JP2007280191A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a printer capable of selectively printing annotations agreeing to a specific condition in printing an electronic document with annotations. <P>SOLUTION: The printer 1 has an annotation determining part 21a for determining whether or not to be a page attached with annotations agreeing to the specific condition about each page of an electronic document to be printed and a printing control part 22 for controlling the an output device 10 to print out a page determined to be a page attached with the annotations agreeing to the specific condition while including text and the annotations agreeing to the specific condition and excluding the other annotations. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a printing apparatus that prints an electronic document.

  Some electronic document formats such as PDF (Portable Document Format) and DocuWorks (registered trademark) have a function of adding an annotation such as a text annotation or an electronic tag for the purpose of proofreading the document. In such an electronic document format, the annotation has attribute information such as an updater, update date / time, and status.

  Patent Document 1 discloses a printing apparatus that prints information included in an annotation in association with a text.

  Patent Document 2 discloses a printing apparatus that prints only a page to which a mark having a selected type number is assigned.

JP 2004-50722 A JP-A-5-81268

  By the way, when printing an electronic document with an annotation, there are cases where it is desired to selectively print an annotation that matches a specific condition. For example, there is a case where an annotation by a specific updater or an annotation whose status is not invalid is selectively printed.

  However, in the printing apparatus described in Patent Document 1, all annotations are printed, and annotations that match a specific condition cannot be selectively printed. For this reason, unnecessary annotations (for example, those for which correction has been rejected) are printed.

  Further, the printing apparatus described in Patent Document 2 can selectively print a page with a specific type number mark, but selectively prints an annotation that matches a specific condition. It is not possible.

  Therefore, the present invention provides a printing apparatus capable of selectively printing an annotation that matches a specific condition when an annotated electronic document is printed.

  The printing apparatus according to the present invention determines whether each page of an electronic document to be printed is a page with an annotation that matches a specific condition (hereinafter referred to as a “page with a specific annotation”). An annotation determination unit, and a print output unit that prints out the page determined to be the page with the specific annotation, including the body and the annotation that matches the specific condition, and does not include any other annotation. It is characterized by having.

  In one aspect of the present invention, pages other than the specific annotated page of the electronic document are printed out in a state including a body and not including an annotation.

  In another aspect of the present invention, pages other than the page with the specific annotation of the electronic document are not printed out.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the specific condition is a condition related to an annotation updater, an annotation update timing, or an annotation status.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the specific condition can be specified by a user.

  In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the annotation is a text annotation. In a preferred aspect of this configuration, when the text and the text annotation are printed out, they are printed out with the contents of the text annotation reflected in the text.

  The program of the printing apparatus according to the present invention, the step of determining whether or not each page of the electronic document to be printed is a page with a specific annotation with an annotation that matches a specific condition, And a step of printing out the page determined to be the page with the specific annotation, including the body and the annotation matching the specific condition, and not including the other annotation. .

  ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, when printing an electronic document with an annotation, the printing apparatus which can selectively print the annotation which matches specific conditions can be provided.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of a printing apparatus 1 according to the present embodiment. The printing apparatus 1 is an apparatus that accepts a print request involving an electronic document and prints the electronic document. Specifically, the printing apparatus 1 has a function of receiving a print request including an electronic document from a client apparatus 2 such as a personal computer (PC) and analyzing and printing the electronic document, that is, directly printing the electronic document. It has the function to do.

  Here, the electronic document is a document file in a format that allows annotations (also referred to as annotations) to be added to the body, and is, for example, a PDF document or a DocuWorks document. The main text is a main component of an electronic document, and is an original sentence, figure, image, or the like that is the object of an annotation. An annotation is an additional component of an electronic document and is supplementary information added to the text. A plurality of annotations can be added to one page. Examples of the annotation include a text annotation, an electronic sticky note, an electronic stamp, and a speech balloon. Here, the text annotation is an annotation representing sentence proofreading information, and specifically, an annotation representing addition, deletion, or change of text to the body. The main application of the annotation is electronic proofing. In such a use, the annotation can be said to be electronic proofing information.

  The electronic document holds annotation attribute information. The annotation attribute information includes, for example, the updater of the annotation, the update time of the annotation, and the status of the annotation (valid, under discussion, invalid, etc.).

  As illustrated in FIG. 1, the printing apparatus 1 includes an output device 10 and a controller 20.

  The output device 10 is a so-called IOT (Image Output Terminal) that prints an image on a print medium such as paper by an appropriate printing method such as an electrophotographic method based on a control instruction of the controller 20.

