JPS6228249A - Dot printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To realize italic style printings of the same quality as usual letters, having proper shapes even in the case of comparatively small inclined italic letters, by a method in which printing is made by a print dot pitch set up according to the inclination of letters. CONSTITUTION:A clock generator for frequency clock pulses to be set up according to the inclination of italic letters is provided. An italic printing controller sends out plural print timing pulses every a given interval synchronously with the pulse of the clock generator. A printing control circuit 15 sends out dot pattern data for italic letters synchronously with the print timing pulses by control of CPU 10. A drive circuit 16 operates a printing mechanism 17 according to the data to print italic letters. Proper dot pitch can be set up in advance according to the inclination of italic letters, and high-quality italic letters can be stably printed.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a dot printer having the ability to print italic characters.

[Technical Background of the Invention and Problems Therewith] Conventionally, in dot printers, the print timing during printing is generally determined by one type of print timing pulse that is generated at a predetermined cycle. That is, in synchronization with the print timing pulse, the dot pattern data is printed Il! A predetermined dot pattern is printed.

By the way, some dot printers can print italicized characters in addition to normal characters. Italic characters are characters that are tilted at a predetermined angle in the horizontal direction (printing direction). Here, if there is only one type of printing timing as described above, when printing italic characters,
The smaller the inclination and the wider the dot bit width, the more distorted the printed characters will be, leading to a problem that the printing quality will deteriorate. That is, in the conventional dot printer, the dots 1 are printed only at predetermined positions on the dot i, and the dot pitch is constant. For this reason, when italicized characters with different inclinations are printed, some of the printed characters will have a degraded print quality.

[Object of the Invention] An object of the present invention is to provide a dot printer that can improve the printing quality of italic characters by setting an appropriate printing dot pitch in advance according to the degree of inclination of the characters when printing italic characters. Our goal is to provide the following.

[Summary of the Invention] The present invention is provided with a clock generating means that generates a clock pulse of a frequency set according to the inclination of the italic print character when the print data transferred from the outside includes an italic print command. ing. In synchronization with this clock pulse, the italic print training means outputs a plurality of print timing pulses at predetermined time intervals, and transfers the dot pattern data to the printing mechanism in synchronization with the print timing pulses. , is configured to print italic characters with a dot pitch determined in accordance with a print timing pulse.

With this configuration, it is possible to print italic characters with stable print quality by setting an appropriate dot pitch in advance according to the inclination of the italic characters.

[Embodiment of the Invention] An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. 1st
The figure is a block diagram showing the configuration of a dot printer according to an embodiment. In Figure 1, a microprocessor (
The CPU 10 is a control circuit that controls the overall operation of the printer, and executes operations according to programs stored in the program memory 11 in advance. The pattern memory 12 stores character patterns for printing composed of dot patterns. The work memory 13 includes the CPU 10
Print control M that stores character patterns etc. edited by
] ffi is a memory for management. Interface circuit 1
4 is a circuit that receives print data transmitted from an external device such as a host computer.

The print control circuit 15 is a circuit that outputs dot pattern data of italic characters in synchronization with print timing pulses under the control of CPUIO. The driver circuit 1G drives a print M structure 17 including a print head in accordance with dot pattern data output from the print control circuit 15.

Specifically, the print control circuit 15 includes a circuit as shown in FIG. That is, the print control circuit 15 includes a shift register 20, cpui, which generates a plurality of print timing pulses A to H.

Registers 21 to 26 groups that store dot pattern data 11 to i24 transferred from the dot pattern data P1 to p24 in synchronization with print timing pulses A to H.
The AND circuits 27 to 50 which transfer the data to the driver circuit 16 are activated. The shift register 20 transfers the print timing pulse output from the CPU 10 to the CPU 1
The clock pulse L outputs a plurality of print timing pulses A to H at time intervals determined according to the period of the clock pulse L. The register 21 outputs pattern data 11 to I8 of 8 out of 24 dots from the CPU 10 to the AND circuits 27 to 34 in synchronization with the print timing pulse T. Registers 22 and 23 contain dot pattern data 19 to 11.
6 is outputted to the AND circuits 35 to 42 every two pulses of the print timing pulse T. The registers 24-26 output the dot pattern data 117-(24) to the AND circuits 43-50 every three pulses of the print timing pulse T.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be explained with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4. First, when print data including a character code and an italic print command is transferred from the host computer, this print data is received by the interface circuit 14 and then transferred to CPU 1o. CPU 1
0 reads a character pattern corresponding to a character code from the pattern memory 12, and uses the work memory 13 to edit, for example, one line of character strings. The dot pattern data, which is the edited character pattern, is transferred to the print control circuit 15.

