JPH0753453B2 - Label printer - Google Patents

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a label printer, and more particularly to a label printer capable of emphasizing print characters on a label.

[Prior Art] In a label printer, a product name, unit price, etc. of a product to be printed on a label are set in advance in a memory. The price is calculated from the weight, and the product name, unit price, weight, price, etc. are printed on the label paper and the label is issued.

An example of the issued label has the format shown in FIG. In the figure, a is a product name, b is an auxiliary character, c is a processing date, an effective date, a product number, d is a bar code, e is a unit price, and f is
Is a weight, g is a price, h is a service name such as a store name and bills.

Among these characters, the product name a, the supplementary character b, and the service character h are for printing Chinese characters, so that a character generator having JIS first level and second level character numbers is required.

However, since the characters set in a commercially available character generator are thin fonts, in the case of printing a large number of characters on a small paper such as a label, the characters become fine and the printing is faint and difficult to see. Enlarged characters are required to print the product name.

For this reason, conventionally, label printing has been performed using a character generator that sets well-balanced enlarged characters and auxiliary characters for product names, and special font data for service characters.

However, with a special character generator like this, it takes a lot of time and effort to create font data, and it becomes remarkable when the number of characters increases.
Therefore, there is a problem that it takes time to manufacture and the cost is high.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In order to address this, a label that makes it easy to read characters is issued by using a commercially available character generator in which font data of JIS first level and second level characters is set. A printer is desired.

However, a known character enlargement method is, for example, a double enlargement method, which simply doubles and enlarges a standard character horizontally as shown in FIGS. 7 (a) and (b). However, when such an enlargement method is used, a double space is required for printing, the size is limited like a label, and there is a problem that it is not suitable for printing a relatively large number of characters. is there.

Further, as shown in FIGS. 8 (a) and 8 (b), there is also a method in which the same character is slightly shifted and is printed twice, but this method has a problem that the printing takes time and the label issuing speed decreases.

Especially when a line printer is used as a printer, there is also a problem that a large-scale mechanism must be added to move the head.

Therefore, the present invention is intended to provide a label printer which can print a legible character using a commercially available character generator without enlarging the character so much, and at the same time, does not reduce the label issuing speed.

[Means for Solving Problems] A first invention is to set a product name, a unit price, etc., calculate a price based on the weight from a weighing unit, and use a character generator to label the product name, unit price, weight, In a label printer that issues a label by printing service characters and the like together with price, shift means for horizontally shifting the font data read from the character generator by one dot, and font data and characters horizontally shifted by the shift means. Combines with the font data that is read from the generator and is not horizontally shifted, deletes the corresponding dots according to the arrangement of the dots in the horizontal direction of the font data that is read from the character generator, creates a print character, and outputs it to the print section. And an output control means for controlling.

The second invention is to set the product name, unit price, etc., calculate the price from the weight from the weighing unit, and use the character generator to print the product name, unit price, weight, price, etc. as well as service characters etc. on the label paper. In a label printer that issues a label, a shift unit that horizontally shifts the font data read from the character generator by one dot, font data horizontally shifted by this shift unit, and font data that is not horizontally shifted by the character generator. Output control that synthesizes and creates a print character by deleting the corresponding dots according to the horizontal dot arrangement and the vertical dot arrangement of the font data read from the character generator and outputs it to the printing unit. And means are provided.

[Operation] In the first invention, the font data read from the character generator is horizontally shifted, the horizontally shifted font data and the unshifted font data are combined, and the font data read from the character generator is combined. Since the printed characters are created by deleting the corresponding dots according to the arrangement of the dots in the horizontal direction, the characters are not enlarged and the vertical lines are emphasized so that the characters are easy to see.

In the second invention, the font data read from the character generator is horizontally shifted, the horizontally shifted font data and the unshifted font data are combined, and the font data read from the character generator in the horizontal direction is combined. Since the print characters are created by deleting the corresponding dots according to the dot arrangement and the dot arrangement in the vertical direction, the characters are not enlarged and the vertical lines are emphasized to make the characters easier to see.

Embodiments Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

In FIG. 1, 1 is a CPU that constitutes the main body of the control unit, 2 is a ROM in which program data for the CPU 1 to control each unit is stored, and 3 is a product code, product name, unit price, etc. set for each product, for example. RAM with table, processing date, memory for setting effective date, memory for storing accumulated weight and total amount of money for each product, memory for storing key input data, print data, display data, etc. Is.

4 is a scale interface for taking in weight data obtained by weighing from the scale 5, 6 controls a keyboard 7,
A keyboard controller 8 for fetching a key signal from the keyboard 7, a display controller 8 for controlling a display device 9 to display display data on the display device 9, and a printer 10 for printing.

The CPU 1 is electrically connected to the ROM 2, the RAM 3, the scale interface 4, the controllers 6, 8 and the printer 10 by the bus line 11.

The printing device 10 is provided with a sub CPU 12, and exchanges data with the CPU 1 via a printing unit interface 13. Further, the printer 10 includes a commercially available character generator 14, a print controller 15, a print buffer 16, a data converter 17, and a thermal head 18.
Is provided. The character generator 14
JIS first level and second level font data are set.

When the product code is input from the keyboard 7, the CPU 1 reads the corresponding product name and unit price from the table in RAM 3,
The processing date and effective date are read from the memory and set in RAM3 as print data. Data such as service characters are also set in RAM3 as print data. Further, when the weight data is taken in from the scale interface 4, the price is calculated from the unit price and the weight and set in the RAM 3 as print data.

The CPU 1 prints the print data thus set.
I am trying to supply to 10.

The sub CPU 12 replaces the print data fetched from the printing unit interface 13 with the font data of the character generator 14 and laterally shifts or enlarges it to store it in the print buffer 16.

