JPH0315231B2 - - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Table of Contents] Overview Industrial Application Fields Prior Art (Fig. 10, Fig. 11, Fig. 12, Fig. 13) Problems to be Solved by the Invention Means (Fig. 1) Working Example (a) Description of ticket issuing device to which the invention is applied (Fig. 2,
(Fig. 3, Fig. 4) (b) Explanation of the internal configuration of the ticket issuing device (Fig. 5, Fig. 6) (c) Explanation of the ticket issuing method (Fig. 7, Fig. 8, Fig. 9) (d ) Description of other embodiments Effects of the invention [Summary] In a ticket issuance method for issuing a series of tickets of multiple types, a message analysis step and a ticket issue editing step are provided, so that received messages for ticket issuance are unedited. If so, edit the format of each ticket, and if the received message has been edited, execute the ticket issuing control step without editing, so that a series of tickets can be issued from either the unedited message or the edited message. This is what I did.

[Industrial application field]

The present invention relates to a ticket issuing method for issuing a series of multiple types of reservation ticket groups such as travel coupons, and in particular, even if print data for a ticket group is given unedited, edited data is given. The present invention also relates to a ticket issuing method capable of printing each ticket.

A series of multiple types of ticket groups are widely used as travel coupons for travel and the like.

Such ticket groups generally consist of multiple reservation tickets, etc., in which the customer makes a reservation for transportation, lodging, facilities, etc. in advance, and is issued by a travel agency in response to the reservation. passed to.

Ticket issuing devices are used to issue these groups of tickets, and in recent years, devices have been provided that use card-shaped tickets and issue various reservation tickets according to reservation details as a series of ticket groups.

[Conventional technology]

For example, when traveling by airplane, an airline ticket issuing device is used to print the necessary information on card-like tickets and print itineraries, agent coupons, fare coupons, and the necessary airline tickets. We will issue five types of customer receipt tickets. For example, for a reservation for a travel route from Sapporo to Tokyo, going to Okinawa, and returning to Sapporo again, the reserved itinerary in Figure 10A (i.e., flights used, accommodations used, facilities used)
The itinerary sheet printed with , the agent coupon in Figure 10B, the fare coupon in Figure 10C, and the required number of airline tickets in Figure 11 (in the figure, Sapporo-Haneda, Haneda- Okinawa, Okinawa-Haneda, Haneda-Sapporo 4
) and the customer receipt shown in Figure 12 are issued, and these are given to the customer as a bound travel coupon booklet.

This method of printing and issuing individual tickets one after another is different from the method of printing and issuing various tickets at the same time on sheets of carbon paper that are bound in advance, while Printing can be done in a free and easy-to-read format, making it possible to issue a variety of flexible tickets.

To print and issue individual tickets like this,
Because the printed content of each ticket is different, conventionally the 13th
As shown in the figure, the host computer HOST that constitutes the reservation system edits the print items of each ticket into the print format of each ticket using an editing program, and sends the edited print data of each ticket to the ticket issuing device TDU. The ticket issuing device TDU simply prints the edited print data of each ticket on an individual ticket and issues each ticket constituting a series of tickets below the travel list.

That is, in the conventional method, the ticket issuing device TDU only had a ticket issuing control function of simply printing edited print data on individual tickets.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

However, in the conventional technology, since the ticket issuing device only has a ticket issuing control function, it is necessary for the host computer HOST to create print data for each ticket in a series of tickets and send it to the ticket issuing device. For this reason, there is a problem that a large amount of printing data for each ticket in a series of ticket groups becomes necessary, and the line usage time for transmitting the data becomes long, which increases the line usage cost. When the system was configured, a situation occurred in which line usage charges became extremely high.

Also, depending on the system, the host computer creates and sends the print data for each ticket in a series of tickets, and this applies to both systems that send edited data and systems that send unedited data. There was also the problem of not being able to respond.

An object of the present invention is to provide a ticketing method that can issue a series of tickets regardless of whether edited ticketing data or unedited ticketing data is received.

[Means to solve the problem]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the principle of the present invention.

The present invention includes a ticket issuing control section that controls ticket issuing by giving print data to a printing section that prints on tickets being conveyed;
It has a ticketing editing unit that edits the printing data of each ticket in a series of tickets to be issued based on the unedited received message, and it has a ticketing editing section that edits the printing data of each ticket of a series of tickets to be issued based on the unedited received message. A ticketing device that issues a series of tickets, the ticketing editorial department comprising:
A message analysis step for analyzing the message received from the line and determining whether the received message is edited or unedited in the print data of each ticket in a series of tickets to be issued, and receiving the unedited message. A ticketing editing step for editing the printing data of each ticket from the electronic message is executed, and in the ticketing editing step, the ticketing editing unit edits a ticketing order table that stores ticketing order information of each ticket in the series of tickets. The step of obtaining the corresponding ticket issuance order information by referring to the ticket issuance order designation information in the received message stored in the memory, and the step of editing the ticket issuance by editing the mapping table storing the print items and print positions of each of the plurality of ticket types. a step in which the department refers to the ticket issue order information to obtain print items and print positions for each ticket to be issued; and a print item storage that stores the storage location in the memory of print data corresponding to the print items to be printed. The ticket issue editing section refers to the destination designation table for the print item, obtains the storage location on the memory, and creates edited print data for each ticket from the unedited received message.

[Effect]

In the present invention, the ticket issuing device is provided with a ticket editing step to create a series of edited data for each ticket from unedited ticket issuing data, so that the host only needs to transmit the unedited ticket issuing data.

The items printed on each ticket are not completely different from each other and include many common items, so the time required to send the unedited ticketing data is the same as the time required to send the edited data for each ticket. It can be much shorter than

That is, redundancy in data transmitted to the line is removed, and line usage costs can be significantly reduced.

Furthermore, since the present invention includes a message analysis step and a ticket issuing/editing step, a series of tickets can be issued regardless of whether it is connected to a host that transmits unedited data or a host that transmits edited data. It is.

Furthermore, since editing is performed using the ticket issue order table, mapping table, and print item storage destination table, editing data for each ticket according to the ticket issue order can be created simply by referring to the table.

〔Example〕

(a) Description of a ticket issuing device applied to an embodiment of the present invention Figs. 2 and 3 are block diagrams of a ticket issuing device applied to an embodiment of the present invention, and Fig. 4 is a configuration diagram of a ticket issuing device applied to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG.

In the figure, 3a and 3b are ticket storage boxes for storing unprinted tickets, and 4 is a ticket;
As shown in the figure, there is a printing column 4a on the front side (the number of printing digits is 72 in the figure).
19 lines (digits, number of printed lines A to S), and a magnetic stripe 4b on the back side as shown in Fig. 4B. A device that feeds out tickets 4 one by one from the storage box 3a or 3b and transports them to a discharge port; 6 is a write/read head that writes data on the magnetic stripe 4b of the tickets 4 transported by the ticket transport section 5; 7 is a printer that prints on the printing field 4a of the ticket 4 conveyed by the ticket conveyance section 5; 8 is a ticket storage section provided in the discharge section that prints the ticket 4 printed by the printer 7; It is used to receive and store
8a is an external storage box that can be opened manually in the direction of the arrow to make it easy to take out printed tickets.
By providing the dispensing section instead of the ticket storage section 8, a large amount of printed bills can be stored.

Therefore, in this ticket issuing device TDU, the ticket with the magnetic stripe 4b on the back is stored in the ticket storage box 3a,
3b, and the ticket transport section 5 transfers the ticket to the ticket storage box 3.
A and 3b feed out the ticket 4, and while the ticket 4 is being conveyed, the head 6 writes data on the magnetic stripe 4b of the ticket 4, the printer 7 prints on the print field 4a of the ticket 4, and the ticket 4 is discharged from the discharge section. The ejection section is provided with a ticket storage section 8 or an external storage section 8a, and the ejected tickets are stored in these.

(b) Description of the internal configuration of the ticket issuing device according to one embodiment FIG. 5 is an internal configuration diagram of the ticket issuing device used in one embodiment of the present invention.

In the figure, the same parts as those shown in Figures 1 and 2 are indicated by the same symbols, and 9 is a lamp display section, which is lit to indicate when ticket issuance is in progress or when a fault has stopped. , 10 is a microprocessor (hereinafter referred to as MPU) which analyzes whether the received message is unedited or edited, and creates edited data for each ticket by executing a program;
Reference numeral 11 denotes a basic program ROM (hereinafter referred to as ROM), which stores basic programs necessary for processing of the MPU 10, and 12 denotes a work area RAM (hereinafter referred to as RAM), which stores the basic programs necessary for processing of the MPU 10.
13 is a message saving RAM (hereinafter referred to as message RAM) that stores fixed print items and print items of received messages; 14 is a table ROM cartridge (hereinafter referred to as message RAM); 14a is a print item storage destination specification table (hereinafter referred to as item specification table), which is composed of a ROM cartridge and stores tables necessary for creating editing data. 14b is a ticket issuance order table, which is made up of a comparison table of the start address and the print item on the telegram RAM 13 that temporarily stores the print items in the ticket, which will be described later in FIG. 14c is a mapping table for specifying the order of ticket issuance, which will be described later in FIG. 6B.
In Figure C, 15 is a connector, which will be described later.
16 is a transmission control unit for connecting the table ROM cartridge 14; 16 is a transmission control unit that controls transmission for exchanging messages with the host computer HOST; 17 is a bus, which connects the MPU 10 and
It connects the ROM 11, RAM 12, message RAM 13, connector 15, and transmission control unit 16.

