JPH0747348B2 - Printer for easy bookbinding - Google Patents

Description

Description: BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a printer for recording characters, figures, graphs, etc. on a recording sheet, and in particular, recording that can be divided into a plurality of sheets and bound into a booklet after recording. Related to possible printers.

2. Description of the Related Art For example, a printer is used as one of output means of various information devices such as a word processor (hereinafter abbreviated as word processor) and a computer. This type of printer usually has (a) data storage means for storing print data such as input characters, figures, and graphs, (b) print mechanism for performing print operation on print paper, and (c) data. Drive control means for driving the recording mechanism based on the recording data stored in the storage means.

In this type of printer, a recording sheet cut into a standard size is generally used, and a document is usually created with one side of one recording sheet as one page. It is also known to create. This is called bag binding printing, and print data is recorded with two print areas set on both sides of the center line of one print sheet as one page, and after the print is finished, the printed surface is the outside. Thus, the recording paper is folded in two on the center line so that the end on the side opposite to the fold is bound and bound. When recording is not performed on the inner surface when folded in two, the fold line is not cut open, but when recording is performed, two recording areas are set on the back surface of the recording sheet and recording is performed. . After the plurality of recording sheets are bound, the folds are cut open to form a booklet. There are formats such as right-opening, left-opening, and top-opening in the booklet. In either case, the front and back sides of each recording sheet should be printed so that the recorded contents of consecutive pages are continuous when bound in the booklet. It is necessary that the print data be distributed to the print areas.

Problems to be Solved by the Invention As described above, a printer capable of recording one side of one recording sheet as two pages has been known, but a printer capable of recording one side as four pages is not yet known. Didn't. When making a booklet with a small size of one page,
It is more efficient to perform recording by setting four recording areas on one side of a recording sheet of double size, and it is usual that the size of the recording sheet that can be supplied to the recording mechanism is limited. In some cases, it may be necessary to perform printing with one page as four pages due to the relationship between the size of recording paper that can be supplied and the size of one page of the booklet to be made.

However, in the past, there was no printer capable of performing this recording, and an object of the present invention is to provide a printer capable of performing this recording, that is, one side of one recording sheet is recorded as four pages and is printed in a booklet. It is to obtain a printer capable of binding.

Means for Solving the Problems The above problems can be solved by providing a recording pattern control unit in a printer including the data storage unit, the recording mechanism, and the drive control unit. The recording pattern control means folds the recording paper in two at the first fold, and further folds the recording paper in two at a second fold perpendicular to the first fold, binds the second fold, cuts the first fold, and opens the page 8 The recording data stored in the data storage means is recorded on the front side and the back side of the recording sheet before folding, which should become the first to eighth pages when bound into a booklet, on the front side. The recorded contents of the page and the eighth page are adjacent to each other in the same recording direction with the second fold in between, and the fourth page with the first fold in each of the first page and the eighth page. Minute and the fifth page are adjacent to each other in the vertically inverted recording direction, while on the back side, the second page and the seventh page are the first page and the eighth page, respectively. Back to back with the recorded contents of the third and sixth pages being back to back with the recorded contents of the fourth and fifth pages, respectively, and the second and seventh pages. And the recording contents of the third page and the sixth page are distributed so that the recording directions thereof are vertically inverted, and the distributed recording data is supplied to the drive control means.

In the printer configured as described above, the recording pattern control unit causes the recording data stored in the data storage unit to be recorded in four recording areas on each of the front and back sides of one recording sheet as described above. The data is distributed, and the distributed recording data is supplied to the drive control device. When the drive control device records the distributed recording data in the recording mechanism, a recording sheet on which recording data of four pages is recorded on each of the front and back sides can be obtained.

Therefore, the recording sheet is first folded in two at the first fold, and further folded in two at the second fold to make four folds. The second fold is bound and the first fold is cut open to make 8
When the booklet of pages is bound, the recorded contents from the first page to the eighth page are continuous in the order of page numbers.

If the same recording is performed on a plurality of recording sheets and the obtained 8 pages are overlapped and bound into a booklet, a booklet having a page number that is a multiple of 8 can be obtained.

EFFECTS OF THE INVENTION As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to bind a booklet by using one surface of one sheet of recording paper as four pages, and an effect of expanding the range of application of the printer can be obtained.

Further, it is possible to make a booklet while recording on the largest possible recording paper to improve the recording efficiency, and further, the recording paper supply device cannot supply the recording paper suitable for the size of the booklet to be made. Therefore, it is possible to avoid the occurrence of a situation in which recording with an excessive margin is left and an extra margin must be cut off during bookbinding, and the waste of recording paper can be reduced.

Embodiment Next, an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a word processor printer will be described with reference to the drawings.

The word processor shown in FIG. 2 has an integrated structure including a keyboard 2 and a printer 4, and a part of the keyboard 2 is provided with a liquid crystal display 6 having a predetermined number of digits.

