JPH09123381A - Composition style deciding and supporting method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To make it possible to compose which is easy to be read and no failure in form even by a beginner. SOLUTION: The method for deciding and supporting a composition style comprises the steps of inputting editing conditions necessary in the case of composing (S10), selecting the candidate of the style to be easily read from a rule of experience according to the conditions (S12), reading an original document to be composed (S14), actually feeding it to the candidate of the style (S16), and then evaluating the excess or insufficiency of the number of lines and most or least frequency of a blank part for the candidate of the style (S20). As a result, the decision of the style which is easily read can be automated.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method for automatically or semi-automatically performing typesetting required in a pre-printing step, and more particularly, to determining a typesetting style finally by using a personal computer or the like. Regarding how you can. INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY The present invention can be used in a typesetting process when producing a printed matter such as a book mainly composed of characters.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, when printing a book, a magazine, a pamphlet, etc., it is necessary to typeset before printing. Traditionally, such typesetting has been done mainly by experts.
Recently, document typesetting devices such as DTP (Desktop Publishing) have become popular. DTP systems often have built-in layout support programs,
The editor interactively looks at the screen, such as the number of columns in one page, horizontal or vertical composition, or the number of characters in a line.
You can specify the so-called typesetting style. D
With the advent of TP, the time required for typesetting has been greatly reduced.

While DTP aims to improve work efficiency by interactive processing, efforts are being made to reduce processing time by batch processing called batch composition. Here, if the target of the typesetting consists only of sentences, in batch typesetting, the information about the typesetting style is embedded in the header part of each sentence. Since the document and style are determined and printing is possible, such a simple format can be processed in the editing terminal in a very short time.
It is possible to optimize the total work time.

As described above, both the typesetting support by DTP and the batch processing by batch typesetting improve the typesetting efficiency, but in reality, they cannot be fully used without knowledge and skill of typesetting. For example, even if the DTP displays the options in an interactive manner, it is not easy for a person who is experienced in typesetting to know which one of the styles should be selected. Even in the case of batch typesetting, sufficient experience is required in regard to what typesetting style makes a legible printed matter before knowledge of software.

[0005]

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In other words, it is difficult to determine a typesetting style that is skillless and easy to read, even with the current efforts. In order to solve this problem, a collection of styles according to use has recently been marketed. Examples of applications include advertising in automobiles, leaflets for supermarkets, product catalogs, contracts, and the like. By selecting a style from these style collections, even beginners can typeset, but the following issues still remain.

(1) Trial and error is unavoidable, and it takes a long time to select the optimum typesetting style. (2) Even if it seems to be the optimum style, it is easy to read if text is actually poured and temporary typesetting is performed. It is not always possible to make things (3) Similarly to (2), if you try to typeset temporarily, the text may not fit on the specified number of pages.

The present invention has been made to solve these problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a method that enables even beginners to perform typesetting that is easy to read and has no deficiencies in format.

[0008]

According to the present invention, there is provided a document input step of inputting an original document to be formatted, a condition input step of inputting editing conditions of the formatting, and a style of style suitable for the input editing conditions. , A style selection step of selecting from a style holding means that holds a typesetting style that is easy to read in advance, a typesetting simulation step of inserting the original document into the selected typesetting style to perform temporary typesetting, and the validity of the typesetting simulation. The evaluation process of evaluating is included.

Here, the "original document" means a document containing at least characters. The "editing condition" is a condition designated at the time of typesetting, and is, for example, the size of paper, the number of columns, the direction of character sets, the total number of pages, or the like. On the other hand, the "typesetting style" refers to the arrangement of each element to be printed, and also includes the format. It may be said that the information regarding these configurations is obtained by excluding each material to be printed. It should be noted here that, for example, the word “horizontal composition” may be an editing condition or an attribute of the composition style.

According to this configuration of the present invention, first, an original document to be formatted is input. Next, the editing conditions that are the conditions for typesetting this are input.

Next, in the style selection step, a typesetting style that matches the input editing conditions is selected. The selection is performed, for example, by searching a style database that stores styles. It is desirable to select multiple typesetting styles in order to retain the latter selectivity. Further, it is desirable that the style database holds a typesetting style suitable for various editing conditions for each editing condition.

If the typesetting style is selected, temporary typesetting is performed. “Temporary typesetting” refers to typesetting that is performed in an uncertain state in order to confirm how the final printing will be performed. When a plurality of typesetting styles are selected, temporary typesetting is also performed a plurality of times for the plurality of styles. In this provisional typesetting, it is desirable to make all necessary considerations for typesetting generally called "letter typesetting", for example, narrowing the pitch of katakana, half-width processing of the part where symbols are continued, and applying prohibition rules. When the typesetting simulation is completed, the validity of the simulation result is evaluated. In the typesetting simulation process, it is not always necessary to display the result of the typesetting simulation on a monitor or the like.

