JPH0361596B2 - - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Application of the Invention] The present invention relates to a tabular data insertion printing device, and more specifically, to a printing device that inserts and inserts other document data (specifically, tabular data) into document data to be printed. It relates to a printing device.

[Background of the invention]

As shown in FIG. 1, a document processing device such as a word processor has an input device 1 for inputting characters, codes, processing function specifications, etc., and character codes, table data, etc. input from this input device 1. A main storage device 2 and an auxiliary storage device 3 that store character fonts, programs, etc., a display device 4 that displays characters input from the input device 1 and the contents stored in the storage devices 2 and 3, and the storage device 2, A printing device 5 that prints the stored contents of No. 3, printing document data that controls each of the devices 1 to 5, and that is specified by input from the input device 1 and print instruction data included in the data. A control device 6 is provided which edits insert print data in the tabular data and outputs the edited data to the printing device 5 so as to be printed together with the character data in the print data.

In such a document processing device, as shown in FIG.
3 and 74, the operator uses the display device 4 to display the printed document data corresponding to the character strings 71 and 72 and the insertion print instruction codes 75 and 76 as shown in FIG. Display data is created using an insert print character string 77 that corresponds to insert print instruction codes 75 and 76 such as c, and is stored. When instructing printing, the data names shown in FIG. 2b and c are specified to obtain the printed document shown in FIG. 2a.

A data processing flowchart of the control device 6 at this time is shown in FIG. When the operator inputs from the input device 1 a print instruction, a designation of the document data name to be printed, and a table data name containing character string data to be inserted and printed, the control device 6 controls the block.
The print document data in Figure 2 b and the table data in Figure 2 c specified by 100 are read into the work area of the memory, then block 110 sets initial values such as the print line counter, and block 120 starts printing. Clear the row data buffer. Next, in block 130, data of the first print line is read from the document data to be printed, and the process moves to block 140, where it is determined whether or not an insertion print instruction code exists in the data of this print line. If the merge instruction code does not exist,
Moving to block 150, a character string 71 is printed based on the data of the print line. Then, in block 160, it is determined whether or not the document data has ended. In this example, since it has not ended, the process moves to block 170, updates the print line counter, and returns to block 120.

Block 120 clears the print line data buffer again, and the process moves to block 130 to read the second print line data from the document data. Since the data of this second print line is the merge print instruction code 75, the process moves to block 180 and it is determined whether or not the merge print data specified by the merge print instruction code 75 exists in the table data. , if it does not exist, it is regarded as a character string and the process moves to block 150, where the insertion print instruction code 75 is printed as is.

If the designated insert print data exists, the process moves to block 190, this data is read, and the process moves to block 150, where the character string 77 in this data is printed as the insert print character strings 73 and 74.

The above process is repeated until there is no more document data to print.

However, in such document processing devices,
Since the table data created by matching the character string 77 to be merged and printed with the merge print instruction codes 75 and 76 is used, such correspondence codes 75 and 76 are
It is not possible to merge and print table data without . Therefore, when it becomes necessary to merge and print existing table data, these table data must be re-created by associating them with the merge print instruction codes 75 and 76 as described above, and the merge print operation of the table data must be performed. was complicated and hot.

[Purpose of the invention]

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a table data insertion printing device that allows insertion printing by specifying existing table data as is without creating table data having an insertion print character string associated with such an insertion print instruction code. The goal is to propose the following.

[Summary of the invention]

The present invention allows the above-mentioned control device to search the tabular data using as a keyword a row number and/or column number existing in insert print instruction data in print document data corresponding to a row and/or column in the tabular data. means for reading out the merge print data;
means for inserting the merge print data read by the means into the print document data instead of the merge print instruction data; and means for printing the print document data into which the merge print data has been inserted by the printing device. The present invention is characterized in that the operator can perform merge printing of table data by instructing the contents of the merge print data using the row number and/or column number of the table data.

[Embodiments of the invention]

An example in which the present invention is applied to a word processor will be explained. The basic configuration of this word processor is the same as the block diagram shown in FIG. 1, and the feature of this embodiment is the data processing means provided within the control device 6.

Since the data processing means in the control device 6 in this embodiment is mainly composed of a computer, this will be explained below with reference to printing examples and data processing flowcharts.

FIG. 4 is a screen showing table data created as a target for merge printing, or specified as a target for merge printing from data that has already been created. Note that the row numbers and column numbers outside the margin are added for explanation purposes and are not displayed on the screen.