The printer 4 mainly includes a carriage 10 which is guided by a guide bar 8 and is driven in the X-axis (horizontal) direction, and a platen 14 which is rotationally driven and sends a recording sheet 12 in the Y-axis (vertical) direction. is there. The carriage 10 holds a recording head 16 such as a wire dot head or a thermal head, and the recording head 16 performs a printing operation on the recording paper 12. The carriage 10 is driven by a carriage drive motor 18 shown in FIG. 3, and the platen 14 is driven by a platen drive motor.
20 and the recording head 16 is driven by an appropriate recording head driving device 22 according to its type.

The keyboard 2 includes various keys such as a character key 30 necessary for creating a sentence, a print key 32, a first booklet print key 34, a second booklet print key 36, and a cancel key 38. The functions of these keys will be described later.

The control circuit will be described with reference to FIG. This control circuit includes a central processing unit (CPU) 50, a program memory 52,
The computer is mainly composed of a work memory 54 and a text memory 56, and a common bus line 58 connecting them. A character generator 60, a keyboard driver 62, a printer driver 64 and a display controller 66 are further connected to the common bus line 58.

The printer driver 64 includes a carriage driver 68, a recording head driver 70 and a platen driver 72, and the carriage driving motor 18 and the recording head driving device 2 for these components.
2 and the platen drive motor 20 are connected respectively. Further, the keyboard 2 is connected to a keyboard driver 62, and data input by operating the various keys of the keyboard 2 is supplied to the work memory 54 and the text memory 56 via the keyboard driver 62. There is. Then, based on the document data stored in the text memory 56, the character generator 60 supplies the pattern data representing each character to the printer driver 64 and the display controller 66, and the printer driver 64 and the display controller 66 are supplied. The pattern data are stored in the respective built-in memories, and the recording head 16 is stored based on the stored data.
The recording mechanism such as and the display 6 are operated.

The input, printing and display of the document data are performed by the CPU 50 executing the program stored in the program memory 52 with the help of the work memory 54.

Of the programs stored in the program memory 52, a flowchart of a print processing program that is closely related to the present invention is shown in FIG.

First, in step S1 (hereinafter referred to as S1. The same applies to other steps), the key input waiting state is entered in step S2, and the normal display of the key input document data or storage in the text memory 56 is performed. The word processing is performed as another key processing of S11. Print key 3
When 2 is pressed, the process moves to S12 via S3 and the text memory
If there is no data in 56, alarm processing is executed in S14,
If there is data, normal memory printing is performed in S13, that is, printing is performed in the order of data stored in the text memory 56 with one sheet of the recording paper 12 as one page.

Also, when the first binding print key 34 is pressed, the text memory 56
If there is data in S, the bookbinding format printing from S6 onward through S4 and S5 (hereinafter, referred to as bookbinding printing), that is, printing processing with a pattern that is easy to bind later is performed.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIG.
12 (hereinafter, simply referred to as recording paper) is first folded in two in the order shown, and then folded in two at a second fold perpendicular to the first fold to make four folds. The second fold is stapled or the like. On the other hand, when the first fold is cut open to form an 8-page booklet as a whole, the bookbinding is facilitated. In this case, in the developed state of the recording paper shown in FIG. 6, the pages of the booklet are continuously arranged in order from the recording area indicated by to the recording area indicated by the number across the front and back sides (the figure shows a state of being turned around the horizontal axis). However, the recording areas indicated by ,,, are upside down before and after binding. More specifically, on the front surface side of the recording sheet, the recorded contents of the first page and the eighth page are adjacent to each other in the same recording direction with the second fold in between, and the first page and the eighth page are adjacent to each other. The recording contents of the fourth page and the recording content of the fifth page are adjacent to each other with the first fold in each of the eight pages and the second page and the seventh page on the back side. The recorded contents of the pages are back to back with the recorded contents of the first page and the eighth page, respectively, and the recorded contents of the third page and the sixth page are respectively the fourth page and the fifth page. The recording contents of the second page and the seventh page, and the recording directions of the third page and the sixth page are reversed upside down. Therefore, if printing is performed with the recording pattern having the arrangement and orientation shown in FIG. 6, the recorded contents will be continuous in the order of pages in the state bound in a booklet. Further, in the case of such bookbinding printing, the amount of data to be printed is determined so as to be within the entire page range of the booklet.

In S6, the recording data stored in the memory 56 is divided into eight recording data stored in the text memory 56 for each recording area corresponding to one page of the booklet to be bound on the recording paper. Data of delimiter codes A to H shown in FIG. 7 is inserted from the top as conceptually shown in FIG. Furthermore, in S7, between B and C (7th
Memory area indicated by diagonal lines in the figure), between D and F (also,
Memory area) and between G and H (same memory area), information (reversal data) for reversing the recording data by 180 degrees and printing is inserted.

Next, in S8, the printing process by the printer 4 is executed. First, the recording data stored in the memory area is printed in the upper left area on the front side of the recording paper as shown in FIG. 6, and the succeeding recording data is printed in the lower left area in the upside down direction by the inverted data. It This reverse printing is
As the recording paper is fed forward (upward in FIG. 6),
Printing starts from the last data of the recorded data of and ends at the first data. However, when printing is performed in both directions of the reciprocating movement of the carriage 10, the data does not always end with the head data. Then, after the recording paper is fed backward (downward in FIG. 6), the recording data of is printed in the normal direction in the upper right area, and the recording data of is printed in the same inverted direction as in the lower right area. It is.