20 is a microprocessor (hereinafter referred to as MPU)
21 is a ROM which stores a mechanical control program and basic character patterns necessary for ticketing control of the MPU 20; 22 is a communication RAM; 23 is a DMA control unit that functions as a buffer for data communication between the MPU 20 and the MPU 10 of the ticketing editorial department 1 by DMA (direct memory access) control, and data is transferred by direct memory access. 24 is a RAM used as a work area for the MPU 20, 25 is an evacuation RAM for saving data, and 26 is an I/O
A control driver controls the ticket transport section 5, printer 7, heads 6a, 6b, and lamp display section 9 according to instructions from the MPU 20. 27 is a bus, which connects the MPU 20, ROM 21, RAM 22, 24,
25, the DMA control unit 23, and the I/O control driver.

Figure 6 shows ROM cartridge 1 in Figure 5.
FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram of tables 14a, 14b, and 14c of No. 4.

The item specification table 14a includes the item ID and message assigned to each print item as shown in FIG. 6A.
It consists of a correspondence table between the maximum data length on RAM 13 and the storage start address, and the data length and storage start address of fixed print items such as "airline ticket", "agent coupon", "fare coupon", etc. Street address and “customer name”,
"Ticketing airline name", "Travel agency name", "Flight number"
The data length and storage start address of the received print item are described.

The ticket issue order table 14b is used to specify the type and order of tickets to be issued in accordance with the ticket issue order designation codes F1 to F8 included in the received message. It is specified that five tickets, ie, passenger receipt, airline ticket 4, airline ticket 3, airline ticket 2, and airline ticket 1, should be issued in this order. In this example, it is specified that tickets are to be issued in order from the last page to the previous page of a booklet consisting of a group of tickets. Furthermore, the pine pick table 14c is
A description of the ID of the item to be printed in each line A to S (see Figure 4) of the printing column of ticket 4 in various tickets (airline tickets, itineraries, agent coupons, etc.) and the printing start digit. This makes it possible to know the printing items and printing positions corresponding to the ticket to be issued. That is, the ticketing editorial department 1 analyzes the received message and determines whether it is an unedited message or an edited message.
The MPU 10 creates print editing data for each ticket, and if the ticket has already been edited, extracts the print editing data from the received message and sends it to the ticket issuing control section 20 to print and write a magnetic stripe on the ticket.

This table ROM cartridge 14 is removable via a connector 15, and can be attached to various tables depending on the printing format and ticket issuing order.
It is configured so that it can be replaced with a ROM cartridge.

(c) Description of one embodiment of ticket issuing method FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of the format of unedited ticket issuing data (received message) according to one embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 7, four blocks of data are transmitted from the host computer HOST as unedited ticketing data.

The first block includes the start code followed by the common information such as the ticket issue order designation code, the number of passengers, the number of routes issued, the number of data blocks, and the date of issue, as well as the airline company, agency, and ticket number. are divided by headers.

The second block contains the passenger number, which is passenger information.
Includes passenger name, fare, seat, and precautions.

The third block contains flight route information such as flight date, airline name, flight number, departure place, departure time, arrival place, arrival time, boarding type (first class, etc.) for each flight. Included accordingly.

The fourth block includes information on hotels, rental cars, etc. and an end code as other reservation information.

Among these, the items to be printed are other than the ticket issue order designation code, number of data blocks, header, start code, and end code.
are associated.

This header is displayed to the effect that it has not been edited, and by analyzing the header, the MPU 10 of the ticketing and editing section 1 can find out that it has not been edited.

On the other hand, the edited ticket issuance data is displayed in the header to indicate that it has been edited, and is configured by editing the print items according to the format of each ticket to be issued, and listing them in the order of issue. .

FIG. 8 is a flowchart of ticketing processing according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram of the buffering operation in FIG. 8.

