JPS63120678A - Information processor having printing function - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent an error from being made in setting based on the type of an ink ribbon, by selecting a control of printing according to the type of the ink ribbon fitted to a printer. CONSTITUTION:An input port 17 is connected to microswitches 60, 61 provided on a carriage 47 of a color printer 4. When a ribbon cartridge 40 for color printing is mounted on the carriage 47, two notches 40a, 40b presses movable parts of the microswitches 60, 61, so that contacts are closed. A ribbon cartridge enclosing a black ribbon does not have the notch 40b. Therefore, a CPU 11 can detects whether the ribbon cassette 40 mounted on the carriage is one for color printing or one for monochrome printing. When a color control code for designating a printing color is given, a printer-controlling circuit 16 rotate a ribbon take-up motor 54, whereby a ribbon part corresponding to the designated color is fed to a printing head 43. When the ribbon cartridge 40 is discriminated as one for monochrome printing, a signal indicating that a color ribbon is not loaded is outputted.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to an information processing device having a printing function, and more particularly to an information processing device equipped with a printing device to which different types of ink ribbons can be attached. .

[Prior Art] Conventionally, in an information processing device having this type of printing function, information such as a document that has undergone processing such as editing is outputted from a control means that controls printing to a printing device, and the information is printed. There is. Various types of printing devices have been proposed and used, but thermal transfer systems using ink ribbons and dot impact systems are common because of their simple construction and ease of maintenance.

In these printing devices, it is easy to print in color by using a multi-colored ink ribbon, and in conjunction with the improvement in the printing processing capacity of information processing devices, in recent years, devices that perform multi-color printing, such as color word processors, have become available. is also popular.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In an information processing device having such a printing function, the ink ribbon attached to the printing device must be replaced with a normal black ribbon, color ribbon, etc. depending on the purpose of the printed matter. In this case, each time the ink ribbon is replaced with a different type, the type of ink ribbon must be set on the print control means, or the type of ink ribbon corresponding to the setting on the print control means must be set. must be correctly attached to the printing device.

However, if there is a mismatch between the settings on the printing control means and the type of ink ribbon actually installed due to human error, it will not be possible to obtain the expected printed matter. There was a problem with not knowing before. In addition, in the case of color printing,
Normally, ink ribbon feed control and other controls are different from those for black ribbon, but due to a setting error, control for color printing was performed using black ribbon, wasting time in the printing process. It was also thought that this would lead to a waste of ink ribbons.

The present invention was made with the aim of solving the problems caused by errors in the ink ribbon and its settings.

[Means for solving the problems] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention has the following configuration as a means for solving the problems. That is, as illustrated in FIG. 1, there is a printing device M1 having a replaceable cartridge-type ink ribbon, and a printing device M1 that outputs information such as a document to be edited or the like to the printing device and performs printing. Control means M
2, the printing device M1 includes a cartridge detection means M3 for detecting the type of cartridge characterized according to the difference in ink ribbon, and the printing control means M2 The configuration of an information processing apparatus having a printing function is characterized in that it includes a printing control selection means M4 that selects printing control corresponding to the installed ink ribbon based on the detected type of cartridge. be.

[Operation] The information processing device having the printing function of the present invention having the above configuration detects the type of the replaceable cartridge-type ink ribbon installed in the printing device M1 by the cartridge detection means M3 of the printing device, and Based on the detected type of cartridge, that is, the type of cartridge characterized according to the difference in ink ribbon, the print control means M
The printing control selection means M4 provided in the printer 2 selects the printing control corresponding to the ink ribbon.

[Embodiment] In order to further clarify the configuration of the present invention described above, a color word processor as a preferred embodiment of the information processing apparatus having a printing function of the present invention will be described next.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing a schematic structure of this color word processor, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing its electrical structure.

As shown in the figure, the document editing device of this embodiment includes a keyboard 2 with various keys arranged, a monochrome liquid crystal panel 3 that allows the angle of the display surface to be set freely, and a color printer 4 that prints documents in multiple colors. .

Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 3, this document editing device includes an electronic control device 10 configured as an arithmetic and logic operation circuit.
is included. The electronic control device 10 includes a well-known C
PU11. ROM12. In addition to RAM13, keyboard 2
A keyboard input circuit 14 that takes in key input from the computer, a line memory 15 that stores the content to be displayed on the liquid crystal panel 3, an intelligent printer control circuit 16 that controls input and output of data to and from the color printer 4, and the status of microswitches that will be described later. An input port 17 for inputting the information is provided, and these are connected to each other via a pass line. Furthermore, a panel drive circuit 18 that reads the contents of the line memory 15 and displays characters, etc. on the liquid crystal panel 3 is also incorporated.

As shown in FIG. 2, the keyboard 2 connected to the keyboard input circuit 14 is equipped with various keys (for example, a character key 20, a function key 22 such as "execute", etc.), and the CPU II Key images from the keyboard 2 can be input via the keyboard input circuit 14.

On the other hand, the liquid crystal panel 3 is connected to the above-mentioned panel drive circuit 18, and as shown in FIG. 2, is a large-sized panel that displays 40 characters by 6 lines.

The characters to be displayed are stored in line memory 1 by the CPU 11.
5, the contents are cyclically read out by the panel drive circuit 18 and displayed on the liquid crystal panel 3. The liquid crystal panel 3 has, in addition to an area for displaying input characters, a guidance area (at the bottom) for displaying the status of editing operations, explanations of next operations, etc. In addition, on the right edge of the front glass of the liquid crystal panel 3, in addition to a blank mass pattern (b) 31, three types of shading patterns 32, 33° 34 are printed, and on the right side of the screen, the color specified by the liquid crystal is printed. An area is provided in which an instruction pattern "." is displayed. These displays are used to indicate the print color of characters displayed on the monochrome liquid crystal panel 3. That is,
When characters are displayed on the liquid crystal panel 3, shading according to the designated print color is performed together with a pattern, and the current print color setting is indicated by this pattern ".". Note that the line memory 15 stores characters and the like displayed on the liquid crystal panel 3 in a dot pattern, and the panel drive circuit 18 is a bitmap display that displays the contents of the line memory 15 as is on the liquid crystal panel 3. ). Therefore, it is easy for such shading to display characters together with patterns.

The color printer 4 incorporated in the document editing device is of a type that thermally transfers ink from an ink ribbon 41 stored in a ribbon cartridge 40 onto printing paper 44 using a thermal head 43, and the ribbon cartridge 40 that stores the color ribbon By using this, it is possible to print in three colors other than black: red, blue, and green. The ink ribbon 41 has black, red, blue, and green solid ink pigments coated in sequence on a ribbon base. An optical sensor 45 is incorporated in the ribbon cartridge 40, and can identify the color of the pigment at the portion fed to the thermal head 43. Therefore, by sending print data from the CPU 11 to the intelligent printer control circuit 16 together with printing control codes such as color control codes, the printer control circuit 16 also controls the feeding of the ink ribbon 41 and prints the specified color. Wording can be printed on printing paper 44. The color printer 4 includes a head transport motor 4 that transports a carriage 47 on which a thermal head 43 and a ribbon cartridge 40 are mounted in the paper width direction.
8, a paper feed motor 52 that feeds the printing paper 44 through the platen 50, and a ribbon winding motor 54 that controls the winding of the ink ribbon 41 described above, all of which are connected to the printer control circuit 16. These controls are well known, so their explanation will be omitted.

The input port 17 is connected to a microswitch 60, 61 (
(see Figure 3). In FIG. 4, the ribbon cartridge 40 for color printing is shown not mounted on the carriage 47, but when it is placed on the carriage 47, the two notches 40a and 40b provided on the bottom surface of the ribbon cartridge 40 presses the movable parts of the two microswitches 60.61 together, so the contacts of the microswitches 60.61 are turned on. In addition, in the case of a black ribbon ribbon cartridge, this notch 40b
is not provided. Therefore, the CPU 11 reads the states of the microswitches 60 and 61 through the input port 17, thereby controlling the set ribbon cartridge 4.
0 is for color (with notches 40a and 40b), single color (with notches 40a and no notch 40b), or whether the ribbon cartridge 40 is not placed.

Next, the printing process of the color word processor having the above configuration will be explained. FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the procedure of printing processing in the color word processor.

