JPS61148970A - Information reading device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To speedify the reading speed and to shorten the necessary time for displaying by thinning the subscanning line density when reading domain specified mode is set with the original-still type reading device. CONSTITUTION:In the reading domain specified mode, a CPU11 directs the clock interface 41 of a subscanning part 40 to generate the subscanning frequency used in specifying the reading domain. Therefore, by the clock interface 41 of the subscanning part 40 generates a clock of which period is shorter than that of the synchronizing clock used in the normal reading. In synchronization with this clock, a motor driving circuit 42 drives a pulse motor 43. In consequence, a line sensor performs the subscanning of the original 2 with its density thinner than that used in the normal reading.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to an improvement in an information reading device that is of a stationary type and is capable of partially reading a document.

[Technical overview of invention]

In recent years, for example, as a type of facsimile machine, a so-called stationary document type information reading device has been developed, which reads the information written on the document by moving the reading section (scanner) side with the document set on the reading stand. This type of device does not need to transport the original, so there is no need to worry about damaging the original, and regardless of the form of the original, for example, books, pamphlets, etc., it can be read as is.
Very convenient.

In recent years, this type of device has also been designed to take advantage of the stationary original feature to specify the desired reading area of the original placed on the reading stand using a cursor, and to read the original reading information.
It has been proposed to provide a so-called partial reading function in which only information in an area specified by the cursor is selectively inputted and transmitted, for example. If such a function is provided, it is possible to input and transmit only the read information of the necessary area, which reduces transmission costs and is very effective for facsimile machines.

By the way, in general, stationary document reading devices are configured so that the document is set on a transparent reading table with the reading surface facing down, and the reading unit scans the document from below on the reading surface. When specifying the desired reading area of a document, the operator cannot visually see the reading surface, making it very difficult to carry out the specifying operation, and errors in specifying often occur. For example, even if an operator attempts to read only the characters B T1 on the document 2 set on the reading table 1 as shown in FIG. P2 and P3. I ended up setting it like P4,
As a result, problems such as missing read characters occur.

If such an incorrect designation is made, the operator must respecify the reading area and reread the data, and in the case of facsimile, the read information must be transmitted again, which is cumbersome to operate and reduces the equipment and line. This is extremely undesirable as it causes inconveniences such as a decrease in usage efficiency.

Therefore, conventionally, when specifying a reading area, written information is read and this written information is displayed as an image on a display device as shown in FIG. 4(b), so that the image displayed on this display device is of? l! ! 1! L
Consideration has been given to making it possible to designate a desired area to be read.

[Problems with background technology]

However, such conventional devices use the same scanning method as normal scanning when specifying the desired reading area, so it takes a lot of time to read, and as a result, the information written on the display device is The disadvantage is that the display timing is delayed, making it impossible to quickly confirm the desired reading area.

[Purpose of the invention]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide an information reading device that can shorten the document reading time when specifying the desired reading area and increase the display speed on the monitor, thereby quickly specifying the desired reading area. do.

[Summary of the invention]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention sets the sub-scanning line density of the reading unit when the reading area specification mode is set to be coarser than the sub-scanning line density in the normal reading mode, thereby increasing the reading speed. This speeds up the display and shortens the time required to display it on the monitor.

(Embodiment of RF!4) FIG. 1A shows the configuration of an information reading device in an embodiment of the present invention. ing. Incidentally, D is a CRT monitor connected to the above-mentioned host C.

Now, the above information reading device AG, CPU11, this CPU
a control unit 10 consisting of a ROMI 2 that stores 11 control programs and a RAM 13 that stores reading written information, etc., a reading area designation unit 20 that inputs positional information of an area desired to be read on the original 2, and a line sensor 31 as a reading unit. a main scanning section 30 that performs main scanning on the reading surface of the document 2 using the line sensor 31; a sub-scanning section 40 that moves the line sensor 31 in a sub-scanning direction with respect to the document 2; and a mode designation switch 51. The mode setting section 50 includes an input interface 52 and a mode setting section 50 for selectively specifying a desired reading area specification mode and a normal reading mode.

Note that 60 is a device interface for exchanging information between the control unit 10 and the host C.

The reading area designation section 20 is configured to read a document 2 set on the document table 1.
It has cursors 21 and 22 for specifying the desired reading area in each of the main scanning direction and the sub-scanning direction, and the output voltages of these cursors 21 and 22 are selected by the changeover switch 23 and are individually applied to the A/D converter. 24, and this A/D converter 24
After digitizing each with input interface 2
5 to the control unit 10.