FIG. 5 shows print document data created for printing or specified as a target for printing from data that has already been created, with character strings 81, 82, 8
3, and insertion print instruction codes 84 and 85. The insertion print instruction codes 84 and 85 are
Merge printing marks 84a and 85a each indicate that merge printing is to be performed, and a row number and/or column number 8 of the table data as a keyword for searching the displayed data for data to be merge printed.
4b and 85b.

FIG. 6 shows a document printed using the above two data, which is composed of character strings 81, 82, 83 and insertion print character strings 86, 87.

The data processing function of the control device 6 for performing merge printing of table data as described above is illustrated in FIGS. 7 to 1.
This will be explained with reference to the data processing flowchart shown in FIG.

In block 210 of FIG.
The document to be printed, the contents of the insertion data, and the management information of the document and table structure specified by the input device 1 are read from the auxiliary storage device 4 or the memory 3 shown in FIG. 1 into the buffer area on this memory.
In block 220, initial settings such as a row counter and a work area at the time of insertion are performed. block 230
In this step, the row data buffer storing row data is cleared. This is to prevent old information from remaining in the row data buffer area. In block 240, the set line data on the buffer is transferred to the work area, starting from the line number set in block 220 and thereafter starting from the line number set in block 350. In block 250, a check is made to see if there is an insertion print mark in the data transferred to the work area. If block 250
If it is determined that no insertion print mark exists in the check at step 330, the process moves to block 330, where the data in the work area is printed.

If the merge print mark exists, it is checked in blocks 260 and 270 whether the keyword indicating the data to be merge printed after the merge print mark is a row designation or a column designation. Block 260 first checks to see if the keyword is a line. Since the line number is directly specified as a keyword, the number of characters for the keyword will vary depending on the size of the table data allowed for the merge print data, but the method of checking is to find the word indicating the line within the specified number of characters for the keyword. Just check if it exists. If a word indicating a line exists in the keyword, the process proceeds to block 280; otherwise, the process proceeds to block 270.

Block 270 uses the same method as block 260,
Check whether there is a word indicating a column in the keyword. If so, proceed to block 290. If it is determined in block 270 that the keyword does not indicate a column, then the keyword is neither a row nor a column, and is therefore not a valid keyword. Therefore, there is no merge print data for the keyword that follows this merge print mark, and the merge print mark is not treated as a control code, but as a normal character, and the same processing as when there is no merge print mark is performed. Then, the process moves to block 330, printing processing.

If it is determined in block 260 that the keyword indicates a row, the process moves to block 280 to check whether the indicated row exists in the table data as insert print data.

Similarly, the merge data for the keyword determined in block 270 to indicate a column is
A check is made at block 290 to see if it exists in the table data. This check is for block
This is done by comparing it with the table structure management information read in step 210.

When checking block 280, if the row indicated by the keyword does not exist in the table data,
The mail merge mark is treated as a normal character, and the printing process 330 is performed in the same way as when there is no mail merge mark.
Do this. A similar check is performed in block 290, and if the column indicated by the keyword does not exist in the table data, print processing 330 without insertion print mark is performed.

On the other hand, if the row and column indicated by the keyword exist in blocks 280 and 290, insert print data is obtained in blocks 300 and 310, respectively. At this time, if line data is specified as a keyword as insert print data, in block 300 character string data for one line of table data is obtained. However, if column data is specified as the merge print data as a keyword, the column data does not exist as a series of character strings on the buffer, but is scattered randomly on the buffer, so the block 310
Now you have to edit it back into a series of merge print data. This editing is performed based on information about the position on the buffer of the first row of the specified column, the number of characters in one line, and the number of characters in the specified column from the management information of the table structure.

The details of the processing in block 310 will be explained using FIG. First, in block 311, a line counter for creating inserted character string data is initialized. Block 312 performs initial clearing of the work area for creating merge print data. In block 313, a pointer indicating the position where each line of print data is set is initialized. block
In step 314, a position on the buffer is determined based on the line number set in block 311 or block 317 and the specified column number, and print data for the number of characters in the specified column is obtained from this position. In block 315,
Refer to the pointer set in block 313 and place block 314 in the merge print data creation work area.
Set the string print data obtained in . In block 316, it is determined whether the creation of insert print data for the specified column has been completed. If completed, the process advances to block 320 in FIG. 7, where the merge print data created in blocks 300 and 310 is inserted at the position of the merge print mark in the document data to be printed. At this time, if the merge print data is simply placed at the position of the merge print mark, if there is character string data to be printed after the merge print mark, that character string data will be destroyed. Therefore, in block 320, before placing the merge print data, it is necessary to save the character string data to be printed following the merge print mark. After the data is saved, the insert print data is inserted.

