JPS606474A - Character pattern and printing apparatus using the same - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make it possible to store a large amount of character patterns, by repeatedly reading in a soft mode and printing the dots of an extended part stored in the space region part of the character pattern corresponding to set character intervals. CONSTITUTION:A mapping processor 43 reads a character intervals S stored in page buffer 41 and reads dot patterns corresponding to an arbitrary one line from a first - a N-th lines in a space region to transfer the same to buffer 45 while printing corresponding to one line is performed by a recording head 14 to repeat printing while reducing only one from S. When S=0, (i) is set to 1 and the dot pattern of a first line is read to perform printing corresponding to one line by the buffer 45 and the head 14. In the next step, when 1 is added to (i) and printing is performed in M-times of recirculations, printing corresponding to one line is finished. By this method, a pattern to be continued can be printed in a perfectly continuous state and necessary memory capacity can be reduced and, if it is of the same capacity, a large amount of character patterns can be stored.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Field of Application) The present invention relates to a character pattern and a printing device using the same.
The present invention relates to a character pattern for printing dots on a line-by-line basis and a printing device using the character pattern.

(Prior Art) FIG. 1 shows a conventional character pattern and main parts of a printing device 40 used therefor.

In the page buffer 41, by a commonly known method,
Video signals corresponding to characters (images) to be printed in one page of images that are currently being printed are transferred from a processor (not shown) and stored. In this case, the video signal-1, that is, the print data is a character code,
and character spacing information.

The print data stored in the page buffer 41 is taken out line by line and put into the line buffer 42. □The mapping processor 43 takes out print data one character at a time from the line buffer 42, and calculates the address of the font memory 44 and print<CI'N.

According to instructions from the mapping processor 43, the print pattern read from the font memory 44 is sent to a pair of output buffers 45.4 with a capacity for one scan.
The equivalent of either number 6 is written to 16.

Output buffers 45 and 46 are connected to switches 81 and S
Writing and reading are performed alternately by switching 2.
The read data is transferred to the C1 recording head 14 as a video signal.

In addition, as mentioned above, the page buffer 41, line buffer 42, mapping processor 1) 43, font memory 4
41, operations and timings of Onibiara 1 to Butu 1 to Buffer 45 and 46 are controlled by a sequence control circuit 49.

That is, as is well known, the sequence control circuit 4 is supplied with a page start signal PSS and a scan start signal SSS, and generates a signal for controlling the operation timing of each of the above-mentioned units.

Further, FIGS. 2A to 2F show examples of character patterns specifying the formation of the letter A and dots 41 of horizontal and vertical lines.

As can be seen from these figures, the character pattern has a dot pattern constituting the corresponding character corresponding to each character, and in the main scanning direction and sub-scanning direction,
Space areas for generating character spacing when printed are appropriately designated on the top, bottom, left and right, as indicated by diagonal lines in each figure.

For this reason, if you use these 21 nyarakta patterns, even if you print without character spacing, there will be spaces or spaces (blank areas) between each character that correspond to the space area.
, so that characters, symbols, etc. that are easy to distinguish can be printed.

However, as is clear, it is not possible to print continuous straight lines or patterns using only the character pattern shown in FIG.

For the purpose of printing continuous straight lines or patterns, as shown in Fig. 3 (Δ) to (D), a square pattern having a driver configuration extending into the space area is used. must be prepared.

When printing without character spacing, use a continuous straight line or pattern ((1).
pattern) can be printed and covered.

However, if you try to print while maintaining the character spacing, the character pattern in Figure 3 will no longer be consecutive.
There is a drawback that the pattern becomes broken lines.

That is, for example, when trying to print a vertical (sub-scanning direction) or horizontal (main-scanning direction) straight line in the character pattern shown in FIG. has the disadvantage that dots are not printed, resulting in broken lines.

Furthermore, in the above example, a space area of a predetermined number of lines (or number of dots) is provided for character patterns of characters that should not be consecutive even when the character spacing is 0.

For this reason, there are many blank areas in which information is not stored in the font memory (for example, in the example in Figure 4, N942 is displayed at the top).
(There are several blank spaces on the left and right, and several dots on the left and right), resulting in poor memory usage efficiency and a large required memory capacity.

