JP3087463B2 - Character symbol generator - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a character / symbol generator for converting outline data representing the outline of a character such as a character / symbol into dot data for each pixel as a bag character.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when creating dot data as a bag character of a character whose shape is defined by outline data, the outline of the character is read out one by one, and dots are drawn from pixels passing through the outline along the trajectory. Had been placed.

[0003]

However, according to the conventional method, when data in which the outlines of characters overlap as shown in FIG. 2 are used as bag characters, the outlines of the overlapping portions appear as dots as shown in FIG. Did not become a bag letter.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problem, and a character / symbol generating device capable of generating dot data as a bag character even when outlines defining the shape of a character are overlapped. It is intended to provide.

[0005]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a character / symbol generating apparatus for reading out outline data of a character by identifying an outer contour and an inner contour. A calculating means for calculating intersection coordinates of the outline data and a plurality of mutually parallel scanning lines assumed on a coordinate plane defining the dot data, and a starting point and an ending point of the filling based on each intersection coordinate obtained by the calculating means. Use non-zero winding
An extraction unit for extracting based on rules, and a dot-forming unit for arranging dots at the positions of the start point and the end point obtained by the extraction unit and outputting the dots as dot data of a bag character.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided the character / symbol generating device, wherein the direction of the scanning line in the calculating means is the first direction.
A first dot generating means for generating first dot data by the calculating means, the extracting means and the dot forming means, and a direction of a scanning line in the calculating means is a second direction different from the first direction. A second calculating means, a second dot generating means for generating second dot data by the extracting means and the dot forming means, and a third generating means for generating a logical sum of the first dot data and the second dot data. Dot generating means.

[0007]

The reading means of the character / symbol generating apparatus according to the first aspect of the present invention having the above structure reads the outline data of the character by identifying the outer contour and the inner contour, and the arithmetic means defines the outline data and the dot data. obtain the intersection coordinates of a plurality of scanning lines parallel to each other envisioned on a coordinate plane which, extracting means the position of the dots of the start and end points of fill from the intersection coordinates obtained by the arithmetic means Roh
Based on the zero-winding rule ,
The dot forming means arranges the dots at the positions of the starting point and the ending point obtained by the extracting means and outputs the dot data as the dot data of the bag character.

Further, the first dot generating means of the character / symbol generating device according to the second aspect includes a first calculating means in which the direction of a scanning line in the calculating means is a first direction, a first calculating means, and a extracting means and the dot forming means. A second dot generating means, wherein the second dot generating means includes a second calculating means in which a direction of a scanning line in the calculating means is a second direction different from the first direction, the extracting means, and the dot forming means. Generates the second dot data, and the third dot generating means generates a logical sum of the first dot data and the second dot data.

[0009] Also, the identification of the outer contour and the inner contour of the reading means may be performed by the rotational direction of the vector of the contour line.

[0010]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS One embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a portion of a control circuit of a laser printer to which the present invention is applied, which mainly generates dot data from outline data. The microcomputer unit 10 which forms the main part of the control circuit includes:
CPU 12, character ROM 13, program ROM
14, a text memory 15, a working memory 16, and a dot data memory 17. These CPUs 12
Are connected to each other via a bus 18. Further, an input device 19 and a printing device 110 are connected to the microcomputer unit 10 via a bus 18.

The input device 19 is for inputting data such as designation of a character code and a character size supplied from the outside.

The printing device 110 is a device for printing dot matrix data read from the dot data memory 17 by an electrophotographic method.

The program ROM 14 stores programs for performing various controls performed in this embodiment.

The text memory 15 stores data such as a character code and a character size input from the input device 19.

The working memory 16 temporarily stores data required when the CPU 12 executes a program.

The dot data memory 17 stores dot data converted from outline data.

The character ROM 13 stores outline font data in which the contours of characters and symbols are defined by a set of straight lines and cubic Bezier curves (hereinafter simply referred to as curves). Outline font data includes coordinate value data and an attribute flag. The coordinate value data is an xy1 set of coordinate values. The attribute flags include types of the start point “S” of the outline, the end point “L” of the straight line, the first control point “B1”, the second control point “B2” of the curve, and the end point of the curve “B”. The start point of the straight line or the curve is the end point of the previous straight line or the curve, or the start point of the contour line if it is the first straight line or the curve. As for the contour, data indicating the outer contour is stored in the counterclockwise direction, and data indicating the inner contour is stored in the clockwise direction. That is, data as shown in FIG. 2 is stored as shown in FIG. Note that there is no curve in this data.

A process for generating dot data of a bag character from outline data of the laser printer will be described below.

First, an outline of this processing will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

S51 is a process for reading outline data for a desired one character from the character ROM 13.
That is, the process of writing the data shown in FIG.

S52 is a process for converting the coordinate values of the read outline data into a desired size.

In step S53, the outline data obtained in step S52 is input, and dot data of a bag character is output. That is, this is an application part of the present invention. This processing will be described later in detail.

In step S54, the dot data obtained in step S53 is stored in the dot data memory 17.

Next, referring to the flowchart of FIG.
The process of creating bag character dot data No. 3 will be described.

In step S60, outline data of the character to be processed is read. Also in this case, the outer contour is oriented counterclockwise, and the inner contour is oriented clockwise.

S61 is a scanning process using y scanning lines, and S62 is a scanning process using x scanning lines. The y scanning line is a scanning line that is parallel to the x axis and can be defined by the value of y, and points from the smaller x value to the larger x value. or,
An x-scan line is a scan line that is parallel to the y-axis and can be defined by the value of x, and points from the smaller y value to the larger y value.
The scanning process is a process for generating dots on each scanning line, and will be described later in detail.