The details of the processing at block 320 will be explained using FIG. In block 321, the character string data after the merge print mark is moved to a save area in order to prevent it from being destroyed by inserting the merge print data. In block 322, the merge print data created as described above is inserted from the position of the merge print mark. block
323, in order to recover the saved character string data, the end of the characters after insertion is updated based on the position of the insertion print mark and the number of characters in the insertion print data. In block 314, the character end position updated in block 323 is referred to and the saved character string data is recovered.

With the above processing, insertion of the merge print data in block 320 is completed.

In this insertion process, if it is desired to insert each item of row data or column data at a certain interval, by setting tabs, frames, etc., each item is inserted at the desired interval.

Next, in block 330, the character string data created in block 320 is sent to a print line data buffer and printed. In block 330, the printing device shown in FIG. 1 performs printing based on the data sent to the line data buffer.
In block 340, a check is made to see if all of the specified print document data has been printed, and if it has been, the process is terminated, and if printing has not been completed, the line number is entered in block 350. is updated, and the process returns to block 230 to repeat the process described above.

In the above explanation, the row number or column number of a table is specified as a keyword for specifying merge print data, but it can also be treated as a keyword indicating a certain item by specifying a combination of rows and columns.
However, in this case, when specifying rows and columns, if you just specify X row and Y column after the merge print mark, the check in the process flow described above will only read the data in the previously specified row, and the row You end up printing data by merging it. Therefore, when specifying an item, specify it with a control sign after the mail merge mark to indicate that the item is specified, and check whether it is an item specification or a row or column specification. Process flow.

Regarding the data processing flow in this case, the 10th
This will be explained using figures. First, the block in Figure 10
250 (same as block 250 in FIG. 7), if the presence or absence of the merge print mark is found to be inserted, then in block 410, it is checked whether there is control code data for specifying an item after the merge print mark. do. If not, proceed to block 260 (same as block 260 in FIG. 7).
If control code data for item specification exists,
Moving to block 420, it is checked whether the specified item exists by comparing it with the table-structured management information. If the specified item does not exist, the process advances to block 320 (same as block 320 in FIG. 7).
If it exists, data of the specified item is acquired in block 430. The method of acquisition is similar to the method of creating column merge print data, and by adding the position of the specified column from the beginning of the row to the buffer position of the specified row, data for the specified item can be obtained. Then proceed to block 320.

Through the data processing described above, merge print data can be obtained when an item is specified.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, when table data is used as merge print data, it can be specified by the row number and/or column number of the existing table data, so you can newly edit the table data and create merge print data for merge print. The process of creating table data is no longer necessary,
Operator operations become easier. Furthermore, since the row or column designation number is used as a keyword, it becomes possible to designate a series of row-by-row and column-by-column data in existing table data as one merge print data.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Figures 1 to 3 are for explaining a conventional table data insertion printing device. Figure 1 is a block diagram of a document processing device, Figures 2 a to c are examples of print data, and Figure 3 is a block diagram of a document processing device. It is a data processing flowchart of a control device. 4 to 10 are for explaining an embodiment of the table data insertion printing apparatus of the present invention. FIG. 4 is an example of table data, FIG. 5 is an example of printed document data, and FIG. 6 is an example of printed document data. The document examples shown in FIGS. 7 to 10 are data processing flowcharts of the control device. 1... Input device, 2... Main storage device, 3... Auxiliary storage device, 4... Display device, 5... Printing device,
6...Control device, 250-290...Processing step for checking the presence or absence of merge print data, 30
0...Processing step of reading merge print data of rows from table data for mail merge printing, 310...Processing step of reading merge print data of columns from table data for mail merge printing, 320...Merge into print document data Processing step for inserting print data, 3
30...Print processing step.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An input device, a storage device that stores character codes, table data, character fonts, programs, etc. input from the input device, and a display device that displays characters input from the input device and the contents stored in the storage device. , a printing device that prints the contents stored in the storage device, and a printing device that controls each of the devices and print document data specified by input from the input device and a table specified by merge print instruction data included in the data. In a tabular data insert printing device, the control device edits insert print data in the data so as to print it together with character data in the print document data, and outputs the edited data to the printing device. means for reading the merge print data by searching the table data using a row number and/or column number existing in the merge print instruction data in the print document data as a keyword corresponding to the row and/or column in the print document data; means for inserting the merge print data read by the means into the print document data instead of the merge print instruction data; and means for outputting the print document data into which the merge print data has been inserted to the printing device. A table data insertion printing device characterized by the following.