JP2000293152A - Information processor and printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize a WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get). SOLUTION: A cable 15 connected to a network card incorporated in plural information processors 10A and 10B, and a cable 15 connected to a built-in network card of a printer 12 are connected to a hub 11. During the time of a start up, the processors 10A and 10B recognize all network equipment being started up, establish a connection to the printer 12 and upload a built-in font of the printer.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

The present invention relates to a WYSIWYG (W
hat You See Is What You Get).

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art When fonts installed in an information processing apparatus are reproduced on a display, screen fonts are used. On the other hand, when reproducing on another device such as a printer, a device font built in the device is used.

[0003]

However, since the same font file is not used for the screen display on the display and the output from the printer, the characters displayed on the display are always output from the printer in the same font. Not necessarily. Therefore, the user cannot know the output result unless the user actually outputs the data from the printer. Therefore, a system that can print out the display characters on the screen in the same font, so-called WYSI
Realization of WYG (What You See Is What You Get) is desired.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an information processing apparatus capable of acquiring a built-in font of a printer on a network. It is another object of the present invention to provide a printer capable of transmitting a built-in font requested from an information processing device.

[0005]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention provides a method for displaying characters represented by application data.
An information processing apparatus for displaying on a display in a font specified by an application, a storage means for storing font data representing a font of a character displayed on the display and a font name in association with each other, and a font including the font name A font acquisition unit that issues a transfer request and acquires font data transferred from the destination of the font transfer request, and associates the font data acquired by the font acquisition unit with the font name used when acquiring the font data. In addition, there is provided an information processing apparatus comprising: a font registration unit that stores the font in the storage unit.

Further, the present invention is a printer for printing a character represented by data transferred from an information processing apparatus in a built-in font, wherein the font data representing the font of the print character and a font name are stored in association with each other. Means for receiving a font transfer request including a font name from the information processing apparatus, extracting font data corresponding to the font name included in the font transfer request from the storage means, and extracting the font data from the font transfer request. A printer characterized by comprising a font transmitting means for transferring to a publisher.

According to the information processing apparatus of the present invention, a font transfer request can be transmitted to the outside, font data can be received as a response to the request, and this can be registered in the font management table. On the other hand, according to the printer of the present invention, a registered font transfer request from outside can be accepted, and the corresponding font among the built-in fonts can be sent to the transmission source. Therefore, if these information processing devices and printers are connected, WYSIW
YG (What You See Is What You Get) is achieved.

[0008]

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

First, the configuration of the network system according to the present embodiment will be described.

As shown in FIG. 1, a cable 15 connected to a plurality of (here, two) information processing apparatuses 10A and 10B built-in network cards and a cable 15 connected to a printer 12 built-in network card are provided. , Respectively, are connected to the hub 11.

As shown in FIG. 2A, the printer 12
In addition to the above-described network card 20 equipped with a function for realizing the TCP / IP protocol, a printing mechanism 21 (for example, a recording head, A recording paper transport mechanism), an output interface card 22 having a video interface circuit for controlling data input to a drive circuit of the recording head, a controller 23 for controlling the entire printer, and the like. And
The controller 23, as shown in FIG.
4, a RAM 25, a ROM 26 storing a program in which a data transfer process described later is defined, etc., and a font ROM 2 storing font data representing a font of a print character.
7, an image memory 28, a memory controller 29 for controlling data reading from each memory and the like are connected by a bus.

With such a hardware configuration, the controller 23 of the printer 12 executes a data transfer process, which will be described later, in addition to a print mechanism control process. FIG. 3A shows only a functional configuration for executing a data transfer process to be described later among the functional configurations for that. Specifically, the controller 23 includes, as a functional configuration for executing a data transfer process described later, (1) an interface manager 36 for decoding a packet received from a network and extracting a command or the like, (2) an interface manager 36 A command interpreting unit 30 for realizing font transfer by a command received from the printer, (3) a font data storage unit 3 storing a font file of a printer font
2, (4) a font data management unit 31 for accessing a font file in accordance with an instruction from the command interpretation unit 30; The font file of the printer font stores header information including a printer font name, a character code of a print character, and a character information table in which the font data is registered.

