JPS63207656A - Output device for font set of arbitrary size per character style - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce the capacity occupied by a font file, by a method wherein, basic bit map pattern information is expanded or reduced to generate a possible matrix pattern, and the shape of the possible matrix pattern is corrected to generate a dot matrix pattern. CONSTITUTION:When the input of information A of point size is effected, a CPU 3 transfers 'basic bit map pattern', 'conversion pattern matrix information', and 'bit map pattern information for correction', stored in a system disk 1 to a buffer memory 5 through a disk controller 2. Furthermore, 'the point size of target', 'the address in a font memory 10 to load a converted font thereto', and the like are stored in the buffer memory 5. A control circuit 4 allows an arithmetic circuit 7 to conduct a calculation for predicting a bit map pattern of point size serving as a target, and a decoder 6 to conduct a function of decoding the condensed bit map pattern for preparation of corrected information, and an arithmetic circuit 8 to convert the information to a font pattern used in actual printing.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention relates to an arbitrary size font set output device for each font, and in particular, to generate a bitmap pattern of a requested size from a bitmap pattern of a basic size,
The present invention relates to an arbitrary size font set output device for each font, which loads a bitmap pattern of the requested size into a font memory.

(Prior Art) In a conventional kanji laser printer, each font (e.g., Gothic, Mincho, overwriting, etc.) and point size (e.g., 6.8°, 10.12, 1) are stored on the system disk.
A font file is provided for each page (4.16 points, etc.), and the font files necessary for the page to be printed are loaded into the font memory and the page is printed.

In addition, a high-quality kanji printer such as 6003PI (S p
With kanji printers such as ot per Inch),
The system disk has font files for each font, point size, and orientation due to the demand for high quality printing. By the way, the 600
A 3PI Kanji printer requires a 64 x 64 dot font in order to print 16 point characters, and the bitmap capacity of a font file implemented corresponding to JIS Level 1/2 is approximately 4 MB.

(Problems to be solved by the invention) As mentioned above, in the conventional kanji laser printer,
Since the system disk contains font files for each font, point size, and orientation, there is a problem in that a system disk with a capacity of 4 is required.

Furthermore, since large-capacity font files are stored on the system disk, it takes time to load the large-capacity fonts from the system disk to the font memory, resulting in a reduction in system throughput.

The purpose of the present invention is to eliminate the problems of the conventional device described above,
The purpose of this invention is to reduce the capacity occupied by font files on the system disk by generating a bitmap pattern of arbitrary point size from a basic matrix pattern.

Another object of the present invention is to prevent a decrease in system throughput by reducing the number of sectors that must be loaded from a system disk into a font memory without degrading print quality.

(Means and operations for solving the problems) In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides basic bitmap pattern information, conversion pattern matrix information, and correction data, as shown in FIG. A system disk 21 in which at least bitmap pattern information is stored; a buffer memory 22 to which the basic bitmap pattern information, conversion pattern matrix information corresponding to a designated point size, and correction bitmap pattern are transferred; a first arithmetic circuit 23 that applies the conversion pattern matrix information to basic bitmap pattern information to generate a predicted matrix pattern; a decoder 24 that decodes the correction bitmap pattern; and a decoder 24 that decodes the correction bitmap pattern. a second arithmetic circuit 25 that corrects the predicted matrix pattern according to the pattern and generates a dot matrix pattern to be used for actual printing;
It is characterized in that it includes a font memory 26 that stores the dot matrix pattern generated by the second arithmetic circuit.

With this configuration, the present invention enlarges or reduces the basic bitmap pattern information to generate a predicted matrix pattern, corrects the shape of the predicted hindlimb matrix pattern, and generates a dot matrix pattern used for well-shaped printing. It is distinctive in that it was made to take place.

(Example) Below, the present invention will be explained in detail with reference to Examples. Second
The figure shows a block diagram of an embodiment of the invention.

In the figure, 1 is a system disk, and the system disk 1 stores font files having the structure shown in FIG. The font file includes (1) header (HEADER) information, (2) address information, (3) basic bitmap pattern information, (4) matrix information of conversion patterns #1 to #n, and correction bitmap information after decoding. It consists of address information for each character and (5) data compressed correction bitmap pattern #1 to #n information.

2 in FIG. 2 is the controller of the system disk, 3
4 is a CPU, 4 is a control circuit that controls the operations of the buffer memory 5, decoder 6, and 1.2 arithmetic circuit 7.
1 is an image generating device, 10 is a font memory, and 11 is a bus connecting the above-mentioned devices.

