JPH1115614A - Printer controller - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent the interruption of the reception/analysis/developing work of printing data even if the printing stop condition of a printing mechanism part occurs in a printer controller having a printing image storage area. SOLUTION: The printer controller has an image storage area 12 into which image data are written at the time of developing printing data, the non-volatile storage device 13 of large capacity, which stores image data, and a read buffer 14 reading image data from the non-volatile storage device 13. Even if a printing stop condition occurs in the printing mechanism part 16, printing can speedily be executed after the printing stop condition disappears without interrupting a reception part 9, an analysis part 10 and a development part 11.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer control device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art The operation of a conventional printer control device will be described below.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a conventional printer control device and its peripheral devices. The host computer 1 for sending print data, the printer control devices 17 and 7 are composed of a printer printing mechanism 7. Printer control device 1
Reference numeral 7 denotes a receiving unit 2 for receiving print data from the host computer, an analyzing unit 3 for analyzing the received data, a developing unit 4 for developing a print image, and an image data generated by developing the developing unit 4. It comprises an image storage area 5 to be stored and a scanning section 6 which reads out image data from the image storage area 5, converts it into a video signal, and sends it to a printing mechanism section 7 of the printer.

In the prior art, the data received from the host computer 1 is sent once to the receiving unit 2 of the printer control unit 17, the sent print data is analyzed by the analyzing unit 3, and the image is sent to the developing unit 4 by the developing unit 4. The data is developed and stored in the image storage area 5. The print image data stored in the image storage area 5 is read out by the scan unit 6 with the timing of the operation of the printer print mechanism unit 7 converted to a video signal and sent to the printer print mechanism unit 7 for printing. Will be

[0005]

In recent years, a page description language for a printer often consumes a large amount of resources (memory resources) such as font data and image data, and the types of the languages are increasing. Therefore, it has been necessary to create page image data for each job in a plurality of languages in a printer control device. In each language, a large amount of resources are often sent to the receiving buffer of the printer due to preprocessing when switching languages and downloading fonts, and long processing is required to develop outline fonts and create graphic image data. .

In the conventional printer control device, the print image data stored in the image storage area is several pages, and even if the reception data that can be stored by the reception unit is several tens of pages, the printer printing mechanism unit If it is necessary to interrupt the processing at any time due to the occurrence of printing stop conditions such as paper replacement, paper jam, replacement of maintenance parts, etc., the control device stops developing work only by developing several pages of image data In some cases, the printer printing mechanism cannot provide a sufficient printing speed due to the waiting time for creating image data after the disappearance of the printing stop condition. The present invention pays attention to this point, and realizes a substantial improvement in printing speed by allowing the unfolding operation of the printer control device to be performed without interruption even when the printer printing mechanism is temporarily stopped.

[0007]

In order to achieve the above object, an image storage area for storing an image expanded by an expansion unit, a large-capacity nonvolatile storage device for sequentially storing image data in the image storage area, By having a read buffer for storing data read from the non-volatile storage device, even if a print stop condition of the printing mechanism unit occurs, the development operation of the print image by the reception unit, the analysis unit, and the development unit is performed in the non-volatile storage The printing operation is continued without interruption until the free space of the apparatus is exhausted, and the printing operation after the printing stop condition of the printing mechanism disappears is promptly restarted.

[0008]

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a printer control device and its peripheral devices, and includes a host computer 8 that sends out print data, a printer control device 18, and a printer printing mechanism unit 16. The printer control device 18 is generated by a receiving unit 9 that receives print data from a host computer, an analyzing unit 10 that analyzes received data, a developing unit 11 that develops a print image, and a developing unit that develops the print image. An image storage area 12 where image data is written;
A large-capacity nonvolatile storage device 13 for storing image data in the image storage area 12, and a read buffer 14 for reading image data from the nonvolatile storage device 13;
And the image storage area 12 or the read buffer 14
And a scanning unit 15 which converts the image data read from the printer into a video signal and sends it to the printer printing mechanism unit 16.

The print data from the host computer 8 is sent to the receiving unit 9 of the printer control unit 18, analyzed by the analyzing unit 10, developed into one-page image data by the developing unit 11, and stored in the image storage area 12. You. The image data stored in the image storage area 12 is converted into a video signal via the scanning unit 15 and sent to the printer printing mechanism unit 16 when the printer printing mechanism unit 16 is in a standby state for inputting a video signal after the image creation is completed. Printing is performed. In this case, writing to the non-volatile storage device 13 may be performed simultaneously with reading of image data from the image storage area 12 by the scanning unit 15. At this time, when it is confirmed by the scanning unit 15 that the printing has been completed normally, the printed image is marked on the corresponding image data in the nonvolatile storage device 13 or the image storage area 12.

When the image data is completely created by the developing unit 11, paper exchange or paper jam occurs in the printer printing mechanism unit 16.
If a print stop condition such as replacement of maintenance parts has occurred,
The image data in the image storage area 12 is stored in the large-capacity nonvolatile storage device 13 as unprinted image data. The work of receiving, analyzing, expanding, and storing print data
During the occurrence of the print stop condition of the printer printing mechanism 16, the empty area of the nonvolatile storage device 13 or the area marked with the print is overwritten. The scanning unit 15 monitors the statuses of the non-volatile storage device 13 and the printer printing mechanism unit 16, and if unprinted image data is found in the non-volatile storage device 13 and the image storage area 12, one page worth of data is immediately written in the written order. The image data is read into the read buffer 14, converted into a video signal by measuring the timing of the operation of the printer printing mechanism 16, transmitted, and printed. At the end of normal printing, printing is performed on the corresponding image data in the nonvolatile storage device 13 or the image storage area 12.

[0011]

As described above, according to the present invention, the expansion operation of the print image is performed without interruption even when the printing of the printer printing mechanism is stopped as occasion demands. Print time can be improved.

Also, regardless of the state of the printing mechanism, data received from the host computer can be received, so that the load on the host computer can be reduced.

Further, even if the power is turned off by storing the image data in the non-volatile storage device, the printing can be restarted immediately after the power is turned on again.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a printer control device and peripheral devices according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a conventional printer control device and peripheral devices.

[Explanation of symbols]

1, 8: Host computer, 2, 9: Receiving unit,
3,10 ... Analysis part, 4,11 ... Development part, 5,12 ...
・ Image storage area, 6, 15 ... Scanning section, 7, 16
··· Printer printing mechanism section, 13 ··· Large-capacity nonvolatile storage device for storing image data, ··· 14 reading buffer, 17 and 18 ··· Printer control device.

Claims (1)

[Claims] A receiving unit that receives print data from a host computer; an analyzing unit that analyzes the received data; a developing unit that develops a print image; and an image storage area that stores the developed image. A non-volatile storage device for storing the image data expanded in the image storage area, a read buffer for reading the stored image data from the non-volatile storage device, and an image storage area or a read buffer. A printer control device comprising: a scanning unit that converts read image data into a video signal and sends the video signal to a printer printing mechanism unit, so that a print image is developed without interruption.