In the print control circuit 15, as shown in FIG.
For example, 24-bit data 11 to 124 of the dot pattern data transferred from the CPU 10 are stored in registers 21, 22, and 24 in units of 8 bits. Furthermore, a print timing pulse T is transferred from the CPU 10 to the shift register 20 . The shift register 20 outputs a plurality of print timing pulses A to H at predetermined time intervals in synchronization with the frequency of the clock pulse L from the CPU. Here, the frequency of the clock pulse L is set according to the inclination of the character when italic printing is performed. That is, as shown in FIG. 3, the shift register 20 uses the clock pulse L to output print timing pulses B to H that are sequentially shifted by the width of the pulse T from the pulse A synchronized with the print timing pulse T.

The data 1 to I8 stored in the register 21 are sent to the AND circuits 27 to 18 in synchronization with the print timing pulse T.
The signal is output to one input terminal of each of the 34 input terminals.

Print timing pulses A to H are supplied from the shift register 20 to the other input terminals of the AND circuits 27 to 34, respectively. As a result, the output terminals of the AND circuits 27 to 34 output the dot data P as shown in FIG.
1 to P8 are output and transferred to the driver circuit 16.

The driver circuit 16 drives the printing mechanism section 17 according to the dot data P1-P8 from the AND circuits 27-34. Similarly, the dot data 19 stored in the register 22
116 are outputted to the register 23 in synchronization with the print timing pulse T, and outputted from the register 23 to one input terminal of each of the AND circuits 35 to 42. That is, at the second pulse of the print timing pulse, dot data 1
9 to 116 are output to one input terminal of each of AND circuits 35 to 42. Print timing pulses A to H are supplied from the shift register 20 to the other input terminals of the AND circuits 35 to 42, respectively. As a result, from each output terminal of the AND circuits 35 to 42, as shown in FIG.
Dot data P9 to p16 delayed by one cycle from dot data P1 to P8 are output to the driver circuit 16. Furthermore, the dot data 117 to 117 stored in the register 24
■24 is output to the register 25 in synchronization with the print timing pulse T, and from this register 25 to the register 26.
Output to. That is, at the third pulse of the print timing pulse T, the dot data 117 to I24 are sent to the AND circuit 43.
~50 are output to one input terminal of each. AND circuit 4
A shift register 20 is connected to each other input terminal of numbers 3 to 50.
Print timing pulses A to H are respectively supplied from the input terminals. As a result, the output terminals of the AND circuits 43-50 output dot data p17-P24, which are two cycles later than the dot data P1-P8, to the driver circuit 16, as shown in FIG. As a result, as shown in FIG. 4, the dot data P1 output to the driver circuit 16
- In accordance with P24, patterns 60 to 62 that are inclined at a predetermined angle in the horizontal direction (printing direction) are printed. At this time, the slopes of the patterns 60 to 62 are determined by the frequency of the clock pulse L as described above.

In this way, a dot pattern having a predetermined inclination is printed using a plurality of print timing pulses A-H1, :I obtained by shifting the original print timing pulse (1) by a clock pulse.

By forming this dot pattern, italicized characters are printed. For this reason, as shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, in contrast to conventional printing at a dot pitch DPI that corresponds to the period of the print timing pulse T, the present invention prints at a dot pitch DP2 that corresponds to the print timing pulse A-H. It will be printed. therefore,
When printing italic characters with a relatively small slope, the dot pitch can be significantly narrowed, so it is possible to print italic characters with appropriate shapes.

[Effects of the Invention] As detailed above, according to the present invention, when printing italic characters in a dot printer having an italic printing function, printing is performed using a printing dot pitch that is set in advance according to the degree of inclination of the characters. Therefore, it is possible to obtain a printing result that has an appropriate shape even in the case of italic characters with a relatively small slope. Therefore, as a result, italic printing with the same printing quality as normal characters can be realized.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a dot printer according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the specific configuration of a print control circuit of the same embodiment, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the operation of the same embodiment. Timing chart for explanation, 4th
The figure is a diagram showing printing results for explaining the operation of the same embodiment. 10...CPU, 14...Interface circuit,
15... Print control circuit, 1... Driver circuit, 17... Printing mechanism section. Applicant's agent Patent attorney Takehiko Suzue Figure 4

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] Pattern generation means for generating dot pattern data corresponding to a predetermined character pattern in accordance with print data transferred from the outside, and when the print data includes an italic print command, the italic print characters. a clock generating means that generates a clock pulse with a preset frequency according to the slope of the clock; Italic type printing control means that transfers dot pattern data from the pattern generation means to a printing mechanism section in synchronization with a pulse to print italic characters with a dot pitch determined according to the printing timing pulse. A dot printer characterized by: