JPS62297924A - Integrated document print system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform the print of an integrated document by using the document control data and the print control program to control the range and order of printing on the page of a print program proper to each application. CONSTITUTION:A print control program 203 obtains the form layout information from a document control data file 300. The layout is obtained in the form of an aggregate of rectangular areas and a piece of editing data is prepared for each rectangular area. A print control program 203 starts the print programs 201 and 202 corresponding to the editing data. Then the programs 201 and 202 produce the drawing commands from the editing data. The program 203 develops the editing data corresponding to all rectangular areas to a print image by starting both programs 201 and 202 and outputs the image to a wire dot printer 103 or a laser beam printer. Both programs 201 and 202 can have small scales since they are just required to produce the drawing commands form the editing data.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] & Detailed Description of the Invention [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a document editing and printing processing system such as a word processor, and is particularly suitable for printing integrated documents containing a mixture of text, figures, graphs, etc. 8] Regarding the printing system.

[Conventional technology]

As shown in FIG. 3, many conventional word processor programs have editing processing and printing processing integrated into a package. For example, in the text editing program 150 in FIG. 6, text data 151 generated by the 1MA collection process is printed by the print process of the same program. In program 150, figure editing program 1
The graphic data 152 edited in step 52 cannot be printed.

Conversely, the text data 151 cannot be printed by the graphic editing program 152.

Recently, there has been an increasing demand for editing and printing documents that integrate text, graphics, etc., and some text editing programs are trying to respond to society's demands by adding graphics and graph functions, but these functions are limited. It pales in comparison to dedicated graphics and graph packages.

There is a need for an inexpensive integrated document processing system that can edit each type of data, such as text, figures, graphs, etc. using the rich functions of a dedicated package, and efficiently print that data in any layout on the same sheet of paper. However, conventional word processor processing programs are not designed to take into account editing and printing of integrated documents.

Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 57-157545 discloses a technique in which one page is divided into logical areas so that a plurality of output contents can be printed within one page. However, this technique simply fonts the image of the page within an area, does not include the concept of an integrated document, and is aimed at saving paper.

[Problem to be solved by the invention] Although the conventional technology has greatly contributed to the advancement of editing functions,
As a natural result, programs have become more complex and their size has increased. Furthermore, the structure of the editing data is also complicated. As a result of improvements being made to individual editing programs for text, graphics, etc., with the aim of increasing the functionality of each individual program,
Currently, it is extremely difficult to combine these individual editing programs to create a program that can edit and print an integrated document due to the complexity, capacity, and data structure of the program.

The purpose of the present invention is to utilize data edited by conventional individual editing programs (text, graphics, etc.) as they are, and to efficiently display the editing results of each editing program on the same page based on a given layout (K). The objective is to realize an integrated document printing system that can print. Another object of the present invention is to construct a printing system having a system structure that allows conventional programs with rich editing functions to be used with almost no changes.

[Means for solving problems]

The above purpose is achieved by the following program structure and data structure.

That is, in the present invention, in a document editing print processing system equipped with an operating system capable of multitasking control, the document editing and printing processing system is compatible with each editing program for text, figures, graphs, etc. a plurality of independently operating print programs that generate commands; a print control program that generates dot images for printing according to the drawing commands from the plurality of print programs; and information regarding print position information of the edited data and the print program. The printer includes management data having information, etc., and a print management program that controls the operations of the plurality of print programs, and the print management program controls the operations of the plurality of print programs using the management data.

[Effect]

The print management program obtains paper layout information from the document management data. The layout is given as a set of rectangular areas, and one piece of editing data corresponds to a rectangular area. The print management program starts a print program corresponding to the edited data, and the print program generates a drawing (print) command from the edited data. The drawing command is a command provided by a print control program in O8 that develops a print image on memory.

The print management program develops the editing data corresponding to all rectangular areas into a print image by starting each print program, and then outputs it to a wire dot printer or laser beam printer.

Since the print program only generates drawing commands from each edit data, its scale is extremely small. Since it is not necessary for two or more printing programs to run at the same time, the program area in memory does not become large if the programs are rolled into memory from the hard disk when they are executed.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 is an example of a hardware configuration for implementing the present invention. 100 and 110 are microprocessors. Reference numeral 100 is a microprocessor involved in document editing and printing, and is hereinafter referred to as main CPU.

110 is a processor that develops characters, straight lines, etc. in a graphic memory 1111C based on instructions from the main CPU, and is hereinafter referred to as a sub-CPU. The expanded result is C
Displayed on RT112. The main CPU and sub CPU communicate via shared memory 107. Programs to be executed by the sub CPU are stored in the shared memory 107. The programs to be executed by the main CPU 100 include a resident program that is always stored in the main memory 105 and a resident program that is normally stored in the hard disk ICH, and can be rolled out to the main memory 105 or transferred from the main memory 105 to the hard disk. There is a non-resident program that will be rolled out to 101. A CGROM 108 stores fonts of characters used for displaying the print JPca'r, and can be accessed from both the main CPU 1oo and the sub CPU 110. 1
02 is a floppy disk, and each user's documents and
Contains the operating environment. Instructions such as editing and printing, and document input operations are performed via the keyboard 109 and mouse 115. 103 and 104 are printers, and in FIG. 2, a low-speed and inexpensive wire dot printer 103 and a high-speed laser beam printer (hereinafter abbreviated as LBP) 1 are shown.
040 shows an example of a system that supports two types of printers. 106 is IPL.

(Initial program loader) ROM.

FIG. 1 shows the software configuration of a print processing system that is an embodiment of the present invention. 201 and 202 are a group of printing programs such as text, graphics, graphs, etc. that depend on each application run. Although only two are shown in the figure, there are 6 text shapes.

There are print programs that support various application runs such as graphs, tables, English text, boxed articles, and images. These print programs generate print commands prepared by O8 (operating system), which will be described later, from data of the corresponding editing programs. A print management program 203 controls the execution order of print programs. Reference numeral 204 is a print condition setting program, which operates the print management program 205 after inputting the white side conditions. Each of the above programs 201 to 204 is controlled by 08205 as an independent task. 082
05 is divided into a kernel section 207 that performs basic task control and input/output control, and a print control program 206 that implements functions unique to white side processing, such as generating dot images from the above-mentioned print commands. The print control program 206 provides advanced print processing functions to the programs 201 to 204.

The printing programs 201 to 202 each generate drawing commands such as text string drawing, straight line drawing, circle drawing, etc. from the data of the editing program. In response to this command, the print control program develops a print dot image into a desired print buffer. 208 is a wire dot printer driver, and 209 is an LBP driver. These are wire dot printer 1os and LBP 1o respectively.
Control a. LBPLoa is the LB that performs the actual printing.
Controls the P engine 211 and the LBP engine 211,
A controller unit 210 that communicates with the word processor 200 and converts print data transferred from the word processor 200 into a form that can be printed by the LBP engine 211.
Consisting of

As mentioned earlier, FIG. 1 shows the software configuration necessary for print processing related to the present invention, and it is understood that the word processor 200 is equipped with various other programs such as those for editing. Needless to say, these programs are omitted.

Next, the structure of a document data file necessary for carrying out the present invention will be explained using FIG. 4. One document is
It consists of a document management data file 500 and area data files 640 (text data file 340α, graphic data file 5aOb, graph data file 3400, etc.) edited by individual editing programs. The data in the area data file 340 has the same data structure as data edited by conventional application program data.

Document management data is newly provided data to enable printing of integrated documents. The document management data consists of a page management table 310, an area management block 320, and a format data table 550. The page management table 610 includes a list header 311 that points to the beginning of the management block 320 of the area included in each page, and a pointer 312 that points to the format data table. The area management block is located at area position 621. Area size 522, area attribute 3
23, data type 324, area data file name 3
25, pointer to the next area Consists of 6260 items.

