JPH07276715A - Tape printer capable of printing multiple blocks of arbitrary number of lines - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To select a size of a printed character based on the number of printed lines per block by providing a size-selecting means wherein a size of a character and a symbol of each block are automatically selected per block unit according to the number of printed lines of each block on the basis of data of the character and the symbol and a block instruction data. CONSTITUTION:A character size-setting image plane is displayed on a display 22 by operating a size-setting key. Then, a character size is respectively displayed by a point value on the basis of specified data for printing according to a number. Besides, an automatically selectable size per block is displayed according to the number. Further, when any character other than the automatically selectable size is set, an automatic size flag is reset, the set size data is stored in a character size memory 44, and the selected character size is executed for control of a tape printing. The size of the printed character can be selected by the number of the printed lines per block thereby.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a tape printing apparatus for printing characters or symbols on a tape, and in particular, it designates each character or symbol of an arbitrary number of lines as a block and arranges a plurality of blocks in the longitudinal direction of the tape. The present invention relates to a method in which a character size for printing a plurality of characters or symbols included in a block is selected for each block according to the number of print lines in each block.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As described in Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 1-85050, the applicant of the present invention is a tape capable of printing characters and symbols on a tape (for example, a tape having a width of 10 mm or about 24 mm) as a printing medium. Although a printing device has been put into practical use, this tape printing device is suitable for making a tape on which a file name is printed which is to be attached to the spine of a file.

Further, the applicant of the present application has proposed a tape printer in which a function of printing characters and symbols on a plurality of lines is added to the tape (see Japanese Patent Application No. 3-91492).

[0004]

In the conventional tape printer, the character size when the document data stored in the text memory is printed in a desired number of print lines, for example, two or three lines, is determined by the print size. Only one type is set in advance according to the number of lines.

By the way, depending on the character strings to be printed on the tape, it is sometimes desired to change the number of printing lines and continuously print these character strings, for example, a two-line printing portion and a three-line printing portion. In this case, since the character size that allows tape printing with the maximum number of print lines is set in advance and the character string is printed, even if the number of lines is changed, it will be printed with one type of character size. There is a problem that the character size of a character string having a small number of print lines becomes smaller than the tape width, and the appearance as a whole deteriorates.

An object of the present invention is to provide a tape printer capable of selecting the size of a print character for each block by the number of print lines.

[0007]

A tape printer according to a first aspect of the invention includes an input means for inputting characters and symbols and various commands, and a print head for printing a dot pattern on a tape as a print medium. A print means, an input data storage means for storing character and symbol data input from the input means, and a print control means for receiving the data of the input data storage means to create dot pattern data and causing the print means to print. In the provided tape printer, when inputting data from the input means, block designation data for designating a plurality of characters or symbols as a block is input, and the input data is attached together with the data of a plurality of characters or symbols of the block. The block designation means to be stored in the storage means, and the character and symbol data and the block designation data stored in the input data storage means. And Zui the one in which the size of characters and symbols of each block, and a size selection means for automatically selecting the respective blocks according to the number of print line of each block.

A tape printer according to a second aspect is the tape printer according to the first aspect, wherein the size selection means is configured to select one size for each block.

[0009]

In the tape printer according to the first aspect of the present invention, the operation of the input means, the print means, the input data storage means, and the print control means is substantially the same as that of a normal print apparatus.

By inputting the block designating data by the block designating means every time a plurality of characters or symbols are inputted when the data is inputted by the input means, the plurality of characters or symbols can be designated as a block. The block designation data is stored in the input data storage means in association with the data of the plurality of characters and symbols.

On the other hand, the size of the character or symbol set by the block designation data is determined by the size selection means based on the character or symbol data stored in the input data storage means and the block designation data. It is automatically selected for each block according to the number of print lines. The print control means creates dot pattern data based on the selected size and causes the print means to print.

As described above, since the size for character printing is automatically selected in block units according to the number of printing lines, even if the number of printing lines is increased or decreased, the characters or symbols in each block are tape width. On the other hand, it is always possible to print in good balance.

In the tape printer according to the second aspect of the present invention, the same operation as that of the first aspect can be obtained, and the size selecting means selects one size for each block. Are printed in the same size,
The balance of characters in each block is always good.

[0014]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

In the present embodiment, the present invention is applied to an English-only tape printer capable of printing a large number of characters such as alphabetic characters and symbols on a printing tape (tape as a printing medium).

As shown in FIG. 2, a keyboard 3 is arranged in the front part of the main body frame 2 of the tape printer 1, a printing mechanism PM is arranged in the main body frame 2 behind the keyboard 3, and A liquid crystal display 22 capable of displaying characters and symbols is provided behind the keyboard 3.