  The controller 20 controls the entire printing apparatus 1. Specifically, the controller 20 analyzes an electronic document to be printed and causes the output device 10 to print out the electronic document. In the present embodiment, the controller 20 is a circuit board on which a CPU (Central Processing Unit), a ROM (Read Only Memory), a main memory, an NVRAM (Non Volatile RAM), and the like are mounted. This is realized by reading the program recorded on the recording medium into the memory and executing it by the CPU. However, the function of the controller 20 may be realized by a hardware circuit such as an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). The controller 20 includes an input data analysis unit 21 and a print control unit 22 as main functional blocks.

  The input data analysis unit 21 analyzes the input data input from the client device 2 and outputs the analysis result to the print control unit 22. Here, the input data is print request data including an electronic document to be printed and print setting information. The contents of the print setting information will be described later.

  In the present embodiment, the input data analysis unit 21 includes an annotation determination unit 21a. The annotation determination unit 21a determines whether each page of the electronic document to be printed is a page with an annotation that matches a specific condition (hereinafter referred to as a “page with a specific annotation”). Here, the specific condition includes a condition regarding an annotation updater, an annotation update time, an annotation status, an annotation type, and the like. Specifically, the updater is a specific user, the update date / time is a specific date, a specific date before or after a specific date, the status is not invalid, the type is text annotation, For example, a specific character string is included.

  The print control unit 22 controls the output device 10 based on the analysis result of the input data analysis unit 21 to print out the electronic document.

  In the present embodiment, the print control unit 22 controls the output device 10 to include a page that has been determined to be a page with a specific annotation by the annotation determination unit 21a, including a text that matches the specific condition, Print out with no other annotations included.

  Note that functions other than those described above of the controller 20 will be apparent from the operation description of the printing apparatus 1 described later.

  FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing an operation procedure of the printing apparatus 1 according to the present embodiment. Hereinafter, the operation of the printing apparatus 1 will be specifically described with reference to FIG.

  The client apparatus 2 accepts designation of an electronic document to be printed and input of print setting information from the user, and sends a print request including the electronic document and the print setting information to the printing apparatus 1. This process is realized by a software program for direct printing installed in the client device 2, for example. For example, the user of the client device 2 drags and drops an icon representing an electronic document to be printed onto an icon representing software for direct printing on the desktop screen of the client device 2. Then, the client device 2 accepts designation of an electronic document to be printed by the user operation, further displays a print setting screen on the display screen, and accepts input of print setting information from the user via the print setting screen. .

The client apparatus 2 sets the following settings (a) to (c) as print setting information, in addition to general print settings such as specification of paper type (size, paper quality, color) and single-side / double-side specification. Accept.
(A) Setting whether or not to perform a process of selectively printing an annotation that matches a specific condition (hereinafter referred to as “annotation selective printing process” as appropriate) (b) Setting a specific condition (c) Text annotation Whether to reflect text annotations in the body when printing pages that contain text

  In FIG. 2, in step S <b> 11, the controller 20 of the printing apparatus 1 receives a print request including an electronic document to be printed and print setting information from the client apparatus 1.

  In step S12, the controller 20 determines whether or not to perform annotation selection printing processing based on the print setting information included in the print request. As a result of the determination, if it is determined that the annotation selective printing process is to be performed, the process proceeds to step S13. If it is determined not to be performed, the process proceeds to step S17.

  In step S <b> 13, the controller 20 determines whether the target page is a page including a comment that matches a specific condition (a page with a specific comment) based on the print setting information. If it is determined that the page is a page with a specific annotation, the process proceeds to step S14, and if it is determined that the page is not a page with a specific annotation, the process proceeds to step S15.

  In step S <b> 14, the controller 20 controls the output device 10 to print and output the text included in the target page and the annotation that matches the specific condition on paper. That is, in cooperation with the output device 10, the controller 20 prints out the target page in a state that includes a text that matches the text and a specific condition and does not include any other comment. When the text and the text annotation are printed out in this step and the setting is made to reflect the text annotation, the controller 20 prints out the text annotation with the content reflected in the text. To do. Here, reflecting the contents of the text annotation in the body includes, for example, deleting or changing the text in the body or adding the text to the body in accordance with the text annotation.

  In step S15, the controller 20 controls the output device 10 to print and output only the text of the target page on paper. That is, in cooperation with the output device 10, the controller 20 prints out the target page in a state that includes the text and does not include the annotation.

  In step S16, the controller 20 determines whether or not the processing in steps S13 to S15 has been completed for all pages. If it is determined that all pages have been completed, the processing of FIG. 2 is terminated. If it is determined that all pages have not been completed, the process returns to step S13, and steps S13 to S15 are performed for the next page. Process.

  In step S17, the controller 20 performs a general print process without performing the above-described annotation selection print process. Specifically, the controller 20 causes the output device 10 to print out the text and annotations of the electronic document or only the text.

  Through the above processing, all pages of the electronic document are printed out. At this time, the text is printed as usual. As for annotations, only annotations that meet specific conditions specified by the user are printed, and other annotations are not printed.

