JPS6179673A - Dot recording system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable the increase in a printing speed and printing while supporting a character width by increasing not only the printing speed by m- times but also the character width by m/n-times, by providing a means for compressing a character pattern to 1/n by thinning out the dots for constituting said character pattern and subsequently enlarging the same by m-times. CONSTITUTION:A density converter circuit 13 compresses an inputted character pattern to 1/n by thinning out the dots in the lateral direction of said character pattern ad subsequently enlarges said character pattern by m-times to write the same in the buffer 12. A processor 1 sends out the character and image pattern written in the line buffer 12 to a printing head control circuit 9 when both of them are united as a printing line and allows a printing head 10 to perform printing. When n=m in this case, a character width is same but, because dot density is reduced to 1/n, a printing speed can be increased by n-times. When nnot equal to m, the printing speed is increased by m-times and the character width comes to m/n-times. By this mechanism, the printing speed can be increased and it is possible to perform printing by changing the character width.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a dot-dot recording method for printed characters in a serial dot printer, and in particular, to change the printing speed by thinning out dots that form a character pattern to achieve high-speed printing. The present invention relates to a dot recording method that makes it possible to change the printed character width.

For example, wire dot printers use multiple pins in the print head, and the coils that drive the pins are excited by supplying a pulsed current, and the pins driven by this excitation press the ink ribbon onto the printing paper. Print. Therefore, when printing characters or the like consisting of continuous dots in the direction in which the print head moves, the maximum speed of printing is determined by the limit set by the follow-up speed of the pins of the print head. Therefore, characters with a relatively high density of dots are printed at a low speed, and characters with a relatively low density of dots are printed at a high speed.

A serial dot printer normally receives a character code from a host device, reads out a character corresponding to the character code from a character generation circuit, and writes it into a line buffer. This character generation circuit generally generates several types of character patterns, including a low-density font for high-speed printing and a high-density font for slow printing but with good print quality. Therefore, it is possible to move the print head at multiple space speeds depending on the printing speed.

When printing, if you thin out the dots, for example every other dot,
Although the printing speed can be doubled, the printing quality will deteriorate. However, when printing with a printer, it is not always necessary to have good print quality.

For example, when creating a manuscript and revising it, a high printing speed is desirable even if the printing quality is poor.

There is also a desire to vary the width of characters to fit more characters into a narrow space, or to emphasize expression by widening the character width.

[Conventional technology]

Traditional wire dot printers produce characters with low density patterns,
For example, ANK characters such as alphanumeric characters, kana characters, and symbols are printed at high speed, while characters with high density patterns, such as kanji characters and images, are printed at low speed by reducing the space speed.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a circuit showing an example of a conventional dot printer.

The processor 1 reads a program stored in the ROM 2 and operates. Print data is sent from the father's host device via the interface control circuit 4.

The processor 1 temporarily stores this print data in the RAM 3 and then reads it out. If the print data is a character code, the processor 1 reads the corresponding character pattern from the character generation circuit 11 and writes it to the line buffer 12, and if the print data is an image pattern. writes directly to the line buffer.

When the characters and image patterns written in the line buffer 12 are collected in print line units, the processor 1 sends them to the print head control circuit 9 and causes the print head 10 to print them.

At the same time, the processor 1 controls the space control circuit 7,
The space motor 8 is driven to cause the carriage carrying the print head 10 to move in space.

At this time, the processor 1 spaces the carriage at high speed based on the data obtained from the character code in order to print characters with a low density pattern at high speed. Also, based on the data obtained from the image and character code, in order to print characters with a high density pattern at a reduced printing speed, the carriage is spaced at a low speed.

When the processor 1 includes a line feed command in the print data read from the RAM 3, it controls the line feed control circuit 5 to drive the line feed motor 6 to feed the paper.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

As mentioned above, with conventional wire dot printers, even when printing for revising a manuscript, the printing time becomes longer when printing text with many kanji or images, and the print width is constant, but the character width is reduced in narrow areas. There is a problem in that it is impossible to narrow the width of the characters to pack them in, and it is also impossible to make the characters stand out by increasing the width of the characters.

[Means for solving problems]

The above problem can be solved by providing means for thinning out the dots that make up the character pattern, compressing it to 1/n, and then expanding it by m times, in a dot printer that can print at multiple printing speeds by switching the space speed. This can be solved by increasing the character width by m times and increasing the character width by m/n times.

[Effect]

In other words, the horizontal dots that make up the character pattern or image pattern are thinned out and compressed to 1/n, and then expanded by a factor of m to increase the printing speed by a factor of m.
This also makes it possible to increase the character width by m/n times.

〔Example〕

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

FIG. 1 is a circuit in which a density conversion circuit 13 is added to the circuit in FIG. 2, and the differences in operation from FIG. 2 will be explained.

The processor 1 reads the print data sent from the host device that has been temporarily stored in the RAM 3, and if the print data is a character code, reads the corresponding character pattern from the character generation circuit 11. The processor 1 writes this character pattern into the line buffer 12 via the density conversion circuit 13 as necessary.

The density conversion circuit 13 thins out the horizontal dots of the input character pattern, compresses it to 1/n, expands it by m times, and fills the line buffer 12 with it. In other words, the dots constituting each column of the character pattern are thinned out according to the compression rate, the columns that are no longer thinned out are packed and compressed, and the character pattern whose number of columns has been reduced due to thinning is thinned out according to the expansion rate. Add “0” to expand the spacing between customer columns.

If the print data read from the RAM 3 is an image pattern, the density conversion circuit 13 compresses it to l/n in the horizontal direction and expands it by m times in the same way as described above.

When the characters and image patterns written in the line buffer 12 are collected in print line units, the processor 1 sends them to the print head control circuit 9 to be printed by the print head 10.

In this case, if n=m, the character width is the same, but the dot density has decreased to 1/n, so the printing speed is n
It can be doubled.

In the case of n#m, the printing speed is m times higher and the character width is m70 times higher.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, in the present invention, if you want to print at high speed even if the print quality deteriorates, it is possible to improve the printing speed by thinning out high-density character patterns or image patterns, and print by changing the character width. It is also possible.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a circuit showing an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a circuit showing an example of a conventional dot printer. In the figure, ■ is a processor, and 2 is a ROM. 3 is RAM. 4 is an interface control circuit, 5 is a line feed control circuit, 6 is a line feed motor, 7 is a space control circuit, 8 is a space motor, 9 is a print head control circuit, 10 is a print head, 11 is a character generation circuit, 12 is a line buffer , 13 is a density conversion circuit. Half 1 Tsukasa vs

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a dot printer that can print at multiple printing speeds by switching the space speed, a means is provided to thin out the dots that make up a character pattern, compress them to 1/n, and then expand them by m times, thereby increasing the printing speed by m times. At the same time, the dot recording method is characterized in that the character width is also increased by m/n times.