This routine is repeatedly executed together with other routines (not shown) as a color word processor, and first it is determined whether there is a request for printing (step 100).

If there is no print request, this control routine ends as is, but if there is a print request, the process moves to step 1'IO and the microswitch 60.
61 is read. The states of the microswitches 60 and 61 may be read when the color word processor is powered on and stored and held in a predetermined register.

As a result, if both microswitches 60 and 61 are on, it is assumed that a color ribbon is attached, and the RA
The text stored in M13 is read out along with the color control code for printing, etc., and a process is performed to output this to the printer control circuit 16 (steps 120 and 130).
Since the printer control circuit 16 receives the color control code along with the text, it controls the feeding of the ink ribbon using the optical sensor 45 accordingly, and prints the multicolor (
Color) printing. That is, when a color control code specifying a print color is given, the ribbon winding motor 54
While monitoring the output of the optical sensor 45, a process is performed to feed the ribbon portion of the color corresponding to the designated print color to the position of the print head 43, and when a character code is given, that character The font pattern corresponding to the font pattern is read from the built-in font ROM, and the font pattern is sequentially sent to the print head 43 for printing.

On the other hand, when it is determined that the ribbon cartridge 40 is for a single color (usually "black") based on the state of the microswitches 60 and 61, a message indicating that no color ribbon is installed is first output to the liquid crystal panel 3 (step 130). .140
>, it is further determined whether the "execute" key has been pressed (step 150). If the "Execute" key is pressed, RAM1
The text stored in step 3 is output to the printer control circuit 16, excluding the color control code (step 1).
60). Therefore, in this case, no special control is performed regarding the feeding of the ink ribbon 41.

Incidentally, in the determination at step 150, if the user desires color printing and presses a key other than the "execute" key, no processing is performed and this routine is immediately executed.
exit and exit. In this case, the ribbon cartridge 40 may be replaced with a color cartridge and then printing may be instructed again.

As explained above, according to the color word processor of the present embodiment, the type of ribbon cartridge set by the user is automatically determined, so there is no need to set it each time from the keyboard 2 or the like. Therefore, there is no possibility that the ink ribbon and its settings will be changed due to a mistake and undesired printed matter will be produced. Moreover, since optimal control is automatically performed depending on the type of ink ribbon attached, there is no need for wasted control. In particular, when a single color ink ribbon is installed while color printing is specified, the unavoidable waste of the print head 43 reciprocating at the same location two or three times to print a mixed color is avoided. Since it is completely removed, problems such as wasted ink ribbon and loss of printing time are all eliminated.

Although one embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the present invention is not limited to this embodiment in any way. For example, if a ribbon cartridge is not installed, the print head is assumed to be using thermal paper. A configuration that switches the control time of the heating element, etc., and a collection ribbon are included.
The present invention can be implemented in various ways without departing from the gist of the present invention, such as a configuration that switches to control for generating characters treated as white when an iU ink ribbon cartridge is installed. Of course. Further, it goes without saying that the information processing device is not limited to a color word processor.

As described above in detail, the information processing device having the printing function of the present invention can select printing control according to the difference in the ink ribbon installed in the printing device, and can select the printing control depending on the type of ink ribbon. Errors in settings can be prevented. Therefore, there is no need to create undesired printed matter, waste ink ribbon, or waste time on printing, and the printing function can be fully utilized, which is an extremely excellent effect. play.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating the basic configuration of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a perspective view illustrating the schematic configuration of a color word processor as an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating its electrical system. FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing a schematic configuration of the carriage 47, and FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a print control routine. 2...Keyboard 3...LCD panel 4...
・Color printer 10...Electronic control unit 40...
Ribbon cartridge 40a, 40b-/ch

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] A printing device having a replaceable cartridge-type ink ribbon, and a printing control means for outputting information such as a document to be edited or the like to the printing device and printing it. In an information processing device having a printing function, the printing device includes cartridge detection means for detecting the type of cartridge characterized according to the difference in ink ribbon, and the printing control means detects the type of cartridge characterized by the difference in ink ribbon. An information processing device having a printing function, characterized in that it is provided with printing control selection means for selecting printing control corresponding to the attached ink ribbon based on the type.