The font data stored in the print buffer 16 is sent to a data conversion unit 17 for parallel / serial conversion, and is controlled by the print control unit 15 to send a signal from the data conversion unit 17 to the thermal head 18 for label printing. Printing is performed on paper.

The horizontal shift and expansion performed by the sub CPU 12 are performed as follows.

For example, if the font data "meat" is read from the character generator 14 as shown in FIG. 2A, the font data is horizontally shifted by 1 dot and the horizontally shifted font data is read from the character generator 14. An OR with the original font data is taken and combined, and stored in the print buffer 16 as font data with vertical lines emphasized as shown in FIG.

Further, in the case of the font data of "ant" as shown in FIG.
As shown in (b) of the figure, the P ₁ and P ₂ portions of (a) are crushed. However, if the horizontal dots are simply black “1” white “0” black “1”, the shift will be canceled as shown in FIG. 3 (c). Becomes a missing character and becomes insufficient. Therefore, in the present embodiment, the shift is canceled only when two black "1", white "0", and black "1" continue vertically.

Then, if (a) of FIG. 3 is horizontally shifted by one dot, it becomes as shown in (d) of FIG. 3, and vertical fonts are emphasized, and easy-to-read font data with no missing parts are obtained and stored in the print buffer 16. Become so.

Thus, the horizontal dots are "1", "0", and "1", and this is 2
When two consecutive characters are consecutive, it is possible to obtain clearer font data of characters by canceling the shift.

Further, in the case of the font data "barrel" as shown in FIG. 4 (a), if the shift is canceled only when two "1", "0", and "1" are consecutive, the result will be as shown in FIG. 4 (b). As shown in (a), the problem that the portion indicated by "." Therefore, the shift is canceled even when there is black “1” above and below white “0” and on the left and right.

As a result, horizontally shifted font data as shown in FIG. 4 (c) is obtained.

In this way, the horizontal dots are "1", "0", and "1", which are two in succession, and when there is a "1" at the top, bottom, left, and right of "0", the shift is canceled to make the font data of a clearer character. Can be obtained.

In the case of enlarging, for example, in the case of enlarging to double, first, as shown in (a) of FIG. 5, the enlarging is horizontally shifted by one dot, and the horizontally shifted font data and the lateral shift are applied. The OR with the font data not to be taken is combined, and stored in the print buffer 16 as enlarged font data in which vertical lines are emphasized as shown in FIG.

In the present embodiment having such a configuration, the thin font data read from the character generator 14 is shifted horizontally by 1 dot to become font data with vertical lines emphasized. The characters printed on the label paper by the head 18 are easy-to-read characters with vertical lines emphasized. Moreover, the size of the character is the character generator because it is only horizontally shifted by 1 dot.
It is almost the same as the one printed based on the 14 font data, and there is no risk that printing will not be possible on the paper.

Further, since the font data for emphasizing is created in the print buffer 16 and then printed by the thermal head 18, the printing operation can be performed only once, and the printing speed does not decrease. That is, the label issuing speed does not decrease.

Furthermore, when printing enlarged characters, the font data read from the character generator 14 is first enlarged and then horizontally shifted by one dot.
Even if there are dots of "1", "0" and "1", they are enlarged to "1", "1", "0", "0", "1" and "1". "1""1""0"
Since "1", "1", and "1" are always formed as the space portion "0", the space portion is not crushed in the enlarged character. Moreover, the data processing is simple because only the processing of enlarging and shifting by one dot is required.

In this respect, if the method of first shifting horizontally by 1 dot and enlarging as it is, there is a problem that the horizontal shift causes the space to be expanded and the space is crushed. Cumbersome data processing for detecting and canceling the dot array of "1", "0", and "1" is required. That is, the enlarged emphasis character can be obtained by a relatively simple data processing.

[Effects of the Invention] As described in detail above, according to the present invention, a commercially available character generator can be used to print easy-to-read characters without making the characters too large, and the label issuing speed may be reduced. There is no label printer available.

Further, it is possible to provide a label printer in which enlarged emphasized characters can be obtained by relatively simple data processing.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIGS. 1 to 5 show an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 is a block diagram, FIGS. 2, 3, and 4 are diagrams for explaining the process of creating an emphasized character. FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining an enlarged character creating process, FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of a label, and FIGS. 7 and 8 are diagrams for explaining a conventional emphasizing character creating process. 1 ... CPU, 2 ... ROM, 10 ... Printing device, 12 ... Sub CP
U, 14 ... Character generator, 16 ... Print buffer, 18 ... Thermal head.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A product name, unit price, etc. are set, a price is calculated based on the weight from the weighing section, and a character generator is used to print the product name, unit price, weight, price, etc. as well as service characters. In a label printer for issuing labels, a shift means for laterally shifting the font data read from the character generator by one dot, font data laterally shifted by the shift means, and a font read from the character generator and not laterally shifted And output control means for synthesizing the data with the data, deleting the corresponding dots according to the arrangement direction of the dots in the horizontal direction of the font data read from the character generator to create a print character, and outputting the print character to the printing unit. A label printer characterized by that. 2. A product name, unit price, etc. are set, the price is calculated from the weight from the weighing section, and a character generator is used to print the service name etc. on the label paper together with the product name, unit price, weight, price, etc. In a label printer for issuing labels, a shift means for laterally shifting the font data read from the character generator by one dot, font data laterally shifted by the shift means, and a font read from the character generator and not laterally shifted Creates a print character by synthesizing data with the data, deletes the corresponding dots according to the horizontal dot arrangement and vertical dot arrangement of the font data read from the character generator, and outputs it to the printing unit. A label printer provided with output control means for controlling the label printer.