(Purpose) The present invention has been made to eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks, and its purpose is to
An object of the present invention is to provide a character pattern capable of obtaining a continuous pattern and a printing device using the character pattern.

(Summary) In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the present invention extends a character pattern of a continuous J pattern to a portion corresponding to a space area for generating character spacing when printed, and also In the case of printing while maintaining the character spacing, the character pattern is characterized in that the extension part of the character pattern is continuously printed by the same number of times corresponding to the character spacing.

(Example) Hereinafter, the present invention will be explained in more than 8 minutes with reference to the drawings.

FIGS. 4(A) and 4(B) are schematic diagrams showing an example of a character pattern according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 5 is an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to pattern continuity in the sub-scanning direction. For example, 1 mapping block [1t? An example of the operation of the shank 43 is shown in a 1'' narrow-boo 17-1-.

It should be noted that FIG. 5 shows only the operational parts of the mapping processor that are directly related to the present invention, and the operational parts described in relation to the conventional example are not shown.

Figure 4 (A) is an example of a character pattern for characters that should not be consecutive when printed, with a space area of 1-N dots on the top and an appropriate number of dots on both sides (diagonal lines). ) are shown in rows ( ), respectively.

FIG. 4(B) is an example of a character pattern of a pattern that should be continuous, and in columns 1 to N corresponding to the upper space area of FIG. 4(A), extended fonts for making the patterns continuous is set.

In this example, the dimensions of the character pattern in the sub-scanning direction and the number of dots are shown as M columns.

The mapping processor 43 first performs the page buffer 4
The character spacing S stored as 1 is read (step s1 in FIG. 5), and it is determined whether this is 0 (step 82 in the same figure).

When S is not O (this invention corresponds to this case), the space area indicated by diagonal lines in FIG.
The dot pattern for one arbitrary column is read out from the Nth column) and printed for the output buffer line (subject 83 in the figure).

After that, reduce the above S by 1 (S"j knob S4 in the same figure)
, the steps 32 33 S4 are repeatedly executed.

This is the number of lines corresponding to the character spacing S. [When `` is printed, S becomes O, and the determination in step S2 becomes true. Therefore, the process proceeds to step S5, and thereafter, normal printing process as before is performed.

That is, first, i is set to 1 (13) and step S in the same figure is
5) Next, read out the dot pattern for the first column,
This is transferred to the output buffer 1/15 and printed for one line by the recording head 14 (step S6 in the figure).

Next, add 1 to the above 1 (step 37) in the same figure.
It is determined whether or not i is smaller than (M+1) (where M is the number of columns in the sub-scanning direction of the character pattern or the number of dots 1 to 1, as shown in FIG. 4) (step S8 in the same figure).
).

(Seriously, 1 is less than <M+1) and the determination is valid, so the process cycles through steps 56-87-88. After cycling M times in this manner, printing for one character is completed and the determination in step S8 is no longer valid, so the process is temporarily terminated.

As is clear from the above d1, according to this embodiment, even if the character spacing S is set to a certain value, patterns that should be continuous are made to be continuous, and characters that should not be consecutive are specified. It can be printed to maintain the specified character spacing.

In addition, in the above, even when the character spacing S is O, for character patterns of characters that should not be consecutive, a space area of a predetermined number of lines or 1 to 1 (in this example, N columns) is arranged in stages. Ta.

For this reason, there are many blank areas in which no information is stored in the fan memory (for example, in the example in Figure 4, there is a blank area for N lines at the top, and several dots on the right side). (There are blank areas), memory usage efficiency is poor, and the required memory capacity is limited.

The second embodiment of the present invention further improves this point and can realize a reduction in memory capacity.

Figures 6 (A) and (8) are schematic diagrams of an example of the 11 Yarakuta pattern according to this embodiment, and Figure 7 (1) When this embodiment is applied to pattern continuity in the sub-scanning direction. This is a flowchart showing an example of the operation of the mapping procedure 1).

J: Sea urchin, which is clear from the comparison with Figure 4, Figure 6 (A),
The character pattern in (B) can be created by reducing the space area on the upper side and on both the left and right sides in Figure 4 () to 1 dot each, increasing the number of vertical lines from M lines to (M-
By making the rows (N+1), the memory noise can be reduced to (N-
1) This corresponds to saving only on attendants.