When the printing on the front side of the recording paper is completed, the process proceeds to S9, and it is judged whether or not data is stored in the memory area delimited by the delimiter codes B and C shown in FIG. It is checked just in case that there is data to be printed up to the back side of the recording paper. If YES, S10 is executed and the message “Please turn over the paper” is displayed on the display 6.

In response to the display, the operator flips the recording paper around the horizontal axis to set the recording paper, and then presses the second bookbinding print key 36, the determination in S17 is YES and S18 is executed. That is, similar to S8, the print pattern shown on the right side of FIG. 6 is printed in the order of →→→, and the print data of is printed in reverse. Then S19
Is executed and the additional information such as the division code data and the reverse data accompanying the bookbinding printing is erased from the text memory 56. If the cancel key 38 is pressed without pressing the second bookbinding print key 36, the determination in S16 is YES.
Then, S17 and S18 are skipped, and the end processing of S19 is performed.

As shown in FIG. 5, when the recording paper on which the front and back sides are bound and printed is folded into four as shown in FIG. 5 and bound and cut, the recording data of items 1 to 3 are arranged in the same direction in that order. , It is easy to format it as a booklet.

As is clear from the above description, in this embodiment,
The text memory 56 constitutes data storage means for storing print data, and the carriage 10, the platen 14, the print head 16 and the carriage drive motor 18, the platen drive motor 20, the print head drive device 22, etc. for driving them constitute a printing mechanism. Also, the CPU 50 and the printer driver 64 constitute drive control means of the recording mechanism. Then, in the program memory 52, an area storing a program for inserting the delimiter code data and the inverted data in S6 and S7 when bookbinding printing is designated, and supplying the data to the printer driver 64 in S8 and S18. And the CPU 50 that issues a print command based on the program constitute a recording pattern control means.

In this embodiment, printing on the front side and the back side of the recording sheet is started by operating each of the first and second bookbinding print keys. Can also be

Also, the printing order can be changed as appropriate, for example, the sixth
In the figure, →→→ or →→→
Programs such as (and reverse printing) can also be built.

Further, although not shown, when binding as a booklet, 4
The present invention is also applicable when binding the corners (for example, the upper right corner) of the booklet in a folded state or in a state of collecting the divided small pieces.

In addition, the present invention can be variously modified and improved on the basis of the knowledge of those skilled in the art, such as application to a printer that records graphs and figures, a printer other than a word processor, and the adoption of various recording mechanisms having a known recording head such as a pen. It is possible to carry out in the provided manner.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing the external appearance of a word processor having a printer which is an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing its control circuit. FIG. 4 is a flow chart mainly showing a printing program deeply related to the present invention among the programs stored in the program memory thereof. FIG. 5 is an explanatory view showing a concrete example of binding the recording paper printed by the printing to a booklet, and FIG. 6 is a view showing the developed state together with the printing order. FIG. 7 is a conceptual diagram schematically showing the steps of inserting delimiter code data in the flowchart of FIG. 2: Keyboard, 4: Printer 10: Carriage, 12: Recording paper 14: Platen, 16: Recording head 32: Print key 34: First booklet print key 36: Second booklet print key 50: Central processing unit (CPU) 52 : Program memory 56: Text memory 64: Printer driver 68: Carriage driver 70: Recording head driver 72: Platen driver

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of front page (72) Inventor Naoko Unmo 9-35 Hotta-dori, Mizuho-ku, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Brother Industries, Ltd. (56) Reference JP-A-59-231686 (JP, A) JP Sho 60-204379 (JP, A) Actually opened Sho 59-113836 (JP, U)

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A data storage unit for storing input recording data such as characters, figures, and graphs, a recording mechanism for performing a recording operation on a recording sheet, and recording data stored in the data storage unit. A printer including a drive control unit for driving the recording mechanism based on the above, wherein the recording sheet folded in two at a first fold is further folded at a second fold perpendicular to the first fold, and the second fold is The data storage means stores the four front and back recording areas of the unfolded recording paper which should become the first to eighth pages when binding and opening the first fold and binding into a booklet of eight pages. On the front side, the recording data of the first page and the recording content of the eighth page are adjacent to each other in the same recording direction across the second fold, and The recorded contents of the fourth page and the fifth page are adjacent to each other with the first fold between the eighth page and the eighth page, respectively, while they are adjacent to the second page on the back side. The recorded contents of 7 pages are back to back with the recorded contents of 1st page and 8th page respectively, and the recorded contents of 3rd page and 6th page are 4th page and 5th page, respectively. And the recorded contents of the second page and the seventh page, and the recorded directions of the third page and the sixth page are reversed upside down, and the distribution is performed. A printer capable of easy bookbinding, comprising a print pattern control means for supplying print data to the drive control means.