Step S63 is a process for obtaining the logical sum of the dot data obtained in steps S61 and S62 to complete the dot data.

The scan processing of S61 and S62 will be generalized and described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

In step S71, a scanning line is initialized.

In step S72, information on the intersection of the scanning lines is created. The intersection information includes intersection coordinate data and direction data. The intersection coordinate data is the coordinates of the intersection between the scanning line and the character outline, and the direction data is the direction of the vector of the character outline at the intersection with respect to the scanning line. The intersection is “leftward”, and conversely, the intersection with the contour of the character that crosses from left to right is “rightward”. In this case, in the portion parallel to the scanning line, only the start point and the end point of the portion are set as intersections.

In step S73, the obtained intersection information is sorted in ascending order by coordinate values in the sub-scanning line direction. That is, the data is sorted in ascending order by the x coordinate in the case of scanning by the y scanning line, and by the y coordinate in the case of scanning by the x scanning line. In step S74, data of a start point and an end point of a portion corresponding to the inside of the character is extracted from the sorted intersection information. Here, a non-zero winding rule is used for recognition of the start point and the end point.

The non-zero winding rule is:
This is a means for determining whether or not a certain point is inside the outline. This rule prepares a signed counter initialized with 0, runs a scanning line, checks the direction of intersection of the outline when it hits the outline of the character, and for example, in the case of "rightward", the counter This is a rule in which the operation of adding 1 and subtracting 1 from the counter in the case of "leftward" is performed, and the point where the absolute value of the counter is not 0 corresponds to the part corresponding to the inside of the character.

Applying this rule, the sorted intersection information obtained in S73 is checked in order, the direction data is checked, the counter is operated as described above, and the point at which the absolute value of the counter changes from 0 to 1 Can be recognized as the start point and the point where the value changes from 1 to 0 is the end point.

For example, when a counter c is provided and the scanning line Q is set in the outline data of the character in FIG.
Intersection points p0, p1, p2, p3, p4, p5 are obtained,
Sorted in this order. Examine this point in order. p0
Is a rightward intersection, so that c = 0 to 1 and p0 is determined to be the starting point. Since p1 is "leftward", c
Since = 1 to 0, p1 is the end point. Since p2 is "rightward", it changes from c = 0 to 1, so p2 is the starting point. Since p3 is "rightward", c = 1 is changed to 2, so p3 is neither a start point nor an end point. Since p4 is "leftward", it changes from c = 2 to 1, so p4 is neither a start point nor an end point. Since p5 is "leftward", it changes from c = 1 to 0, so p5 is the end point. Therefore, the start point can be recognized as p0 and p2, and the end point can be recognized as p1 and p5.

S75 is a process for arranging dots determined by the start point and the end point obtained in S74. In this embodiment, the dots are arranged at positions where the decimal point of the intersection coordinates of the start point and the end point is truncated. In this portion, a plurality of dots can be placed based on the coordinates of the intersection of the start point and the end point in order to increase the line width.

In step S76, it is determined whether the processing has been completed for all necessary scanning lines. If not finished, S7
In step 7, the scanning line is updated, and the processing from S72 is repeated. If the scanning has been completed, the scanning process ends.

FIG. 8 shows the dot data obtained by processing the data of FIG. 2 in S61, FIG. 9 shows the dot data obtained by processing in S62, and FIG. 10 shows the data obtained by processing the same in S63.

In this embodiment, an example is shown in which the character / symbol generator of the present invention is applied to a laser printer. However, the present invention is not limited to this. Any device that outputs dot data can be applied.

In the present embodiment, the method applying the non-zero winding rule is used for the process of extracting the start point and end point in S74. However, the present invention is not limited to this. Any method can be used as long as it can be recognized.

Various other applications are possible without departing from the spirit of the present invention.

[0042]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the character / symbol generating device of the present invention, dot data as a bag character can be generated even when the outlines defining the character shape overlap. .

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a microcomputer unit according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of outline data of a character.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing dot data for bag character processing according to a conventional method.

FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram of character data according to the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a bag character creation process according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart of a scan process according to the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of a bag character dot data creation process according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a result of a scan process using y scan lines according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating a result of a scan process using x scanning lines according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating dot data of a bag character according to the present embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 S60 Read processing (read means) S61 First dot generation processing S62 Second dot generation processing S63 Third dot generation processing S72 Intersection information creation processing (calculation means) S73 Start point and end point extraction processing (extraction means) S74 Dot arrangement processing (dots) Means)

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] 1. An apparatus for generating dot data of a bag character from outline data defining the shape of the outline of a character such as a character or a symbol, wherein the reading means reads the outline data of the character by identifying the outer outline and the inner outline. Calculating means for obtaining intersection coordinates of the outline data and a plurality of scanning lines parallel to each other assumed on a coordinate plane that defines dot data; and a starting point for filling from the intersection coordinates obtained by the arithmetic means. Non-zero winding position of dot to be the end point
Extracting means for extracting based on the rule, and dot-forming means for arranging dots at the positions of the starting point and the ending point obtained by the extracting means and outputting the data as dot data of a bag character. Character symbol generator. 2. The character / symbol generator having the configuration according to claim 1, wherein a direction of a scanning line in the arithmetic unit is a first direction, and a first arithmetic unit, the extracting unit, and the dot forming unit define a first direction. A first dot generating means for generating dot data; a second calculating means in which a direction of a scanning line in the calculating means is a second direction different from the first direction; A second dot generating means for generating two dot data; and a third dot generating means for generating a logical sum of the first dot data and the second dot data. apparatus.