Note that the above-mentioned symbols S, M, and N are used here as well with the same meaning as in FIG. 1. As is clear, in this example:
Even when the character spacing S is 0, it is necessary to perform software processing similar to that in the first embodiment when changing the character spacing.

The processing procedure will be explained below with reference to FIG.

The mapping broker 43 first starts with the page buffer 4
Read the character l2iJ interval S stored in 1 (step s1 in FIG. 7), and set this value S to N (i.e., the number of lines in the sub-scanning direction of the upper space area shown in FIG. 4). (Step 521 in FIG. 7).

With this, the first part of the character pattern shown in FIG.
Contains the number of repetitions the row should be read. The seventh cause step 822, 823.82/1 is the step S2 of FIG. S3. This process corresponds to E;/I, and its contents are clear from the above explanation.

By the processing from step S1 to step S24 explained above, (1) For the characters to be separated, the character spacing S and the spaces corresponding to the space areas in the character pattern are C"?IT 1 is added to the image, and (2) continuous printing is performed for consecutive patterns.

Thereafter, as in the case of FIG. 5, the cycle from step S5 to step 881 continues from the second row to the last row of the +7-hair pattern, in this case the (M-th)
Character patterns up to N+1) lines are read and printed.

As is clear, according to this embodiment, compared to the font memory having a space area of N lines as in the first embodiment, the memory size can be reduced by (N-1) 8 spaces. Conversely, if the memory capacity fl is the same, a correspondingly large number of character patterns can be stored.

Moreover, although the above description has been made about making the pattern continuous in the sub-scanning direction, as is clear, the same thing can be carried out in exactly the same manner in the main-scanning direction.

However, in this case, as is easily understood by those skilled in the art, the number of dots corresponding to the character spacing is calculated from the space area provided at at least one of the left and right ends of FIGS. 4(A) and 4(B). Second, it is necessary to read out the character pattern and output it additionally.

(Effects) As is clear from the above description, the following effects can be achieved according to the present invention.

(1) Since the extended portion stored in the space area of the character pattern is repeatedly read out and printed by software according to the set character spacing S, it is difficult to determine how the character spacing S can be adjusted manually. Even if the pattern is selected carefully, it is possible to print a completely continuous pattern if it is not continuous.

(2) Space area should be at least 1 dot (1 line)
If you provide just enough capacity, you can do it without reducing the required capacity. Conversely, if the memory capacity is the same, it is possible to memorize more Gitractor patterns.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Figure 1 is a block diagram showing character pattern generation and the main parts of a printing device using this, and Figure 2 is a schematic diagram showing a conventional example of a character pattern for characters that must not be consecutive when printing. , FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing a conventional example of a character pattern that must be continuous during printing, and FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing an example of a character pattern according to an embodiment of the present invention. 5 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the mapping processor in the embodiment, FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing an example of a character pattern according to another embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. It is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the mapping processor in J3 in the embodiment. 14... Recording head, 40... Printing device, 41...
・Page buffer, 42...Line buffer, 43...
Mapping processor, 44...7 on 1-memory,
45.46...output vano νtufa, 49...
・Sequence control circuit fee"1! Patent attorney Michito Hiraki and 1 other person 92- L-==-1-------- Figure 2 Figure 4 Figure 6 (A) (B) Figure 5 Figure 424 Figure 7

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) Drawers 1~ positioned appropriately along rows and columns
Depending on the configuration, a main 11-character pattern for storing individual characters and patterns, comprising a space area provided at least one above and below the character and pattern forming area and at least one to the left or right, The dimensions or number of dots of the space area are the dimensions or number of dots required when printing with zero character spacing.
: A character pattern characterized by being small. (2) A patented character pattern characterized in that the character pattern storing the pattern to be continuous when printed includes a dot pattern extending to the space area. (3) Characters that should be separated by η1 from each other when printed have a ripple pattern that constitutes the character, and a space area that generates the character spacing when printed, and About the pattern that should be followed by one dot pattern [;1 Based on the dot pattern that makes up the pattern and the character pattern that extends to the space area and extends to the dot pattern 1 to 1, create a dot pattern for one line at a time. This is a printing device for reading and following this to print one line of f lines to 1. 1. A printing device comprising means for repeatedly reading out a dot pattern.