The keyboard 3 includes character keys for inputting alphabets, numbers and symbols, a space key, a line feed key for a line feed command, a line break key for a line break command, and a cursor to the right or left. A cursor move key to move, a document creation key to create document data, a format setting key to set the print format, a size setting key to set the size of the print character, a typeface setting key to set the typeface of the print character, and print A print key for execution, a power key for turning the power on and off, and the like are provided.

Next, the printing mechanism PM will be briefly described with reference to FIG. 3. A rectangular tape storage cassette CS is detachably attached to the printing mechanism PM, and the tape storage cassette CS is transparent. A tape spool 6 on which a printing tape 5 having a width of about 24 mm is wound, a ribbon supply spool 8 on which an ink ribbon 7 is wound, and a take-up spool 9 on which the ink ribbon 7 is wound.
And a supply spool 11 on which a double-sided tape 10 having the same width as the printing tape 5 is wound with a release paper as the outside, and a joining roller 12 for joining the printing tape 5 and the double-sided tape 10 to each other. It is provided in.

A thermal head 13 is erected at a position where the printing tape 5 and the ink ribbon 7 overlap each other, and the thermal head 13 holds the printing tape 5 and the ink ribbon 7 together.
A platen roller 14 that presses the printing tape 5 and the double-sided tape 10 against the joining roller 12 are rotatably supported by a support 16. The thermal head 13 has 128 rows arranged in the vertical direction.
A heating element group including individual heating elements is provided.

Accordingly, by driving the tape feed motor 24 (see FIG. 4) in the predetermined rotation direction, the joining roller 12 and the take-up spool 9 are driven in synchronization with each other in the predetermined rotation direction, and the heating elements are energized. When printing tape 5
Characters are printed by a plurality of dot rows while being fed in the longitudinal direction (tape feeding direction A), and after printing,
The printing tape 5 is delivered with the double-sided tape 10 joined. The printing mechanism PM has the same structure as that of a known structure (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-106555). A cassette discriminating member 17 for setting the type of the tape accommodating cassette CS, that is, the tape width of the accommodated printing tape 5 is attached to the bottom wall of the tape accommodating cassette CS, and is provided in the cassette discriminating member 17. A cassette discrimination sensor 18 (see FIG. 4) including a photo interrupter for detecting a protruding piece (not shown) is attached to the main body frame 2. Therefore, the tape width can be detected based on the discrimination signal from the cassette discrimination sensor 18. Also, tape width is "6mm", "9mm", "1"
Various tape storage cassettes CS around which the printing tapes 5 of 2 mm "and" 18 mm "are wound are separately prepared.

Next, the control system of the tape printer 1 is shown in FIG.
The block diagram of FIG.

The keyboard 3 and the cassette discrimination sensor 18
And a display controller (L having a drive circuit 21 for the warning buzzer 20 and a display RAM for outputting display data to a liquid crystal display (LCD) 22.
The CDC) 23, the drive circuit 25 for driving the thermal head 13, and the drive circuit 26 for driving the tape feed motor 24 are connected to the input / output interface 27 of the controller C, respectively. The control device C is a CPU
29, an input / output interface 27 connected to the CPU 29 via a bus 28 such as a data bus, and a CGR
It is composed of an OM 30, ROMs 31 and 32, and a RAM 40.

CGROM (pattern data memory) 30
In FIG. 5, dot pattern data for display is stored in association with code data for each of a large number of characters. ROM (outline data memory) 31
In order to print the character, the outline data (outline data) that defines the outline of the character for each of a large number of characters is a typeface (Gothic typeface,
It is classified according to Mincho typeface, etc.) and stored in association with code data. Each of the large number of outline data stores the size of the print image in the vertical direction and the size of the print image in the horizontal direction.

In the ROM 32, a display drive control program for controlling the display controller 23 in correspondence with code data of characters such as letters, numbers and symbols input from the keyboard 3, and an outline corresponding to each code data of the text memory 41. An image development processing control program for converting data into dot pattern data for printing and developing it in the print buffer 47, a print drive control program for sequentially reading the data in the print buffer 47 and driving the thermal head 13 and the tape feed motor 24, A control program for tape printing control, which will be described later, peculiar to the present application is stored. Further, in the ROM 32, for each of the five types of tape widths of the printing tape 5, a size table TB in which the character size that can be printed in the tape width is set for each number of printing lines is stored in advance. For example, "2
In the size table TB (24) of the tape width of "4 mm", as shown in FIG. 5, the character size is set for each of the printable print line numbers "1" to "5". Since the same applies to the other four types of size tables TB,
The illustration and description thereof are omitted.