Each data will be explained in detail using FIG.

400 represents a print image of one page, and in this example, text and graphics are integrated to form one document. One page is defined as a set of one or more areas 410, and one editing program is assigned to each area. The data edited by the editing program is the data to be printed within the area, and is the area data file 340α,
5aOb. Area management block 520a
, 520h is against the area 410α, alab. The position (3:α, ya), size υα, and Δnα of the area 410α in the figure are the area management blocks 321α and 3, respectively.
22α. Regarding the graphic area 410b, its position (xh, yh), size Δxb,
Δ>b is 321jS of each area management block.

522h. Area management block 320b
323b is opaque, so the area below 4101J cannot be seen. The data type of area 410b is graphic;
The fact that the file name of the data is "Figure A" is 3.
You can understand this by looking at 24, 6, and 325A. The data 410b is stored in a file called "Text A," but when it is text data like 410α, a format data table 330α is required in addition to the data file for dot development of the print image. Format data table 3
30α stores information for one page, such as a line spacing of 1 character and 0 line spacing format.

Now, an example of integrated printing processing performed using the system configuration and data configuration described above will be described. When a print processing request is issued, the print condition setting program 204 is started. FIG. 8 shows the flow of processing of the printing condition setting program 204. The print condition setting program 204 first prompts the user to set print conditions such as print range, pagination, number of copies, etc., and generates a print control block 601 (FIG. 6) according to the user's input values (701 and 702).
processing).

The generated print control block 601 is connected to the print queue shown in FIG. 6 (ya3). In addition to print conditions 607, a print control block 601 includes a file name 606 of a document to be printed. This document file name 6
06 is nothing but the name of the document management data file 300. The printing condition setting program 204 starts the printing management program 205 and ends the process. The activation method uses a task activation macro provided by O8.

FIG. 7 shows the processing flow when printing with a wire dot printer. However, the printing condition setting program 204
is omitted. According to this diagram, an outline of the print processing will be explained, and then detailed processing of each program will be explained.

The print management program 203 is the print condition setting program 2
04, the print control block 601 6
The document management data is read from 06, and an appropriate print program 201 is activated according to its contents. The print program 201 reads the data file 540 using the file name specified by the print management program 203 and issues a print command to the print control program 206.

The print command consists of a command 1100α and a parameter 1100b, as shown at 1100 in FIG. 11(α).

For example, in the case of a straight line, the drawing command is 110 in the same figure (A).
1, which indicates a straight line, and four parameters 1101A: a starting point X coordinate, a starting point y coordinate, an ending point X coordinate, and an ending point n coordinate. Reference numeral 1102 in FIG. 4(c) shows a text drawing command. As shown in FIG. 12, the print control program 206 analyzes one command (1201) and executes a subroutine 120 corresponding to the command.
2, call 1203. For example, if the command is a straight line, the straight line drawing routine shown in the figure is called and the straight line is drawn in the given image development buffer 603. The print control program 206 develops a print image 605 for one page according to commands sent one after another.
Since it is impossible to print one page's worth of print images on the memory at once, the print images are developed on the hard disk. In addition to drawing commands, the commands include printer control commands that control image output to the printer, paper feeding, etc. When the print control program 206 receives the control command, it executes the printer control routine 120.
3 and controls the printer 103 via the wire dot printer driver 208.

When the print program finishes developing the image in its own area, it notifies the print management program 203 of the completion through a message provided by O8, as shown in FIG. After the print management program 203 starts the print program 201, it is in a trap waiting to receive a message. The print management program 203 that receives the message starts the next print program 201 and waits for a message again. When the print image has been developed in all areas of one page in this way, the print management program 203 issues a request for the white text of the image to the print control program 206.