The MPU 10 is in a state of waiting for a data interrupt from the transmission control unit 16, and when the transmission control unit 16 receives a received message from the host computer HOST, it issues a data interrupt to the MPU 10.
The MPU 10 receives a received block from the transmission control unit 16, analyzes it, determines whether the received block is edited or unedited from the above-mentioned header, and moves the unedited block from the edited one to the step. If so, proceed to step for editing.

When the MPU 10 determines that the received block has not been edited, the ticket issuing order designation code is first stored in the RAM 12.
Store in.

Next, each print item is stored in the designated address of the message RAM 13 according to the contents of the print item storage table 14a of the ROM cartridge 14.

As shown in FIG. 9, the above-mentioned fixed print items are stored in advance in the head area of the message RAM 13 as character codes, and the MPU 10 selects each print item of the reception block according to the specification table 14a.
Store in the specified address of the message RAM corresponding to the ID. For example, in the example shown in FIG. 7, the ticket number corresponds to item ID (n+5), the storage start address "yyyy" and the maximum data length "xx" are obtained by referring to the specification table 14a, and the ticket number of the receiving block is obtained. Enter the number as the starting address of telegram RAM 13 “yyyy”
Buffling to the position of.

The MPU 10 executes this for each print item of the reception block, and therefore the message RAM 13 stores each print item of the reception block in the specified table 1.
It is stored at the address specified in 4a.

Next, the MPU 10 reads the ticket issuing order designation code stored in the RAM 12 and refers to the ticket issuing order table 14b of the ROM cartridge 14.

For example, if the ticketing order designation code is F5, the passenger receipt, ticket 1, 2, 3, 4, fare coupon, agent coupon, and itinerary shown in Figures 10 to 12 should be issued. and the ticket issue order are obtained from the ticket issue order table 14b.

The MPU 10 refers to the mapping table 14c of the ROM cartridge 14 to determine the print format of each ticket to be issued next.

For example, for passenger receipt, mapping table 1
Refer to the passenger receipt column for ticket type 4c and find the print start line and item ID for each line. And the items obtained
Obtain the storage address of the message RAM 13 by referring to the storage destination specification table 14a from the ID, and
The corresponding print item is taken out from RAM13.

The MPU 10 repeats this process according to the contents of the mapping table 14c, stores the print start line and print item of each line of the passenger receipt in the RAM 12, and edits the print data.

When the print data is edited in this way,
The MPU10 connects to the MPU20 via the communication RAM22.
The edited print data in the RAM 12 is sent to the communication RAM 22.

In the MPU 20, the edited print data stored in the communication RAM 22 by the DMA control unit 23 is transferred to the save RAM 25 and stored therein.

On the other hand, if the MPU 10 determines that the received block has been edited in step, the MPU 10 extracts the edited print item from the received block,
Store it in RAM12.

Then, in the same way as in step, the MPU 10 notifies the MPU 20 of the edited print data via the communication RAM 22, and transmits the edited print data to the communication RAM of the RAM 12.

In the MPU 20, the edited print data stored in the communication RAM 22 by the DMA control unit 23 is transferred to the save RAM 25 and stored therein.

Next, the MPU 20 uses the I/O control driver 26
The ticket conveyance section 5 is operated by the operator, and the ticket 4 is fed out from the ticket storage box 3a or 3b in FIG. 2 and conveyed.

The MPU 20 extracts only the print items from the print data of one ticket stored in the above-mentioned save RAM 25, provides it to the write head 6a via the I/O control driver 26, and prints it on the magnetic stripe 4b of the ticket 4 being conveyed. Write down the items to be printed,
It is read by the read head 6b and the write operation is checked by read-after-write.

Next, the MPU 20 transfers the print items of the print data of one ticket stored in the save RAM 25 to the ROM 2.
1 is converted into a character pattern according to the basic character pattern 1, and the character pattern is developed for each print line in the RAM 24 according to the above-mentioned print start digit.
Then, the print pattern of each print line is given to the printer 7 via the I/O control driver 26, and printed in the print column 4a of the ticket 4.

Then, the printed ticket is ejected to the ejecting section and the process returns to the step. MPU20 repeats this for the number of tickets created by MPU10, and thereby
As explained in the figure, passenger receipt, ticket 4, 3,
2.1. Coupons for fees, coupons for agents,
Tickets will be issued in the order of the itinerary.

At this time, since tickets are issued in order from the back page to the front page of a group of tickets, when a group of tickets is taken out from the ticket storage section 8 (see Figure 2), the printing column of the previous page becomes the first, and the order is manually controlled. There is no need to adjust it.

