image data is sent to a figure output device; r11 A figure generation device for transferring images to a computer, the figure generation device comprising: image data generation means for generating image data for successive dot rows including significant dots in the line figure according to input data; a transfer means for transferring data to a graphic output device, and the generated image data includes, for each dot row, the position of the significant dot in the dot row and the door L.
A figure generation device characterized in that it shows a change over a row of dots adjacent to the row.