The "header information" stored in the system disk 1 includes information regarding the basic matrix of the basic bitmap pattern (that is, information such as vertical and horizontal sizes, number of characters, etc.);
and information about the pattern to be converted (that is, information about what kind of conversion pattern is included). Further, the "address information" is pointer information for each character of the basic bitmap pattern. Said “
"Basic bit map pattern information" indicates each character pattern (approximately 8000 characters) equivalent to JIS 1st/2nd level, and in this embodiment, unlike the conventional device, only character patterns of one point size are stored. There is. For example, an 8 point character pattern is stored as 32x32 dots.

In addition, the above-mentioned "conversion pattern #1 to #n matrix information"
is information on how many times the basic bitmap pattern is to be converted, and the conversion pattern matrix information will become clear from the explanation below. Further, the "correction bitmap pattern information" is information for correcting the enlarged or reduced bitmap pattern when the basic bitmap pattern is enlarged or reduced, and a specific example will be explained later. .

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be explained.

When point size (and font) information A is input from a text creation device such as a word processor (not shown), the CPU 3 accesses the system disk 1 via the disk controller 2 and stores it therein. has been done. The "basic bitmap pattern", "conversion pattern matrix information for converting to the target font", and "correction bitmap pattern information for the target font" are transferred to the buffer memory 5, and the "target font" is further transferred to the buffer memory 5. "point size" and "address j of the font memory 10 into which a font converted to a predetermined point size is loaded are stored."

When the above-mentioned information is stored in the buffer memory 5, the control circuit 4 performs the following processing, timing control, etc. FIG. 4 is a flowchart explaining the functions of the control circuit 4.

(1) The control circuit 4' applies the conversion pattern matrix information to the basic bitmap pattern stored in the buffer memory 5 to predict a bitmap pattern of a target point size. The arithmetic circuit 7 is caused to perform the processing (step 81).

(2) At the same time or before or after (1) above, the control circuit 4 decodes the compressed (encoded) correction bitmap pattern for the bitmap pattern of the target point size and outputs correction information. The decoder 6 is caused to perform the function to be created. (Step S2).

(3) Next, the control circuit 4 performs the step 81, S2
When the bitmap pattern and the correction information corresponding to the expected bitmap pattern decoded by the decoder 6 are completed (steps S3 and S4 are YES), the second
This is done by the arithmetic circuit. (Step 35).

(4) Next, the control circuit 4 transfers the generated font pattern of a predetermined point size to the font memory 10 via the image generator 9 (step S6). As a result, the font pattern is stored in the font memory 10.

(5) The effects of (1) to (4) above apply to all characters of the basic bitmap pattern stored on the system disk 1 (approximately 8000 characters in the case of characters equivalent to JIS 1st/2nd level).
characters).

(8) When the operation on all characters of the basic bitmap pattern is completed (YES in step S7), the decoder 6 and the first and second arithmetic circuits 7 of the control circuit 4,
The processing and timing control for No. 8 ends.

As described above, according to this embodiment, the system disk 1
, one type of basic bitmap pattern information, conversion pattern matrix information for enlarging/reducing it,
Since it is only necessary to store compressed (for example, run length, etc.) correction bitmap pattern information, the capacity of the system disk 1 can be significantly reduced compared to the conventional method of storing bitmap patterns of each point size. Can be reduced. Furthermore, the time required to process and transfer the enlarged or reduced font pattern from the system disk 1 to the font memory 10 is shortened, so that the throughput of the system is improved.

Next, the operation of the above embodiment will be explained in detail using a specific example.

Now, if a text creation device such as a word processor specifies a size of 16 points, as mentioned above,
"Basic bitmap pattern", "conversion pattern matrix information" and "correction bitmap pattern information"
is transferred from the system disk 1 to the buffer memory 5, and "16 point point size information" and "address of the font memory 10" are also stored in the buffer memory 5.

Next, one character in the basic bitmap pattern “
Continuing the explanation by paying attention to the 8 point size (3 points) as shown in FIG.
The basic bitmap pattern 12 (2832 dots) is transferred and stored.

The “conversion pattern matrix information” is the 32×3
For example, for the basic pattern 13 of 4×4 dots in which 2 dots are divided into 64 blocks, FIGS.
) is composed of the matrix shown in That is, a conversion pattern matrix for generating a 10 point size font from an 8 point size basic bitmap pattern is formed in the form shown in FIG. Here, ``毫'' indicates logical product. The conversion pattern matrix 14 is a matrix for enlarging a basic bitmap pattern of 4×4 dots to a bitmap pattern of 5×5 dots, and the third row and third column of the conversion pattern matrix 14 are the matrix for expanding the basic bitmap pattern of 4×4 dots into a bitmap pattern of 5×5 dots. line,
It is created by calculating the second and third columns of the basic bitmap pattern. As for the data in other matrices, the basic bitmap pattern data is transferred as is.

