JPH09134266A - Hard copy device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To evade the occurrence of shortage of memories even in a continuous hard copy mode by holding the compressed image data in plural image data store areas, storing the management information on the image data store areas in an image data management area and expanding the compressed image data to output them to a print means. SOLUTION: A data generation request is sent to a hard copy processing means 10 from a hard copy application 100, and the means 10 transfers the control to an image data generation means 11. The means 11 stores the image data on a CRT screen 18 in plural image data store areas 12 to 12-n via an input interface 17. The management information on the areas 12 to 12-n are held in an image data management area 15. Then the image data stored in the areas 12 are expanded by an image data expansion means 16 and outputted to a print device 19. Thus the shortage of memories is never caused even when the hard copy operations are continuously carried out.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a hard copy device for printing out an image on a display screen of a display terminal, and more particularly to a technique for compressing image data.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional hard copy apparatus, for example, when a thermal transfer type printing apparatus is provided, it takes about 1 minute to print an A4 size image, during which the terminal stops the screen and waits. It had to be in a state.

Conventionally, in a hard copy apparatus, a configuration in which a storage unit is provided for each screen for the purpose of improving the throughput of the terminal has been put to practical use. In the case where the storage means is provided as described above, the screen of the terminal, which has been stopped for about 1 minute at the time of printing, may be stopped for about 0.5 second, and the printing apparatus does not make the terminal wait.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the configuration of a conventional hard copy device, which is proposed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 62-92024, and which can print an image of a CRT or the like on recording paper.

In FIG. 5, 51 is a CRT (Cathode Ray).
Tube), 52 CPU (Central Processing Unit), 53 Input Interface, 54 ROM (Read Only Memory), 55
Is a RAM (random access memory), 56 is a printing device, and 51 to 55 are provided in the terminal.

Image data from the CRT 51 is input as data by the input interface 53 and stored in the RAM 55. RAM55 can store multiple screens, and C
It is controlled by a control program stored in the PU 52 and the ROM 54.

The stored image data is output to the printing device 56, and the printing device 56 prints on the recording paper.

[0008]

In the above-mentioned conventional hard copy device, when performing hard copy continuously, that is, when performing hard copy of a plurality of screens, it is not necessary for a terminal having a small memory (RAM55) capacity to be mounted. There is a problem that memory shortage occurs.

The reason is that the amount of image data of the CRT screen to be hard copied is large and exceeds the installed memory capacity.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art and to prevent a shortage of memory when continuously performing hard copy even in a terminal having a small mounted memory capacity. The present invention aims to provide a hard copy device.

[0011]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides an image data compression means for compressing image data of a display screen and storing it in a memory, and an image data compression means for storing the compressed image data. Or a plurality of image data storage areas, an image data management area for holding management information of each image data storage area, and an image data expansion means for expanding the compressed image data and outputting the expanded image data to the printing means. A characteristic hard copy device is provided.

A hard copy device according to the present invention is a CRT.
Image data on the screen is compressed and stored. More specifically, the image data of the CRT screen is compressed and stored in a memory (hereinafter,
Image data compression means (13 in FIG. 1) for storing RAM in "memory", image data storage area (12 in FIG. 1) for storing compressed image data, and each image data storage An image data management area (15 in FIG. 1) for holding area information, and an image data expansion means (16 in FIG. 1) for expanding compressed image data and outputting the expanded image data to a printing apparatus.
And

[0013]

According to the present invention, the image data of the CRT screen is
The image data is compressed by the image data compression means and stored in the image data storage area on the memory. Therefore, the memory capacity required for the hard copy for one screen of the CRT is significantly reduced.

In the case of continuous hard copy, an image data storage area is created for each CRT screen, and the created time is held in the image data management area of each image. It is possible to print each CRT screen data in time series by referring to. Further, by using the present invention, it is possible to reduce the mounted memory capacity in a terminal in which it is highly necessary to continuously perform hard copy.

[0015]

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

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

Referring to FIG. 1, a CRT screen 18 is a screen of a display device in the system, which is a hard copy target. The input interface 17 has a CRT screen 18
This is an interface for the image data generation means 11 to collect the image data. The printing device 19 is a printer connected to the terminal and is a device that prints the image data output from the terminal on a recording sheet.

The hard copy application 100 is program control processing software installed in the terminal,
By notifying the hard copy processing main means 10 of the data generation request, the image data of the target CRT screen 18 is generated, and by notifying the hard copy processing main means 10 of the data reception request, The address on the memory of the image data storage area 12 in which the compressed image data is stored is received, the compressed data stored in the area is expanded by the image data expansion means 16, and the printing device 19
Output to

The hard copy processing main means 10 transfers control to the image data generating means 11 when the data generation request is notified from the hard copy application 100, and transmits the image data when the data reception request is notified. Means 14
Pass control to

When the hard copy processing main means 10 receives control from the image data generating means 11, the image data of the CRT screen 18 is sampled from the input interface 17 and stored in the image data storage area 12, and the image data compression means is provided. Start up 13.

The image data storage area 12 is a memory area for storing the image data generated by the image data generation means 11 and the image data compression means 13, as described above.

When called by the image data generation means 11, the image data compression means 13 compresses the image data in the image data storage area 12 by a predetermined compression coding method and overwrites and stores it in the area. In the present embodiment, various known methods can be used as the image compression encoding method.

The image data management area 15 is a portion for storing management information of the image data, that is, an address on the memory of the image data storage area 12, a time when the image data is generated, and the like.