In the text memory 41 of the RAM 40, code data of characters and symbols input from the keyboard 3 is stored as document data. The print format memory 42 stores a plurality of print format information such as the set character size data PZ and font data. In the block number counter 43, the number N of blocks in the document data stored in the text memory 41 is set. The character size memory 44 stores the set size data PZ.
Is stored. The print line number memory 45 stores the print line number L of the block document data. The read block document data is stored in the work memory 46. The print buffer 47 stores dot pattern data of a plurality of characters and symbols that have been image-developed. Therefore, the print buffer 47 has 12 pixels in the vertical direction (dot row direction).
A memory capacity of 128 bits (16 bytes) corresponding to 8 dots and a predetermined bit of 50 characters in the horizontal direction is provided, and dot pattern data of one line or a plurality of lines of printed characters is developed. The flag memory 48 stores the flag data of the auto flag AF that is set (the data is "1") when the auto size is set as the character size. Further, the RAM 40 has a CPU 40
There are provided a buffer, a counter, a pointer, and the like for temporarily storing the calculation result calculated in.

Next, an outline of the tape print control routine executed by the controller C of the tape printer 1 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. In the figure, reference numeral Si (i = 10, 30, 60, ...) Indicates each step.

When the power is turned on by operating the power key, this control is started. First, after operating the document creation key, the code data corresponding to the operated character key, space key, line feed key or break block key is written in the document data. A document data input / edit process for inputting as is executed (S10).

Next, by operating the format setting key, a process for setting a print format such as a character size, a font and a decoration designation is executed (S30). Therefore, the print format setting process includes a plurality of format setting processes such as character size setting process and typeface setting process. Next, a dot pattern data creation process for expanding the print dot pattern data for printing the document data in the print buffer 47 by operating the print key is executed (S60), and the dot pattern data read from the print buffer 47 is read. The data is output to the printing mechanism PM and the printing process is executed (S90).

Next, the character size setting process control routine included in the print format setting process will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

When the size setting key is operated, this control is started, and first, the character size setting screen is displayed on the display 22.
Is displayed on the screen (S31). For example, as shown in FIG. 10, the character sizes for printing are displayed as point values corresponding to the numbers "1" to "6", and the automatic size is displayed corresponding to the number "7". It Next, when the number keys effective for setting the font size are operated (S
32. S33: Yes), when an arbitrary character size other than the automatic size is set (S34: No), the automatic size flag AF is reset (S36), and the set size data PZ is stored in the character size memory 44. Then, the control is terminated (S37), and the process returns to the tape print control. However, when the auto size is selected (S34: Yes), the auto size flag AF is set and the auto size mode is set (S35), and similarly, the process returns to the tape print control.

Next, the print dot pattern data creation processing control routine executed in S60 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. At this time,
As shown in FIG. 9, the text data of the first, second, and third blocks are sequentially stored in the text memory 41, and the delimiter position of each block document data is modified by a modified key operation. Each block code is stored. Then, a character string for printing two lines is stored as the document data of the first block, a character string for printing one line is stored as the document data of the second block, and five lines are printed as the document data of the third block. A character string for is stored (see FIG. 11).

When this control is started, first, the tape width data is read based on the discrimination signal from the cassette discrimination sensor 18 (S61). When there is document data to be printed in the text memory 41 (S62: Yes), the block number N is obtained based on the number of modified block codes (S63), and the block number N is stored in the block number counter 43. It is stored as the number of blocks BC (S64). Next, when the automatic size mode is set (S65: Yes), the block document data of the first block is first read and the work memory 4 is read.
6 is stored (S66). For example, from the text memory 41 shown in FIG. 9, the first block document data including the character string “WEAK” of the first print line and the character string “POINT” of the second print line is stored in the work memory 46. Next, the print line number L of this block document data is obtained from the number of line feed codes and modified block codes, and the print line number L is stored in the print line number memory 45 (S67).

