JPS6391256A - Color word processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable printing of characters which provide comfortable visual impression by providing an arrangement storage means, a print color region setting means, a printing control means and an editing means which changes only character data in the afore-mentioned arrangement storage means. CONSTITUTION:If a print color region setting means M2 sets a region for each print color on a printing face according to entered instructions, aid regions are stored in a distribution storage means M3. A printing control means M4 identifies colors in which a dot pattern of characters to be arranged on a printing face is printed, in accordance with the afore-mentioned region stored in the distribution storage means M3, and prints each dot which corresponds to character data of an arrangement storage means M1 in matching colors. If the arrangement of character data in the arrangement storage means M1 is changed by an editing means M5 which is a function of a word processor, the regions for each printing color which are stored in the distribution storage means M3 are not altered by the editing means M5. So no color pattern is changed, if the arrangement of characters themselves is changed, in the printing process by the printing control means M4.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a color word processor that emits colored characters.

[Prior Art] In order to specify the color of a character in a conventional color word processor, an instruction as to whether or not to print each character in what color is inputted from a keyboard. .

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, with this method, input is cumbersome and colors can only be specified for each character, so there is a limit to the freedom in designing color patterns. Further, when moving characters or character strings, which is a function of a word processor, if the colors themselves are also moved at the same time, this is inconvenient when attempting to express a specific color pattern on the printing surface.

Therefore, the present invention aims to solve the above problems and employs the following configuration.

Means for Solving Problem E] That is, the gist of the present invention is to convert input character data into a dot pattern corresponding to the character data, as illustrated in FIG. - A color word processor that prints dots according to a pattern, further includes an array storage means M1 for storing the arrangement of the character data, a print color area setting means M2 for setting an area for each print color on the dot printing surface, and a distribution of the area. distribution storage means M3 for storing the dot pattern; print control means M4 for controlling the dot pattern to be printed in the set color of the area to which the dot pattern belongs; and changing only the arrangement of character data in the arrangement storage means Ml. A color word processor characterized by comprising: an editing means M5.

[Operation] When the print color area setting means M2 sets an area for each print color on the printing surface according to the input instruction, the distribution storage means M3 stores the area. The printing control means M4 determines the color in which the dot pattern of the characters arranged on the printing surface should be printed based on the above area stored in the distribution storage means M3, and prints the array memory 14M1 in the corresponding color. Print each dot that corresponds to the character data. Even if the arrangement of character data in the array storage means Ml is changed by the editing means M5, which is a function of a word processor, the editing means M5 does not change the area for each print color stored in the distribution storage means M3. When printed by the control means M4, even if the arrangement of the characters themselves changes, the color pattern does not change.

Next, the present invention will be described in detail.11 The present invention is not limited to these, but includes various embodiments without departing from the gist thereof.

[Embodiment] FIG. 2 is a perspective view of a color word processor that is an embodiment of the present invention. This color word processor includes a keyboard 1 for inputting print data, a liquid crystal panel 2 for displaying up to 24 characters of the print data input from the keyboard 1, and a thermal transfer printing device 4 for color printing the print data input from the keyboard 1. We are prepared.

In addition to the normal character keys, the keyboard 1 includes a color specification key 5 for instructing the start operation of specifying the area color for color printing;
Color-specific keys for instructing the different colors for color printing, ie, yellow key 6, ma, zenta key-8, cyan key 10, cursor key 11 for moving the cursor displayed on the liquid crystal panel 2 up, down, left and right. A print key 12 for commanding the start of printing, a line feed key 14 for commanding line feed, and the like are provided.

The printing device 4 also includes a platen 18 to which printing paper 16 is attached and rotated by a step motor (not shown), a guide shaft 20 provided parallel to the platen 18, and a guide shaft 20 that is slidably supported on the guide shaft 20. The carriage base 22, the ribbon 1 cassette 26 placed on the carriage base 22 and containing the film ribbon 24, the drive shaft 30 that engages with the ribbon cassette 26 and is rotated by the step motor 28, and heats the film ribbon 24. A print head 32 that prints by melting and an optical sensor 34 provided adjacent to the print head 32 are provided.

A part of the timing belt 36 is engaged with the carriage base 22, and as the timing belt 36 is rotated by the step motor 38, the carriage base 22 also moves.

In addition, the film ribbon 24 has yellow Y, magenta M
, cyan C (hereinafter referred to as Y, M, and C, respectively).

) are sequentially applied to the same length as the width of the printing paper 16, and a bar code is provided at the beginning of each color.

This barcode is discriminated by the optical sensor 34 to perform color identification and determination of color boundaries. Three primary colors Y of the above colors,
M, C, red R, Glishi G, blue B, which are mixed in reduced color by overlapping and printing them.
Printing is performed in 4 colors of black BK and a total of 7 colors.