The print image on the hard disk is printed line by line (607
') is read into the output buffer 604, transferred to the wire dot printer 103 via the wire dot printer driver 206, and printed. When printing of one page is completed, the print management program 203 starts printing the next page.

When a print request is issued during the above print processing, the print condition setting program 204 is started again. The printing condition setting program 204 allows printing conditions to be entered in response to a new printing request, generates printing control block 01, and connects it to the end of the printing queue.

When the print management program 203 finishes printing one text, it checks the queue and, if print control blocks are connected, starts printing corresponding to the blocks.

In this way, by configuring the print management program 203 and the print condition setting program 204 as independent tasks, and controlling the user interface and printer-side processing independently and synchronizing them using a queue, it is possible to print one after the other even during printing. It becomes possible to accept print requests.

Although an example of the integrated printing process has been described above using the wire dot printer 103 as an example, the printing process by the LBP 104 is almost the same. In the case of LBPloa, the print control 206 does not execute the command issued from the print program;
The data is transferred to the LBP controller unit 210 via the LBP driver 209. The controller unit 210 receives the command and develops a print image of one page in the page memory. (The page memory is not shown.) The expanded print image is read out by the LBP engine 211 and printed. Print management program 203 and print program 201
The processing is performed by the wire dot printer 103 as well as by the LBP 10.
4 is almost unchanged. However, in print processing with the LBP 104, the print management program 203 is
The process of reading and outputting the image line by line from page 1 is no longer necessary, and it is only necessary to issue a print start command to the print control 206 when image development for one page is completed. The print start command is issued by the LBP controller unit 210.
The LBP controller unit 210 instructs the LBP engine 211K to start printing.

Next, print management program 203 and print program 2
01 will be described in detail using FIGS. 5, 9, and 10. Figure 9 shows the print management program 20.
3 shows the process flow of the print program 201, and FIG. 10 shows the process flow of the print program 201.
extracts the first print control block from the print queue header 600 (FIG. 6) (801), obtains the name of the document management data from the print control block 26000 document file name 606, and reads the document management data file 300. Start (802).

The list header 311α of the area management block of the first page is read from the page management table 310 located at a predetermined position in the document management data file 300.

If printing conditions instruct to start printing from the first page, the list header of the first page is read.

Since the IJs of the page management table 310 are arranged in page order and have a fixed length, it is possible to easily read the list header of the required page. At 803, the area management block 320α at the head of the area management block list is extracted. It can be seen from the entry 325α of the block 320α that the area is a text area. Therefore, the data type is determined as 805 by determining whether it is text (804).
Move on to processing. At 805, the address of the area header is set in the register and the text printing program 201α is activated. This task activation macro assumes that communication between the task that issued the activation request and the task to be activated can be performed via registers. Text printing program 201
After starting α, the print management program 203 issues a message reception macro and waits for reception (808, 8
09). Started text printing program 201α
As shown by 901 in FIG. 10, the area management block at the very beginning of the area list header 511α is extracted. In this embodiment, it is assumed that there is only one text area on one page as shown by 410α in FIG. 5, and that the corresponding area management block is always at the top of the list. It goes without saying that this does not constitute an essential limitation of the present invention. The position and size of the area on the paper to be printed can be known from the entries 621α and 522cL of the area management block 620a. Processing would be easier if there was a work area that was the same as or larger than the size of the area, but normally it is not possible to have a work area that large, so the area is divided into two as shown at 902 in Figure 10.
A work area of the size of the divided area is used as a buffer for image development. The text area data file 340α is read from the file name of the entry 625α. The text printing program 201α generates a command for a text string to be developed from this area data file 640α and format data. The format data can be easily read because the pointer to the format data table can be found from the startup parameters. The area data file 540α contains text character code and attribute data,
and K-line data are stored. Format data includes data such as margins, line spacing, and character spacing.