On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 4, the information processing apparatuses 10A and 10B
Input device such as keyboard (not shown), CRT 14A, 14
B, a display controller 42 for controlling data output to the B, a hard disk 43 storing a communication program and font data in which data acquisition processing described later is defined, and a disk for controlling data reading from the hard disk and data writing to the hard disk A controller 44, a CPU 45, a RAM 41, a ROM 46, a memory controller (not shown) for controlling data reading from each memory and the like, a disk drive (not shown) for mounting a storage medium such as a floppy disk, and the like are provided.

Each of the information processing apparatuses 10A and 10B has such a hardware configuration as well as a document creation process and the like.
A data acquisition process described later is executed. FIG. 3B shows only a functional configuration for executing a data acquisition process to be described later among the functional configurations for that purpose.

More specifically, each of the information processing apparatuses 10A, 10A
B includes (1) an interface manager 37 for decoding a packet received from a network and extracting a command or the like, and (2) a font based on a command received from the interface manager 37 as a functional configuration for executing a data acquisition process described later. A command interpretation unit 33 for realizing the transfer; (3) a font data storage unit 35 storing a character information file for each font and a font management table for managing the character information files; (4) command interpretation A font data management unit 34 for accessing a font file in accordance with an instruction from the unit 33 is provided. The character information file of each font stores a character information table in which the character code of each print character and its font data are registered. The font management table stores a font name for each font. And the like, and a character information file name are registered. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 5, the header information of each font is
Each is associated with the character information file of the font.

Next, referring to FIG.
A data acquisition process executed by A and 10B will be described. However, it is assumed that the address of the network card of the printer 12 is already registered in each of the information processing apparatuses 10A and 10B.

Information processing device (here, 10A)
After recognizing all activated devices on the network at the time of activation or the like, the device searches for registered network card addresses (S50), transmits a connection request command to those addresses, and executes the connection request command. If no response is received, the process is terminated (S51). On the other hand, when a response is received from the printer 12, the following processes S52 to S56 are executed.

Command interpreter 33 of information processing apparatus 10A
The interface manager 37 transmits a packet including the header transfer request command to the printer 12 via the interface card 40 (S52). The printer 12 that has received the transmission packet transmits a data packet including the header information of the printer font to the information processing apparatus 10A that is the command transmission source by executing a data transfer process described below.

In the information processing apparatus 10A that has received the transmission packet, the interface manager 3 converts the packet into header information (hereinafter, referred to as reception header information).
Take out. The command interpreter 33 instructs the font data manager 34 to search for a font file containing the same header information as the received header information (S53). If the corresponding font file is not found in the font file in the font data storage unit 35, the command interpreting unit 3
No. 3 determines that a font file including the received header information is necessary (S54), and issues a font transfer request command. The interface manager 36
A packet including the font transfer request command is assembled, and the packet is transmitted to the printer 12 via the interface card 40 (S55). On the other hand, if the corresponding font file is found in the font file in the font data storage unit 35, the command interpreting unit 33 determines that the font file including the received header information is unnecessary (S54), and Close the connection established in between.

The printer 12, which has received the font transfer request command, executes a data transfer process described below, and transmits a packet containing a character information table or a transfer rejection command to the information processing apparatus 10A of the command transmission source.
Send to In the information processing apparatus 10A that has received the transmission packet, the interface manager 37 extracts data from the packet (S56). If the command interpretation unit 33 determines that the command is a transfer rejection command (S5
7), the connection established with the printer 12 is closed. On the other hand, the character information table
If the received character information table is included, the command interpretation unit 33 instructs the font data management unit 34 to write the received character information table (S57).
According to this instruction, the font data management unit 34 stores the received character information table as a character information file in the font data storage unit 35, and registers the character information file name in the font management table in association with the received header information. (S58).