This printing device 4 uses a step motor 28 to move a predetermined color of an ink ribbon 24 to the position of a print head 32, prints dots by the print head 32, and then moves the ink ribbon 24 to a carriage base via a timing belt 36 using a step motor 38. By moving 22 in the horizontal direction in the figure, printing is performed sequentially.

When one line of printing is completed, the platen 18 is rotated and the printing paper 16 is fed by one line.

Next, the electrical system of this embodiment will be explained using the block diagram shown in FIG. Each of the above devices is driven and controlled by an electronic control device 50 built into the color word processor to perform color printing.

As shown in FIG. 3, this electronic control device 50 includes a well-known CPU 51. ROM 52 that stores control programs and data in advance, array storage means M1, and distribution storage means M
It is constituted as a logical operation circuit by a read/write RAM 53 as shown in FIG. The CPU 51 performs various processes according to procedures (programs) stored in the ROM 52. The line memory 54 is for storing characters and the like displayed on the liquid crystal panel 2 in the form of dot patterns, and the panel drive circuit 60 is for displaying the contents of the line memory 54 on the liquid crystal panel 2 as they are. That is, the display on the liquid crystal panel 2 is performed using a so-called bitmap display method.

Next, the electronic control device 5 serves as the print color area setting means M2.
The process of specifying the print color performed by 0 will be explained using the flowchart of FIG. 4(A).

First, when the color word processor of this embodiment is powered on, flags and the like are initialized.

Next, it is determined whether or not the color designation key 5 is pressed (S
100), if not pressed, character processing as a word processor is performed (S110). If pressed, a request for inputting a starting point for area designation is displayed on the liquid crystal panel 2. (SJ20). The starting point is set using a cursor displayed in dot units on the liquid crystal panel 2 when the color designation key is pressed.

The cursor may blink pixels on the liquid crystal panel, or a special cursor that moves pixel by pixel may be used.

Of course, a cursor that moves in units of multiple dots may also be used.

The movement of the cursor is determined by the input key (3130), and if the cursor key 11 is pressed, the cursor moves forward, backward, left, and right in dot units according to the instruction (3140).
). When the line feed (execution) key 14 is pressed, the current cursor position is set as the starting point and stored at a predetermined location in the RAM 53 (S150). If you press any other key, the system will wait for input again. Once the starting point position is set, a request for inputting the ending point is displayed on the liquid crystal panel 2 (8160).

Here, you can also position the cursor (S1
70, 5180) and the execution key, the end point is determined and the end point position is stored (S190).

The starting point and ending point are set, for example, as a starting point P1 and an ending point P2 as shown in FIG. 4(B).

The position of each point is represented by the number of pixel dots from a predetermined reference position PO. That is, the starting point P1 is a position of C1 vertically and b1 horizontally, and the ending point P2 is a position of C1 vertically and d1 horizontally. At this time, the area is within a rectangle with diagonals of points PL and P2. The actual specified range on the liquid crystal panel 2 is as shown in FIG. 5(B).

Next, select the area color using color keys 6, 8. 10 is determined (S200). The input color code is stored in the RAM 53 adjacent to the start and end point data (S2
10>. Next, a header indicating that the data in the RAM 53 is color area data is added (S220>).

The above data has a structure as shown in FIG. 4(C),
Color area data (header, color code, position data) is stored starting from a specific address xxxx, and further, other color area data is stored. Following this, text data in which a document is stored from a predetermined location YYYY is stored.

Next, FIG. 5 shows a text editing routine performed by the electronic control unit 50 as the editing means M5.

First, a starting point is input (S300). This input is performed in the start point input process (8120 to 514) in FIG. 4(A) described above.
0). However, the cursor is a cursor that moves character by character. Further, the position of the input starting point is represented by the corresponding address in the text area, and is stored at a predetermined location in the RAM 53 (S310). Next, the end point is input (S320). This is also similar to the end point input process (S160-8180) in FIG. 4(A). Further, the position of the input end point is represented by the corresponding address in the text area, and is stored at a predetermined address in the RAM 53 (333
0).

The text data between the start point and end point is copied to a buffer provided at a predetermined location in the RAM 53 (S340). Next, a process is performed to delete the copied portion of the text data and fill in the gaps (S350).

Next, a request for specifying the destination is made on the liquid crystal panel 2 (S
360). Next, the input key is determined (5370), and if the cursor key 11 is pressed, the cursor moves forward, backward, left, and right one character at a time according to the instruction (3380).
, when the line feed (execute) key 14 is pressed, the current cursor position is set as the insertion point, and in order to free up storage space, the text data stored in the buffer is inserted starting from the address corresponding to the insertion point. , later data is transferred backwards and transferred there from the buffer (S390)
. 1iC is the liquid crystal panel 2 for this new text data.
The display is updated (S395).