For example, when continuous hard copy is performed, the image data storage area is 12-, as shown in FIG.
There will be a plurality of 2, 12-3, ..., 12-n.

The image data management area 15 is, as described above, C
The management information of the image data for each RT screen 18, that is, the address on the memory of the image data storage area 12, the generation time of the image data, and the image data length are stored.

For example, in the case of continuously performing hard copy, the image data management information for each CRT screen 18 includes the memory address of the image data storage area 12, the image data length, and the image data as shown in FIG. A plurality of pieces of image data management information 15-1, ...
-n is held in the image data management area 15.

The image data transmitting means 14 receives the control from the hard copy processing main means 10 and receives an image data management area.
15, the address on the memory of the image data storage area 12 storing the image data generated at the earliest time is transmitted to the hard copy application 100, and the corresponding image data management information is sent to the image data management area. Remove from 15.

The image data decompressing means 16 is provided in the hard copy application 100, and the image data transmitting means 1
This is a part that decompresses the image data in the image data storage area 12 at the address on the memory received from 4, outputs it to the printing device 19, and then deletes the image data storage area 12.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be described in detail with reference to the block diagram of FIG. 1 and the flowchart of FIG.

When the hard copy application main unit 10 notifies the hard copy processing main unit 10 of the data generation request (step S31), the hard copy processing main unit 10 is informed.
Passes control to the image data generating means 11.

The image data generation means 11 collects the image data of the CRT screen 18 via the input interface 17, stores it in the image data storage area 12 (step S33), and calls the image data compression means 13.

The image data compression means 13 compresses the data in the image data storage area 12 and overwrites and stores it in the image data storage area 12 (step S34).

The management information of the image data, that is, the address on the memory of the image data storage area 12 storing the data, the image data length, and the generation time of the compressed image data are stored in the image data management area 15 ( Step S
35).

From the hard copy application 100,
When there is a continuous hard copy request, the above steps S31 to S35 are continuously performed, and a plurality of image data are generated and stored in the image data storage areas 12, 12-2, 12-3 ,. Each piece of image data management information is additionally stored in the image data management area 15.

On the other hand, the hard copy application 100
When the data reception request is notified to the hard copy processing main means 10, the hard copy processing main means 10 passes control to the image data transmitting means 14.

The image data transmitting means 14 refers to the image data management area 15 and checks the presence or absence of the image data management information (step S36). If there is no image data management information, that effect is transmitted to the hard copy application 100 (step S43), and the processing ends.

If there is image data management information, the image data generation time in each image data management information is compared (step S37), and the image data generated at the earliest time,
That is, in this embodiment, the memory address of the image data storage area 12 and the image data length are transmitted to the hard copy application 100 (step S38).

Then, the image data management information (15-1 in FIG. 2) of this image data is deleted from the image data management area 15 (step S39).

The hard copy application 100 which has received the address on the memory of the image data storage area 12 activates the image data expansion means 16 therein.

The image data decompression means 16 decompresses the image data in the image data storage area 12 existing at the received address on the memory (step S40) and outputs it to the printer 19 (step S41). Then, the image data storage area 12 is deleted (step S42), and the process ends. The printing device prints the output image data on recording paper.

In this embodiment, both compression / decompression processing of image data are performed in the terminal. Therefore, the printing device does not need to be special, and the model can be freely selected.

Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the block diagram of FIG.

With reference to FIG. 4, the present embodiment is based on the first
In the first embodiment, only the image data of the CRT screen is assumed as the target image data in the first embodiment. However, in the present embodiment, the image data source
Examples of the data transfer device 48 include data transfer from various input devices such as an image scanner and an electronic still camera, a floppy disk and an optical disk, and data transfer through communication with other terminals.

Therefore, the present embodiment can be applied to the printing of various image data input from the above medium as the image data source.

[0045]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since the image data of the CRT screen for hard copy is compressed and stored in a terminal with a small memory capacity, it is possible to suppress the occurrence of memory shortage even if continuous hard copy is performed. .

Further, according to the present invention, since the image data compression means / decompression means is configured to be performed in the terminal, there is an advantage that the degree of freedom in selecting the printing device connected to the terminal is high.

[Brief description of the drawings]

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

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a configuration example of an image data management area according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a conventional hard copy device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 Hard copy processing main means 11 Image data generation means 12 Image data storage area 13 Image data compression means 14 Image data transmission means 15 Image data management area 16 Image data decompression means 17 Input interface 18 CRT screen 19 Printing device 100 Hard copy application 40 Hard copy processing main means 41 Image data generation means 42 Image data storage area 43 Image data compression means 44 Image data transmission means 45 Image data management area 46 Image data decompression means 47 Input interface 48 Image data source 49 Printing device 400 Hard copy application

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An image data compression means for compressing image data of a display screen and storing it in a memory, one or a plurality of image data storage areas for storing the compressed image data, and each of the image data storage areas. A hard copy device, comprising: an image data management area for holding management information; and an image data expansion unit for expanding compressed image data and outputting the expanded image data to a printing unit. 2. When continuously performing hard copy, an image data storage area is created corresponding to each of the display screens, and an image data management area corresponding to the time when the image data storage area is created is created in the image data management area. The hard copy device according to claim 1, wherein the hard copy device is stored and held, and is controlled so as to print each display screen data in time series. 3. An image data source for outputting an image data signal is used as the display screen.
Alternatively, the hard copy device according to item 2.