The same applies when the external storage box 8a is attached as shown in FIG.

Further, if the magnetic stripe 4b of the ticket 4 is, for example, an airline ticket, check-in data can be automatically input by reading it with a magnetic stripe reader.

In this way, when the ticketing editorial department 1 receives the received message, it determines from the header of the received message whether it is data that has been edited for printing or data that has not been edited for printing. In step , , necessary printing items are extracted and edited according to the format of each ticket, and edited data is created.On the other hand, if the ticket has already been edited, the edited data is extracted from the received message in step.

Therefore, the ticket issuing device can issue a series of tickets regardless of whether it receives edited data or unedited data.

Therefore, even if the ticket issuing device is connected to both a host computer that sends unedited data and a personal computer or other computer that creates and sends edited data, a series of tickets can be issued in the same way.

(d) Description of other embodiments In the above-described embodiments, the explanation was given using an airline ticket issuing device as an example, but the present invention can also be applied to other ticket issuing devices, reservation ticket issuing devices, etc.

In addition, although the table for editing is made into a ROM cartridge so that it can be replaced freely, it may also be made up of other well-known memory cartridges such as a magnetic bubble cartridge. It may be composed of

Furthermore, in the above embodiment, the printing items and positions of each ticket to be issued as received edited data are specified, but it is also possible to specify the printing items of each ticket and use the mapping table 14c. The format may be edited on the ticket issuing device side.
The header does not identify whether it has been edited or not.
It may be specified separately in the received message.

Although the present invention has been described above with reference to examples, the present invention can be modified in various ways according to the gist of the present invention.
These are not excluded from the present invention.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the present invention, when issuing multiple types of tickets, an editing step is provided for editing the printing format of each ticket from the unedited ticketing data given by the ticketing device. There is no need to send data edited into a print format as a ticket over the line, and it is sufficient to send unedited data including print items necessary for the ticket group, so that the cost of using the line can be reduced.

In addition, by providing a message analysis step, ticket issuing can be performed even if edited data is received.
This has the advantage that ticket issuing can be performed by connecting to any system that transmits unedited or edited data, and therefore the range of use of such ticket issuing apparatus can be expanded.

Furthermore, since editing is performed using the ticket issue order table, mapping table, and print item storage specification table, editing data for each ticket according to the ticket issue order can be created simply by referring to the table. It is also effective.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram explaining the principle of the present invention, FIGS. 2 and 3 are block diagrams of a ticket issuing device applied to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 4 is a diagram of a ticket issuing device used in an embodiment of the present invention. Explanatory diagram, FIG. 5 is an internal configuration diagram of a ticket issuing device applied to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 6 is a table configuration diagram in the configuration shown in FIG. 5, and FIG. 7 is a received message format of an embodiment of the present invention. An explanatory diagram, FIG. 8 is a flowchart of ticket issuing processing according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram of the buffering operation in FIG. 8, FIG.
1 and 12 are explanatory diagrams of issued tickets, and FIG. 13 is an explanatory diagram of the prior art. In the figure, TDU...ticketing device, 1...ticketing editorial department,
2...Ticket issuing control unit, 4...Ticket.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A ticket issuing control unit that controls ticket issuing by giving print data to a printing unit that prints on tickets to be conveyed, and each ticket in a series of tickets to be issued based on unedited received messages. The ticketing device has a ticketing editing unit that edits the printed data of the ticket issuing unit, and issues a series of ticket groups consisting of multiple types of tickets corresponding to the ticketing data in the received message given from the outside, the ticketing editing unit a message analysis step for analyzing a message received from the line and determining whether the received message is edited or unedited in the print data of each ticket of a series of tickets to be issued; A ticketing editing step of editing the print data of each ticket from the received message for editing is executed, and the ticketing editing step edits the ticketing order table storing the ticketing order information of each ticket of the series of tickets. The editorial department refers to the ticket issuance order designation information in the received message stored in the memory to obtain the corresponding ticket issuance order information, and the mapping table that stores the print items and print positions of each of the plurality of types of tickets. The ticketing editorial department refers to the ticketing order information to obtain the printing items and printing positions of each ticket to be issued, and stores the storage location in the memory of the print data corresponding to the printing items to be printed. The ticket issuing editorial department refers to the print item storage location designation table for the print item, obtains the storage location in the memory, and creates edited print data for each ticket from the unedited received message. A ticketing method characterized by the following.