Next, referring to FIG. 7, the controller 2 of the printer 12 which has received the transmission packet from the information processing apparatus.
3 will be described.

The interface manager 36 of the printer 12 decodes the transmission packet received by the interface card 20, and extracts a command included in the packet (S70). And the command interpreter 3
0 determines whether the command is a header transfer request command (S71). As a result, if it is determined that the command is a header transfer request command, the command interpreter 3
0 instructs the font data management unit 31 to read the header information from the font data storage unit 32. In response to this instruction, the font data management unit 31 opens the font file stored in the font data storage unit 32 and reads out the header information contained therein.
(S52). And the interface manager 36
Assembles the data packet including the header information and transmits the data packet to the header transfer request command transmission source address (S73).

On the other hand, if it is determined that the command from the information processing apparatus is not a font request command, it is further determined whether or not the command is a font request command (S7).
4). As a result, if it is determined that the command is a font request command, the command interpretation unit 30 instructs the font data management unit 31 to perform a font file reading process from the font data storage unit 32. In response to this instruction, the font data management unit 31 reads the character information table from the font file stored in the font data storage unit 32 (S75). When the character information table is read, the interface manager 3
6 assembles a data packet including the character information table, and transmits the data packet to the font request command source address via the interface card 20. However, if the character information table cannot be read due to license setting or the like, a transfer reject command is returned to the command source address (S76).

The font acquisition processing of the information processing apparatus and the font transfer processing of the printer described above upload the built-in font of the printer to the information processing apparatus, so that WYSIWYG can be achieved at high speed.

[0025]

According to the present invention, since the information processing apparatus can acquire the built-in font of the printer, the WYS
IWYG is achieved.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a schematic configuration of a network system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2A is a diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of a printer according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2B is a diagram illustrating a hardware configuration of a controller thereof.

FIG. 3A is a diagram showing a functional configuration for realizing a data transfer process of a printer, and FIG. 3B is a diagram showing a functional configuration for realizing a data acquisition process of an information processing apparatus; FIG.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a hardware configuration of the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a diagram conceptually showing a correspondence relationship between a character information file and header information in font management of the information processing apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart of a data acquisition process performed by the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of a data transfer process by the printer according to the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10A, 10B: Information processing device 11: Hub 12: Printer 14A, 14B: CRT 15: Cable 20: Network card 21: Printing mechanism 22: Output interface card 23: Controller 24: CPU 25: RAM 26: ROM 27: Font ROM 28: Image memory 29: Memory controller 30: Command interpreter 31: Font data manager 32: Font data memory 33: Command interpreter 34: Font data manager 35: Font data memory 40: Network card 41: RAM 42 : Display controller 43: hard disk 44: disk controller 45: CPU 46: ROM

Continued on front page F-term (reference) 2C087 AB01 AB05 BA09 BD43 CB19 EA26 5B009 RA11 RA12 VC03 5B021 AA01 AA02 BB01 BB02 CC05 EE01 JJ01 5C082 AA01 AA32 BA02 BB01 BB32 CB01 DA87 MM09 BB10 BB10 BB10 BB01 BB01 BB01 BB10 LL03

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A character represented by application data,
An information processing apparatus for displaying a font specified by an application on a display, comprising: storage means for storing font data representing a font of a character displayed on the display in association with a font name; and a font including the font name. A font acquisition unit that issues a transfer request and acquires font data transferred from the destination of the font transfer request, and the font data acquired by the font acquisition unit corresponds to the font name used when acquiring the font data. An information processing apparatus, further comprising: a font registration unit for storing the font in the storage unit. 2. A printer for printing a character represented by transfer data from an information processing apparatus in a built-in font, comprising: storage means for storing font data representing a font of the print character and a font name in association with each other; Receiving a font transfer request including the font name from the information processing device, extracting the font data corresponding to the font name included in the font transfer request from the storage unit, and transferring the font data to the source of the font transfer request And a font transmitting means. 3. A system comprising: the information processing apparatus according to claim 1; and the printer according to claim 2, which receives the transfer data from the information processing apparatus.