JPH1024629A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce the cost price of a printer which holds a text data and an image data once separately and synthesizes the once held text data and the image data to print them. SOLUTION: A magnetic disk 4 is used as a means once holding image data. If necessary, a disk cash memory 5 is provided. From an aspect of the constitution of a printer, the capacity of a memory 3 occupying large cost specific gravity can be minimized and an inexpensive printer suppressed in the cost price can be constructed. Even if the capacity of the loaded memory 3 is small, the magnitude of printable image data is not restricted.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a printer, and more particularly to a page printer that performs printing in page units.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a page printer, generally, text data and image data input from a host device are temporarily stored in separate memories, and the stored data is combined and printed.

In such a conventional page printer,
In order to print one page, a memory having a capacity capable of storing data of at least one page must be prepared. In particular, in the case of a color page printer, when printing color image data such as a photograph, the amount of data transmitted from a host device such as a host computer to the page printer is much larger than that of a monochrome page printer. The data amount is usually 2-3 [Mbytes] and 1
It may exceed 0 [Mbyte].

Therefore, if the page printer is equipped with a memory for receiving and temporarily storing them, the memory occupies a large cost ratio. Therefore, considering the cost of the entire printer, the cost weight occupied by the memory is high, which hinders cost reduction.

[0005]

In the above-mentioned conventional printer, the memory hinders cost reduction. In order to solve such a problem, there is a method of reducing memory by using a data compression technique. However, such a method has a drawback that, depending on the configuration of the data to be printed, printing may not be possible due to insufficient data compression.

Although the cost can be reduced by reducing the memory capacity, there is a disadvantage that the size of printable image data is limited.

In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 64-4349,
A large-capacity memory device is used to absorb the transfer speed when transferring data from the video terminal to the dot printer. Also in this case, the memory capacity becomes large and the cost cannot be reduced.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art, and an object of the present invention is to provide a printer which can reduce the cost and does not limit the size of printable image data. That is.

[0009]

A printer according to the present invention includes a text data holding means and an image data holding means for temporarily holding text data and image data separately, and the text once held by these holding means. A printer for combining and printing data and image data, wherein the holding unit for image data is a magnetic disk device.

[0010]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The operation of the present invention is as follows.

In a printer for temporarily storing text data and image data separately and combining and printing the temporarily stored text data and image data, the image data is stored in a magnetic disk device. If necessary, a disk cache memory is provided. In terms of the printer configuration, the memory capacity occupying a large cost ratio can be minimized, and an inexpensive printer with reduced cost can be constructed.

Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a main part of an embodiment of a printer according to the present invention, and shows a configuration in a case where data transmitted from a host computer as a host device is printed.

Referring to FIG. 1, a printer according to one embodiment of the present invention includes a semiconductor memory 3 for storing text data,
A magnetic disk device (hard disk) 4 for holding image data, and a cache memory 5 for holding a part of the storage contents of the magnetic disk device 4 and increasing the access speed
And a printing mechanism 7.

In such a configuration, the output data 1 from the application software 1 on the host computer side
When 0 is transmitted, the data 10 is passed to the printer driver 2. Thereafter, the printer driver 2 divides the output data 10 into a text portion, a graphic portion, and an image portion. Each data of the divided text portion, graphic portion and image portion is transferred to the page printer.

In this case, the image data is clearly distinguished in the printer language, and a symbol indicating that the image data is a bit image is sent from the host computer.

[0017] The "graphics" referred to here are:
In the printer language, a figure that cannot be represented by a character code (not text data) and is drawn in the printer language, for example, a figure such as a bar graph or a pie graph. on the other hand,
The "image" here refers to bit image data such as a photograph.

On the page printer side, an intermediate code is generated for the data 20 of the text portion and the graphic portion which does not require a relatively large memory capacity. Then, the generated intermediate code is stored in the display list of the memory 3 for each band. On the other hand, as for the data 21 of the image portion, the data received from the host computer is immediately recorded on the magnetic disk device 4.

The "intermediate code" is a code generated in the process of converting a printer language into a raster image, and can be rapidly developed into a raster image from this code. The “display list” is a list in which intermediate codes are collectively managed for each band.

When rasterizing a display list at the time of the last print output and developing it into an output image, image data of a band corresponding to the display list is read from the magnetic disk device 4. Then, the read image data is combined, and the combined data 6 is printed out from the printing mechanism 7.

In this embodiment, the processing is performed by dividing each band. That is, the drawing image for one page is managed by being divided into several blocks. The advantage of dividing into band bands in this way is that when performing drawing processing of a certain band band, data of other band bands is not necessary, so that data of the unnecessary band band is compressed in a memory or the like. Thus, a small memory capacity can be effectively used.

In recent years, magnetic disk drives have become inexpensive, and those having relatively large capacities have been downsized, and examples of mounting them on a page printer controller have been increasing. However, the method of use in this case is to store various fonts or temporarily store outline-expanded fonts (cache fonts). With this printer, image data that has a large proportion of the memory and has an indeterminate data capacity is saved to the magnetic disk drive,
Printing can be performed even with a memory configuration having a minimum capacity, and the cost of the printer can be reduced.

In this embodiment, a part of the storage contents of the magnetic disk device is held in the cache memory. Therefore, the access speed of the magnetic disk device can be increased to the same level as that of the semiconductor memory. When a magnetic disk device capable of high-speed access is used, a cache memory is unnecessary.

As described above, since the magnetic disk is used in the present printer, the capacity of the memory mounted on the printer can be reduced, and the cost of the printer can be reduced. Further, since the image data is held using the magnetic disk, data that cannot be printed due to insufficient memory capacity because the image data is too large can be printed. In particular, in a color image printer that often handles large image data, the effect of cost reduction is great.

In the above description, it is assumed that a magnetic disk drive is used.
A secondary storage device (auxiliary storage device) such as a C memory card can also be used. That is, image data generally requires only a large amount of memory capacity until only processing of resolution conversion is performed until immediately before printing on paper.
Memory usage is very poor. For this reason, the image data may be temporarily stored in another auxiliary medium until printing is required.

In connection with the description of the claims, the present invention can further take the following aspects.

(1) The printer according to claim 1 or 2, further comprising a memory card for temporarily storing the image data instead of the magnetic disk device.

[0028]

As described above, the present invention has an effect that the cost of the printer can be reduced by using a magnetic disk as a means for temporarily storing image data. The use of a magnetic disk also has the effect that printing cannot be disabled due to insufficient memory capacity even when the image data is large.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a printer according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 3 memory 4 magnetic disk device 5 cache memory

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A text data holding means and an image data holding means for temporarily holding text data and image data separately, and the text data and the image data once held by these holding means are combined and printed. Wherein the image data holding means is a magnetic disk device. 2. The printer according to claim 1, further comprising a cache memory for holding a part of the storage content of said magnetic disk device.