  In the above description, an example of performing annotation selection printing processing in the case of direct printing of an electronic document has been shown. However, when a print request with an electronic document to be printed is received, the electronic document is analyzed and printed out If so, the annotation selection printing process can be performed in the same manner as described above. For example, the above-described annotation selection printing process may be performed when performing so-called media printing. In this media printing, a portable recording medium such as a flash memory card is detachably attached to the printing apparatus 1. Then, the printing apparatus 1 receives a print instruction accompanied by designation of the electronic document in the portable recording medium from the user via the operation panel of the printing apparatus 1, and reads the designated electronic document from the portable recording medium. Print out.

  In the above description, an example in which the printing apparatus 1 receives print setting information from the client apparatus 2 has been described. However, the printing apparatus 1 receives all or part of the print setting information via the operation panel of the printing apparatus 1. May be.

  In the above description, an example in which a page other than a page with a specific annotation is printed out has been shown. However, a page other than a page with a specific annotation may not be printed out. Specifically, step S15 in FIG. 2 may be deleted, and if “NO” in step S13, the process may move to step S16. In this process, only pages with specific annotations are printed out of the pages of the electronic document. At this time, the text is printed as usual. As for annotations, only annotations that meet specific conditions specified by the user are printed, and other annotations are not printed.

  Also, the user may be able to specify whether or not to print out pages other than the page with the specific annotation. This user designation is included, for example, in the print setting information.

  According to the present embodiment described above, the following effects (1) to (7) can be obtained.

  (1) In the present embodiment, the printing apparatus determines whether each page of an electronic document to be printed is a page with a specific annotation to which an annotation matching a specific condition is added. Then, the printing apparatus prints out the page determined to be the page with the specific annotation, including the text that matches the text and the specific condition, and does not include any other annotation. Therefore, according to the present embodiment, when an annotated electronic document is printed, an annotation that matches a specific condition can be selectively printed.

  (2) In one aspect, the printing apparatus prints out pages other than the page with the specific annotation of the electronic document in a state that includes the text and does not include the annotation. In this aspect, all pages of the electronic document can be printed out with annotations that match a specific condition and no other annotations.

  (3) In another aspect, the printing apparatus does not print out pages other than the page with the specific annotation of the electronic document. In this aspect, it is possible to print out only a page including an annotation that matches a specific condition.

  (4) Since the condition relating to the comment updater can be set as a specific condition, the comment updated by a specific user can be selectively printed out.

  (5) Since the condition regarding the printing time of the annotation can be set as the specific condition, the annotation updated at the specific time can be selectively printed out.

  (6) Since the condition regarding the status of the annotation can be set as a specific condition, the annotation with the specific status can be selectively printed out.

  (7) Since the specific condition can be specified by the user, the user can selectively print out an annotation that matches the desired condition.

  (8) When printing a page including a text annotation, the printing apparatus can print out the text annotation with the content of the text annotation reflected. For this reason, the user can acquire a printed document in which the text annotation is reflected.

  In addition, this invention is not limited to the said embodiment, It can change variously within the range which does not deviate from the summary of this invention.

1 is a block diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of a printing apparatus according to an embodiment. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an operation procedure of the printing apparatus according to the embodiment.

Explanation of symbols

  1 printing device, 2 client device, 10 output device, 20 controller, 21 input data analysis unit, 21a annotation determination unit, 22 print control unit.

Claims (8)

An annotation discriminating unit that discriminates whether or not each page of the electronic document to be printed is a page with an annotation that matches a specific condition (hereinafter referred to as a “page with a specific annotation”);
A print output unit that prints out the page determined to be the page with the specific annotation, including the body and the annotation that matches the specific condition, and does not include the other annotation;
A printing apparatus comprising: The printing apparatus according to claim 1,
A printing apparatus that prints out pages other than the specific annotated page of the electronic document in a state that includes a body and does not include an annotation. The printing apparatus according to claim 1,
A printing apparatus that does not print out pages other than the specific annotated page of the electronic document. The printing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 3,
The printing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the specific condition is a condition relating to an annotation updater, an annotation update timing, or an annotation status. The printing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein
The printing apparatus is characterized in that the specific condition can be specified by a user. The printing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 5,
The printing apparatus, wherein the annotation is a text annotation. The printing apparatus according to claim 6, comprising:
A printing apparatus characterized in that when a body text and a text annotation are printed out, the body is printed out with the contents of the text annotation reflected. In the printing device,
Determining whether each page of an electronic document to be printed is a page with a specific annotation with an annotation that meets a specific condition;
Printing out the page determined to be the page with the specific annotation, including the body and the annotation matching the specific condition, and not including the other annotation;
A program for a printing apparatus, characterized in that the program is executed.

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