The main scanning section 30 includes an input interface 32 for inputting the read signal of the line sensor 31 to the control section 10.
and an output interface 33 that introduces reading control information from the control unit 10, and an input interface 32 according to the reading control information output from the control unit 10.
is gate-controlled, and thereby, among the read signals read by the line sensor 31, only the signals corresponding to the desired reading area specified by the reading area specifying section 20 are inputted to the control section 10.

The sub-scanning section 40 has a clock interface 41 that generates a synchronized clock for sub-scanning, and supplies the synchronized clock generated by this clock interface 41 to a motor drive circuit 42 to generate pulses by the motor drive circuit 42. The motor 43 is driven. Here, the clock interface 41 includes a reference clock oscillator and a program divider, and by varying the division ratio of the program divider according to instructions from the control unit 10, the clock interface 41 generates a synchronous clock for normal reading sub-scanning and a program divider. The device is configured to selectively generate a synchronization clock used when specifying a reading area whose cycle is shorter than that of the synchronization clock.

By the way, as shown in FIG. 2, the control section 10 includes a reading 1ijiVL determining means 14 that determines the position of the desired reading area based on voltage information from the reading area specifying section 20, and a mode specifying switch of the mode setting section 50. A mode determining means 15 determines the operation mode from the setting state of 51, and the main scanning section 30 and the sub-scanning section 40 are controlled according to the determination results of each of these determining means 14 and 15 to read and scan the original 2. The display control means 17 includes a reading control means 16 for controlling the reading operation, and a display control means 17 for displaying written information read from the original document 2 on the CRT monitor D of the host C.

Next, the operation of the apparatus configured as described above will be explained according to the operating procedure. First, the operator sets the mode designation switch 51 to the reading area designation mode side. Then, the original 2 is set at a predetermined position on the reading table 1, a desired reading area of the original 2 is specified by the cursor 21, 22, and after the specification operation is completed, a reading start switch (not shown) is operated. Then, the output voltages of each of the cursors 21 and 22 are digitized by the A/D converter 24 and output to the CP of the control section 10.
The CPU 11 first determines the position of the desired reading area specified by the cursor 21, 22 from these voltage information. The CPU 11 then operates the main scanning section 30.
Then, a read scanning start instruction is issued to the sub-scanning section 40. Then, the clock interface 41 of the sub-scanning section 40
A synchronous clock is generated from , and the pulse motor 43 operates in synchronization with this synchronous clock, whereby the line sensor 31 starts sub-scanning movement. At the same time, the line sensor 31 repeatedly performs reading main scanning on the original 2 at a predetermined speed, thereby reading information written on the original 2.

Here, during this reading operation, the CPU 11 detects the current position of the line sensor 31 in the sub-scanning direction by inputting the synchronous clock generated from the clock interface 41 and counting zero clocks. Then, during a period when this detection position reaches the position of the desired reading area determined earlier and the position of the line sensor 31 in the main scanning direction reaches a position corresponding to the desired reading area, a gate control signal is issued to Input interface 32 of scanning unit 30
is set to the gate open state, thereby allowing written information obtained by the line sensor 31 to pass through.

As a result, the written information of manuscript 2 is first placed at cursor 21.2.
Only the written information of the desired reading area specified in step 2 is cut out and input to the control unit 10. That is, partial reading of the original is performed. Further, the written information read from the document 2 at this time is once input to the control section 10 and then supplied to the host C via the device interface 60, and the host C displays an image on the CRT monitor D.

By the way, since the above reading operation is performed in the reading area designation mode, the CPU 11 uses the sub-scanning section 40.
The clock interface 41 is instructed to generate a sub-scanning frequency to be used when specifying a reading area. For this reason,
A clock whose cycle is shorter than the synchronous clock used during normal reading is generated from the clock interface 41 of the sub-scanning section 40, and the motor drive circuit 42 drives the pulse motor 43 in synchronization with this clock. As a result, the line sensor 31 has a sub-scanning line density (
Compared to FIG. 3(a), the sub-scanning movement with respect to the document 2 is performed at a coarser sub-scanning line density, as shown in FIG. 3(b), for example. Therefore, the reading speed is increased, and the information written on the document 2 is displayed on the CRT monitor D in a short time.

The operator visually checks the written information displayed on the CRT monitor D as described above to determine whether the specified position of the cursor 21. Respecify the position of 22 and perform the above reading operation again, and then transfer the read information to CR.
Display on T monitor D. After confirming that the cursors 21 and 22 are set to the desired positions, the mode designation switch 51 is switched to the normal reading operation mode,
Thereafter, the reading start switch is operated to start the reading operation. At this time, the partial reading operation of the original 2 is exactly the same as in the reading area designation mode. However, in the case of this normal reading operation mode, the control unit 10 gives an instruction to the clock interface 41 to perform scanning at the normal sub-scanning line density, so the clock interface 41 outputs the normal frequency. A synchronized signal is output, and as a result, the line sensor 31, for example, as shown in FIG.
As shown in a>, relatively high-density sub-scanning is performed.