For other keys, the process waits for input again (S370).

Next, using the above data, color printing processing performed by the electronic control unit 50 as the printing control means M4 will be explained based on FIG. 6(A).

First, one line of print is read from the text data and developed as dot information in a buffer installed in the RAM 53 (S400). For example, if the dot pattern shown in FIG. 6(B) is to be printed, the r
``AB Bouji'' is developed in a dot pattern as shown in the diagram.

Next, the buffer is compared with the color area, and information on other dots is erased, leaving only a specific color area (S41).
0). That is, based on the positional data of the starting point P1 and the ending point P2 stored next to each color code, as shown in FIG. 6(B)
Since the inside of the area shown in FIG. 6 has a different color from the outside of the area, first, the dots falling within the area are erased as shown in (1) of FIG. 6(C). In this state, the dot information is printed (S420), for example, in black as shown in FIG.
) is printed as shown in (1).

Next, whether or not there are other colors that are not printed is determined based on each color code and its area data (3430).
.

In the case of the first line, since the area is not printed, the first line is expanded into the buffer again (S400). Next, only the dots of a specific color are left, but this time the area defined by the starting point P1 and the ending point P2 is left, and the others are erased (S410).

That is, the dots shown in (2) of FIG. 6(C) are printed over the black print as shown in (3) of FIG. 6(C) (S420).

At this point, the color data included in the one line has ended, so it is determined whether the next line exists in the text data (3440).

In the above example, there is a line for "CX Wow" and a line for "YZ Pro", so after rotating the platen 18 and starting a new line (S450), the processing pointer is set to the next line (S450).
460), the process on the second line is performed again. When the second line is completed, the third line is executed.

If all lines are completed in this way, the print line is considered to be finished, and
Finish the printing process. As a result, the input characters are printed in the color set for each area as shown in FIG. 6(D).

Next, after the color area is set as shown in FIG. 6(B), if only the text data is changed in the text editing routine shown in FIG. If you specify a moving character string with `` as the starting point and ``character'' as the ending point, and set the cursor to ``a'' as the insertion position, ``
The character string "Kanji" will be inserted between "wa" and "a". As a result, when printed using the color printing routine described above, only the characters are rearranged as shown in Figure 6(E), but the color pattern remains the same. By activating the color area setting routine shown in FIG. 4 (A>) described above, the settings can be reset regardless of the character arrangement.

Since this embodiment is configured as described above, it is possible to express any color pattern in dot units on printed characters or character strings, and the color pattern does not change even if the arrangement of character data is changed. , does not cause any discomfort. Furthermore, since the color area data is not changed together with the character string, the word processor can quickly change the character string.

In the embodiment described above, if the number of bytes of color area data is not fixed, the number of bytes of each color area data is included in the header. In addition, the color area specification was made into a rectangular shape with the starting point and end point as diagonals, but for example, you can set a circular color area by inputting the data of the center point and radius, or you can also create a circular color area, an elliptical shape, etc. , a rhombus, a triangle, etc. Further, color area specification may also be done not in units of dots, but in units of multiple dots or in units of characters.

Since this embodiment is configured as described above, each color can be easily specified, the color pattern can be freely set, and no matter how much the character arrangement is edited, the original The color pattern will be preserved as is. Therefore, the printed surface does not feel strange. Furthermore, the color pattern can be reset independently of the character data. As a side effect, color word processor processing is also faster.

[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 of a color word processor according to an embodiment, FIG. 3 is a block diagram thereof, and FIG. 4(A) is a color area setting routine. Flowchart, Figure 4 (B) is an explanatory diagram of the setting operation, Figure 4 (C) is an explanatory diagram showing the data storage structure, Figure 5 is a flowchart of the text editing routine, and Figure 6 (A) is color printing. A flowchart of the routine, FIG. 6(B) is an explanatory diagram showing the printing dot pattern, FIG.
C) is an explanatory diagram showing the procedure for printing by color, Figure 6 (D)
6(E) is an explanatory diagram showing the printing state after printing is completed, and FIG. 6(E) is an explanatory diagram showing the printing state after changing the character arrangement. 1...Keyboard 2...LCD panel 4.
...Thermal transfer printing device 5...Color specification key 6...
Yellow key 8...Magenta key 10...
Cyan key 11...Cursor key 12...
Print key 14...Line feed key 50...Electronic control device

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] A color word processor that converts input character data into a dot pattern corresponding to the character data and prints dots according to the pattern, further comprising an array storage means for storing an array of the character data, and a dot printing method. A printing color area setting means for setting an area for each printing color on a surface, a distribution storage means for storing the distribution of the area, and a printing unit for controlling the dot pattern to be printed in the setting color of the area to which the dot pattern belongs. A color word processor comprising: a control means; and an editing means for changing only the arrangement of character data in the arrangement storage means.