Next, based on the size table TB corresponding to the tape width data and the number of printing lines L, the read size data for printing characters on the printing tape 5 in use is obtained as the auto size AP. , The auto size AP is stored in the character size memory 44 (S6
8). For example, when the tape width of the printing tape 5 in use is "24 mm" and the number of printing lines L is "2", "20 points" is obtained as the auto size AP from the size table TB shown in FIG. Then, the base line position (base line position) of each print line is obtained based on the auto size AP, the tape width data, the print line number L, and the outline data (S69). Next, based on the base line position of each print line, the code data of the character string of each print line is read from the work memory 46, the outline data is scaled up and down, and the dot pattern data for printing is printed from this outline data. Is created,
This dot pattern data is sequentially expanded in the print buffer 47 (S70). Next, the block number BC is decremented by 1 (S71), and the block number BC is "0".
If not, that is, if the following block document data exists in the text memory 41 (S72: No), S
Steps 65 and thereafter are executed, and dot pattern data is sequentially created for the following block document data and expanded in the print buffer 47. Then, when the dot pattern data is created for all the block document data in the text memory 41 (S72: Yes), after this control is finished, the print processing is performed based on the dot pattern data stored in the print buffer 47. Is executed (S90). For example, from the text memory 41 shown in FIG. 9, the following second block of document data consisting of one print line and the third block of document data consisting of five print lines are read, and the auto size AP obtained for each block and So that the dot pattern data is sequentially created and stored in the print buffer 47.

As a result of the printing process, as shown in FIG. 11, each of the first, second and third blocks B1 to B3 is automatically selected in block units according to the number L of printing lines. , Even if the number of printing lines L increases or decreases, each block B1 to B
It is possible to always print the letters and symbols of No. 3 in good balance with respect to the tape width. Further, the characters and symbols of each block B1 to B3 are printed in the same size, and each block B1 to B3 is printed.
The balance of characters and symbols in 3 can be always improved.

On the other hand, when the auto size mode is not set (S65: No), the block document data of the first block is first read out and the number L of printing lines of the block document data is obtained as in S66 and S67. (S73 / S74). Then, based on the size data PZ, the tape width data, the number of print lines L, and the outline data stored in the character size memory 44, the total character height of the print lines is the total character height of each print line.
Is smaller than the printable area of (S7)
5: Yes), S69 and subsequent steps are executed, and the dot pattern data for each block document data is sequentially created and stored in the print buffer 47. When there is no document data to be printed in the text memory 41 at the start of this control (S61: No), or when the total character height is larger than the printable area or printing is not possible (S7).
5: No), the buzzer 20 sounds for a warning (S7).
6) The process proceeds to S10 of tape print control.

The number of print lines and sizes stored in the size table TB are merely examples, and a plurality of print lines and various sizes can be set. The tape width W is 2
It is also possible to use various printing tapes 5 other than 4 mm. It is needless to say that the present invention can be applied to various tape printers such as a tape printer that stores a character or symbol print image as dot pattern data.

[0037]

As described in the section of the above operation, the following effects can be obtained according to the present invention. According to the tape printer of claim 1, there are provided a block designating means for designating a block composed of a plurality of characters and symbols, and a size selecting means for automatically selecting the size of the character or symbol of each block in block units. Since it is provided, the size for character printing is automatically selected in block units according to the number of printing lines, and even if the number of printing lines increases or decreases, the characters and symbols in each block are always balanced against the tape width. Good and good printing is possible.

According to the tape printer of claim 2,
Since the size selection unit selects one size for each block, the characters and symbols in each block are printed in the same size, and the balance of characters and symbols in each block can always be made good.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of the tape printer.

FIG. 3 is a schematic plan view of a printing mechanism.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a control system of the tape printer.

FIG. 5 is a chart showing setting contents of a size table.

FIG. 6 is a schematic flowchart of a tape print control routine.

FIG. 7 is a schematic flowchart of a character size setting process control routine.

FIG. 8 is a schematic flowchart of a print dot pattern data creation processing control routine.

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a data structure in a text memory.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a display example of a character size setting screen.

FIG. 11 is a diagram showing a print example in which a size is selected and printed in block units.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 tape printer 3 keyboard 13 thermal head 24 tape feed motor 29 CPU 31 ROM 32 ROM 40 RAM 41 text memory 44 print buffer C controller CS tape storage cassette PM printing mechanism TB size table

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. Input means for inputting characters and symbols and various commands, printing means including a print head for printing a dot pattern on a tape as a print medium, and characters and symbols input from the input means. In a tape printing device having input data storage means for storing the data of (1) and print control means for receiving the data of the input data storage means to create dot pattern data and causing the printing means to print the data. Block input means for inputting block designation data for designating a block for each of a plurality of characters or symbols at the time of input, and storing the data in the input data storage means in association with the data of the plurality of characters or symbols of the block; Based on the character and symbol data stored in the input data storage means and the block designation data, the character and Tape printing apparatus characterized by No. size, equipped with a size selection means for automatically selecting the respective blocks according to the number of print line of each block. 2. The tape printer according to claim 1, wherein the size selection means is configured to select one size for each block.