FIG. 6(b) shows a conversion pattern matrix 15 for generating a 12-point font from an 8-point basic bitmap pattern, and FIG. 6(C) shows a conversion pattern matrix 15 for generating a 16-point font from an 8-point basic bitmap pattern. A conversion pattern matrix 16 for generating fonts is shown. It is clear that the conversion pattern matrix 16 in (C) is a conversion pattern matrix that doubles the basic pattern in both the row and column directions.

In this specific example, a 16 point size font is generated from an 8 point size basic bitmap pattern, so the first arithmetic circuit 7 uses the matrix 16 of FIG. 6(C) as the conversion pattern matrix. A predicted matrix pattern 17 of 64×64 dots is generated as shown in FIG.

On the other hand, the decoder 6 decodes the correction bitmap pattern compressed by run length or the like, which corresponds to the predicted bitmap pattern. An example of the correction bitmap pattern decoded by the decoder 6 is shown in FIG. As is clear from the figure, since white bits account for most of the total number of bits in the correction bitmap pattern 18, the compression ratio is high, and it is difficult to store the correction bitmap pattern before being decoded. The required memory capacity will be small.

Next, the second arithmetic circuit 8 generates a font pattern 19 to be actually printed from the predicted matrix pattern 17 created by the first arithmetic circuit 7 and the correction bitmap pattern 18 decoded by the decoder 6. .

Specifically, as shown in FIG. 9, the second arithmetic circuit 8 turns each bit of the correction matrix pattern 18 ON (that is, black ), and if the bit of the correction matrix pattern 18 is on, the result is No.
Perform the t operation, that is, the operation to make it white. As a result, a 64×64 dot matrix pattern 19, which is used for high-quality actual printing and in which the predicted matrix pattern is corrected, is generated.

64X used for actual printing generated in this way
The 64-dot matrix pattern 19 is stored at a predetermined address in the font memory 10 under the control of the control circuit 4.

The above explanation is about the character "with", but the same processing as above is performed on all the basic bitmap patterns stored in the system disk 1, and the resulting printing The characters are sequentially stored in the font memory 10.

Although the above explanation was an example in which all the basic bitmap patterns stored in the system disk 1 are subjected to the above processing and transferred to the font memory 10, the present invention is not limited to this, and the basic bitmap patterns stored in the system disk 1 are transferred to the font memory 10. Only the characters used in the text are transferred from system disk 1 to buffer memory 5.
It goes without saying that the characters may be transferred to the font memory 10, subjected to the above processing, and then stored in the font memory 10.

(Effects of the Invention) As is clear from the above description, according to the present invention, the system disk can store a basic bitmap pattern of one point size, conversion pattern matrix information that can be stored in a small capacity, and correction bitmap pattern information. This has the great effect of requiring only a small memory capacity on the system disk. Another effect is that the transfer speed from the system disk to the font memory becomes faster, improving system throughput.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing the functions of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a block diagram showing the hardware configuration of the invention, Fig. 3 is a conceptual diagram of information stored on the system disk, and Fig. 4 is a control diagram. Flowchart explaining the functions of the circuit 4, FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a basic bitmap pattern, FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of a conversion pattern matrix, and FIG. 7 is a diagram explaining the process of generating a predicted matrix pattern. , FIG. 8 is a diagram showing an example of a decoded correction matrix pattern, and FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an example of a decoded correction matrix pattern.
The figure is a diagram for explaining the process of generating a dot matrix pattern to be actually printed. 1.21... System disk, 5.22... Buffer memory, 7.23... First arithmetic circuit, 6.24
... Decoder, 8.25 ... Second arithmetic circuit, 10
．． 26... Font memory No. 4 Fig. 6 Fig. 4 dot 9

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) A system disk that stores at least basic bitmap pattern information, conversion pattern matrix information, and correction bitmap pattern information, and conversion pattern matrix information corresponding to the basic bitmap pattern information and specified point size; a buffer memory to which a correction bitmap pattern is transferred; a first arithmetic circuit that applies the conversion pattern matrix information to the basic bitmap pattern information to generate a predicted matrix pattern; and a first arithmetic circuit that decodes the correction bitmap pattern. a second arithmetic circuit that corrects the predicted matrix pattern using the decoded correction bitmap pattern and generates a dot matrix pattern to be used for actual printing; 1. An arbitrary size font set output device for each font, comprising a font memory for storing a dot matrix pattern.