The print program 201 develops a print image in units of divided areas. The area that has been expanded is hard disk 1
It is stored in 01. In this example, the print control 206 stores the information on the hard disk, but the print program 201 must set the information necessary for this process (9Q
4). The hard disk 101 stores a one-page print image shown at 605 (FIG. 7), and the print program is configured to store the image of the area 321α, 322α in a position corresponding to the area 400α in FIG. , or control the storage location using division information. 905-9
When Q7 is looped, the image development process for one page is completed and a message is sent to the print management program (909).
and end the process.

When the message is sent, the print management program 206 starts processing at 809 in FIG. Since the link field 326α of the area management block 320α points to another area management block 320b and there are still areas on the same page, the print image of the area corresponding to the area management block 520h is developed. Area 410b in FIG.
A print program that develops the figure is started by the print management program 203, but a description of the processing related to this figure print program will be omitted. Print management program 2 was waiting for a message from the graphic printing program.
03 starts processing again from 809 in response to a message from the graphic printing program, but the area management block 3
Since the link field 326h of 20b has a NULL value, the printing process of 811 is started based on the determination of 810. This process prints one line (607) of the print image on the hard disk.
The image is cut out one by one and outputted to the wire dot printer 103. When the stamp IJ processing is completed, the next entry 511A (Fig. 4) of the page management table 610 is checked, and if it is valid, processing for that page is started, and if it is invalid (NUI/L value), printing processing is started. end.

The present embodiment described above has the following effects.

(1) The program and data structure of the conventional application cage 1 is almost unchanged from text.

It is now possible to print integrated documents containing a mixture of figures, graphs, etc.

(2) Conventionally, requests to print other documents would not be accepted while a document is being printed, but in this embodiment, requests to print new documents can be accepted one after another even while printing is in progress. Usability from the user's perspective is extremely improved.

(3) When adding a new application, it is only necessary to add its dedicated print program, so it is possible to integrate and print data edited with the new application.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, the document management data 310 and the print management program 206 can control the printing range and printing order of the printing program specific to each application, so that edited data edited by different applications can be defined on the same sheet. It is possible to print according to the specified layout and to print a copy integrated document.

Furthermore, according to the present invention, the printing condition setting program 204, which inquires the user about printing programs (print management program, printing program) and printing conditions, and sets the printing conditions, can be operated independently. However, it is possible to accept print requests for other documents and set white side conditions, which has the effect of improving usability.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a software structure of an example of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a hardware configuration of an example of the present invention, and FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of conventional printing processing. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the data structure of an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 5 is a diagram explaining the data structure, FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of a print queue used in the present invention, and FIG. FIGS. 8, 9, and 10 are diagrams illustrating the flow of processing in an embodiment of the present invention, respectively showing examples of the processing of the print condition setting program, print management program, and print program in the embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 11 is a diagram illustrating the format of a drawing command, and FIG. 12 is a diagram illustrating an example of a print control program. 201, 202...Printing program, 203...
Print management program, 204...Print condition setting program, 206...Print control unit of O8, 300...Document management data file, 600...Print queue header, 601...Print control block, 103... wire dot printer, 104... LBP, 210...
...LBP controller section, 211...LBP engine.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a document editing print processing system equipped with an operating system capable of multitasking control, editing data corresponding to each editing program for text, figures, graphs, etc., edited by the editing program. a plurality of independently operating print programs that generate drawing commands; a print control program that generates printing dot images according to the drawing commands from the plurality of print programs; print position information of the edited data; The print management program includes management data having information regarding the print program, etc., and a print management program that controls the operation of the print program, and the print management program controls the operation of the plurality of print programs using the management data. An integrated document printing system for document editing and printing processing. 2. Configure a printing condition setting program as a task that inquires of the operator about printing conditions when printing a document and generates print information regarding the printing conditions and the document to be printed, and the printing condition setting program executes the print processing of the print management program mentioned above. make it possible to generate print information independently of
2. The integrated document printing system according to claim 1, wherein the printing information is generated in an area accessible by both the printing condition setting program and the printing management program.