As described above, in this embodiment, since the scanning of the document 2 in the reading area specification mode is performed by setting the sub-scanning line density coarsely, the reading speed can be increased, and thereby the reading information It is possible to quickly judge whether the specified position of the desired reading area is good or bad by shortening the time required to display the image on the CRT monitor D. For example, if the sub-scanning line density in the normal reading operation mode is 3°85 lines/read. The main scanning speed for one line is 5m.
s, when scanning a document with a length of 200 am in the sub-scanning direction, the reading time is 51SX200am+X3.85 lines/#lI-3,85
, sea.

On the other hand, if the sub-scanning line density is set to, for example, 1 line/aI in the reading area specification mode, the reading time when scanning a document with the same length of 200cm is 51SX200a.
s+X1 line/am-1 sec, which is significantly shorter than the conventional case.

In particular, in a device such as the information reading device of the present invention, in which the reading surface of the document cannot be seen or is difficult to see when specifying the desired reading area in the original format, it takes several times to specify the desired reading area. may also reposition the cursor,
As described above, being able to significantly shorten the time for one reading is extremely effective in terms of operability and improving the efficiency of use of the device. Furthermore, when applied to a facsimile machine, it is possible to improve line usage efficiency and reduce transmission costs.

As mentioned above, if the sub-scanning line density is set coarsely, the resolution of the display information will be reduced accordingly, but when specifying the desired reading area, it is only necessary to confirm the specified position. In practical terms, this does not cause any inconvenience.

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments. For example, a CRT monitor was used as a monitor, but an LCD
Display devices or digital printers may also be used. Further, in the above embodiment, the sub-scanning line density of the line sensor in the reading area designation mode is fixed, but it may be variable depending on the size of the desired reading area specified by the cursor, for example. In this way, even when the size of the desired reading area is small, a certain level of resolution can be secured without significantly reducing the resolution.
It is possible to provide a device that has a fast reading speed and does not significantly reduce the resolution of displayed information. others,
The setting value of the sub-scanning line density of the reading unit in the reading area designation mode, the means for varying the sub-scanning line density, the mode setting means, etc. can also be modified in various ways without departing from the gist of the present invention.

(Effects of the Invention) As detailed above, according to the present invention, the sub-scanning line density of the reading section when the reading area specification mode is set is set to be coarser than the sub-scanning line density during the normal reading mode. Accordingly, it is possible to provide an information reading device that can shorten the document reading time when specifying the desired reading area and increase the display speed on the monitor, thereby quickly specifying the desired reading area.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

1 to 3 (a) and (b) are for explaining an information reading device according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 is a circuit block diagram showing the configuration of the device, and FIG. 2 is a circuit block diagram showing the configuration of the device. Figures 3(a) and 3(a) are functional block diagrams of the control unit, which is the main part of the device.
b) is a schematic diagram showing the sub-scanning line density of the reading section in the normal reading operation mode and the reading area specification mode, respectively;
Sections (a) and (b) are schematic diagrams for explaining a conventional information reading device. 1... Reading table, 2... Document, A... Information reading device, B... Cable, C... Host, D... CRT
Monitor, 10...Control unit, 11...CPU, 12.
ROM, 13... RAM, 20... Reading area designation section, 21.22... Cursor, 23... Changeover switch, 24... A/D converter, 25.32.52.・
- Input interface, 30... Main scanning section, 31.
...Line sensor, 33...Output interface,
40... Sub-scanning unit, 41... Clock interface, 42... Motor drive circuit, 43... Pulse motor, 50... Mode setting unit, 51... Mode designation switch, 60... Equipment interface. Applicant's agent Patent attorney Takehiko Suzue Figure 2 Figure 3 (a) (b) Figure 4 (a) (b)

Claims (1)

[Claims] For originals placed on the reading table with the scanning side facing down,
In the information reading device that reads and scans written information on the document by moving the reading section side, a reading area specifying means for specifying a desired reading area of the document set on the reading stand; a reading input means for selectively inputting only written information of the desired reading area, and a mode setting means for selectively setting a reading area specification mode and a normal reading mode by the reading area specifying means;
scanning density setting means for setting the reading sub-scanning line density of the reading section to be coarser than the sub-scanning line density when the normal reading mode is set when the reading area specification mode is set by the mode setting means; 1. An information reading device comprising: a monitor for displaying written information of a desired reading area read in a mode.