JPH035316B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Technical Field) The present invention relates to a printing device such as an electronic typewriter that uses a microprocessor, and particularly to one in which the amount of carriage movement can be changed for each character.

(Prior Art) In recent years, with the development of microprocessors, printing devices such as typewriters have changed from conventional mechanical or electromagnetic mechanical type to electronic type, and many so-called electronic typewriters have been proposed. There is. Electronic typewriters have a right margin alignment function and a proportional spacing function, but these functions have been difficult to achieve with anything other than electronic typewriters.

The proportional spacing function, which is directly related to the present invention, will now be described. Conventional mechanical typewriters have always been designed with the ability to print 10 characters per inch (so-called 10 pitch) or 12 characters per inch (so-called 12 pitch); The amount of carriage movement immediately after printing is 1/
It is fixed at either 10 inches or 1/12 inches. However, with electronic typewriters, the amount of carriage movement can be changed according to each character using proportional spacing, so the characters in the printed document are beautifully arranged.

Early electronic typewriters provided only one type of proportional spacing type for each electronic typewriter.

However, in recent years, there has been a demand for different proportional spacing for a plurality of typefaces. In other words, proportional spacing for a type group slightly larger than the conventional type area based on 10 characters per inch (10 pitch), and a type group slightly smaller than the type area based on 12 characters per inch (12 pitch). There is a need for an electronic typewriter that can be used with both proportional spacing and proportional spacing.

(Objective) In view of the above-mentioned points, an object of the present invention is to configure, in particular, a means necessary for applying appropriate proportional spacing to a plurality of groups of typefaces having different sizes using hardware. An object of the present invention is to provide a printing device that can apply fine proportional spacing to each printed character simply by adding this hardware to a conventional printing device such as an electronic typewriter.

(Example) Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an example of a printing device of the present invention, such as an electronic typewriter, where SEL is a selection switch for selecting a reference pitch in proportional spacing, and PSM corresponds to each type of a group of characters in a printing font. This is a read-on memory that serves as a pitch table in which the amount of movement of a carriage (not shown) is stored in advance. The outputs of the selection switch SEL and the pitch table PSM are supplied to an adder ADD, and the output of this adder ADD is supplied to the microprocessor MPU via the data bus DB.

The microprocessor MPU performs calculations and logical judgments for print processing, and controls each component such as the pitch table PSM connected to these buses via the data bus DB and address bus AB. MEM is a memory having a program memory and a work memory, and I/O is an input/output device such as a keyboard or a printer. Here, since the control method centered on the microprocessor MPU in the electronic typewriter is well known, its explanation will be omitted.

Figure 2 shows the contents of the pitch table PSM,
The basic unit of type movement is 1/60 inch. For example, for a character "k" whose character width is 5/60, that is, the same amount of movement as the standard pitch of 12 pitches, if the character "k" is printed 12 times, the total will be 5 x 12 = 60. Can move 1 inch,
In this case, content=5. Furthermore, characters with narrow character widths, such as the letters "i" and "j", are set to 3/60 inches and the amount of movement is smaller than the standard pitch, while characters with wide character widths, such as the character "m", are set to 6/60 inches as the standard pitch. Increase the amount of movement compared to pitch.

Now, for example, as a standard pitch for a carriage.
If a 12-pitch type group is installed, set the selection switch SEL to the "12" position on the scale.
At this time, the logical value of the output from the selection switch SEL becomes "0", and the logical value applied to the adder ADD becomes "0". The microprocessor MPU is
The address bus is used to determine the amount of carriage movement of any desired character in the group of characters, such as "a".
When pitch table PSM is accessed via AB, the desired displacement is read from pitch table PSM and applied to adder ADD. Therefore,
The desired movement amount stored in the pitch table PSM and the logical value "0" from the selection switch SEL are added by the adder ADD, and the added output is read into the microprocessor MPU via the data bus DB. . However, the microprocessor
The MPU controls the carriage so that the amount of movement of the type is obtained according to the output value of the adder ADD.

On the other hand, when a 10-pitch type group is mounted on the carriage as a reference pitch, the selection switch SEL is set to the scale "10" position. At this time, the logical value of the output of the selection switch SEL is “1”
As mentioned above, the microprocessor MPU
When accessing the Pitch Table PSM,
The output of the adder ADD becomes a value larger by "1" than the output of the pitch table PSM. Next, the microprocessor MPU operates the adder ADD mentioned above.
The output of the printer is read and the carriage is controlled so that the type can be moved according to the output value. Note that conventional techniques can be applied to the movement of the carriage itself, so a description thereof will be omitted here.

In this example, the selection switch SEL was used as a selection means to select the typeface of the typefaces attached to the carriage, but instead of this, a sensor could be used to automatically determine the font typeface of the typefaces attached to the carriage. However, the determination output may be supplied to the adder ADD. Further, in this example, the case of two types of fonts has been described, but it goes without saying that the number of fonts can be easily expanded to three or four types.

(Effects) As explained above, according to the present invention, the means necessary for applying appropriate proportional spacing to a plurality of types of typeface groups having different size of typeface can be configured with simple hardware. be able to. Therefore, by adding this hardware to a conventional printing device such as an electronic typewriter, a printing device can be obtained that can apply fine proportional spacing to each printed character.
Furthermore, since the printing device of the present invention requires only a small amount of hardware to be added to the conventional printing device, the overall manufacturing cost can be kept low.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of the printing apparatus of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of the contents of the pitch table shown in FIG. SEL...Selection switch, PSM...Pitch table (read only memory), ADD...Adder,
MPU...Microprocessor, AB...Address bus, DB...Data bus, MEM...Memory,
I/O...Input/output device.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A printing device having a movable carriage on which a plurality of character groups are mounted, comprising: a storage means for storing a reference movement amount of the carriage corresponding to each character of the character group; a designating means for specifying, for each of the type groups, an increase in the amount of movement of the carriage relative to the reference amount of movement; and a reference amount of movement stored in the storage means corresponding to the type group used for printing; , an adding means for adding the amount of movement specified by the specifying means, and a control means for moving the carriage by the amount of movement outputted from the adding means.