In the present invention, the editing condition is a part of various conditions required for typesetting, and the style selecting step is performed by combining the character size, the line feed amount, and the number of filling characters of one stage. It is also possible to select a typesetting style suitable for the editing condition based on the above. This is because some combinations of these three elements are empirically considered to have high readability. Since only a part of all the editing conditions required for typesetting need to be determined as in the conventional art, it is possible to improve work efficiency and automatically select a typesetting style that is easy to read.

Further, in the present invention, the evaluation step may evaluate whether the total number of printed lines is insufficient or insufficient as a result of the typesetting simulation. For example, when "just one page" is given as the editing condition, for example, if the typesetting style A has 3 lines and the typesetting style B has 5 lines, the typesetting style A has a better evaluation result.

As another aspect, the evaluation step may evaluate the amount of blank space associated with a paragraph line found as a result of the typesetting simulation. Here, the "paragraph line" refers to the end line of each paragraph. The margin may be determined, for example, from the ratio of the number of characters included in the line and the number of filling characters in the line. In terms of readability, if there are too many margins, it gives the impression that the space is empty,
If the amount is too small, the entire paper surface becomes too clogged to give a feeling of blockage, which is not preferable. Therefore, in the present invention, the margin of the paragraph line is evaluated after considering the readability based on an empirical rule.

In the present invention, instead of the evaluation step of evaluating the validity of the typesetting simulation result, a display step of displaying the result may be provided. In this case, the operator looks at the displayed result and decides whether or not to adopt the selected typesetting style.

[0017]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT A preferred embodiment for carrying out the present invention will now be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram that can be used to implement the typesetting style decision support method of the present invention. Each configuration will be described.

(1) Document input unit 2 This is a structure for inputting an original document to be formatted.
Here, it is assumed that the original document consists only of characters. Specifically, scanning input by a character type device such as a word processor, input from a magnetic storage device, and the like can be considered.

(2) Condition input section 4 The editing condition is different for each original document to be printed. Therefore, the editing condition is input via the condition input unit 4. The conditions may be input one by one from the keyboard or may be interactively selectable.

(3) Style database 6 A large number of examples of styles that are easy to read are held based on the rule of thumb of typesetting. Since various editing conditions exist in typesetting, it is assumed that styles are classified and registered according to those editing conditions.

For example, the number of easy-to-read columns and the size of the top and bottom are different depending on the size of the paper. At this time, it is assumed that there are sheet sizes “B5”, “A4”, etc. as editing conditions, and recommended styles are stored for each of these.

(4) Typesetting simulation section 8 Performs a typesetting simulation. That is, the condition input unit 4
Using the editing conditions input from the above as a search key, a typesetting style that matches the editing conditions is selected from the style database 6. Then, the original document is applied (flowed) to the selected typesetting style. This is temporary typesetting. When multiple composition styles are selected, temporary composition is performed for each composition style.

(5) Simulation evaluation unit 10 Evaluates the quality of the result of temporary typesetting. The evaluation target is the excess or deficiency of the total print line number or the number of characters included in the paragraph line, as described later.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing each step when performing the typesetting using the system of FIG. As shown in the figure, first, in S10, the editing conditions are read.
Here, it is assumed that the editing condition is “B5, 2 columns, horizontal composition”. Subsequently, the typesetting style is selected in S12. At this point, the original document to be formatted is not referred to yet, and an easy-to-read typesetting style is searched and selected only in accordance with the read editing conditions. This typesetting style becomes a final typesetting style candidate. A plurality of typesetting styles may be selected.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the attributes of the typesetting style selected according to the editing conditions of this time. As shown in the figure, three typesetting styles A, B, and C are selected here. Each typesetting style is "character size""column number of lines"
It is defined by a combination of "and the number of characters in one step". Since the "line feed amount" is determined when the "number of rows in a row" is determined, these may be considered to be substantially the same parameters. The number on the right end of the figure represents the maximum number of characters that can be written on one page in each style.

As shown in the figure, the character size is 12Q,
It is 12.7Q or 13Q. These character sizes are generally used in the body of a document and are empirically readable. Corresponding to these sizes, the amount of line feed and the number of characters in one step are also determined from empirical rules. For example, under the condition "B5, 2 columns, horizontal composition",
When the character size is 12Q, the number of characters in one line is 3
It is considered to be most readable when 0 and the number of rows of columns is 25, and this is selected as the typesetting style A.

Next, in S14, the original document is read. Here, for example, a text format file may be read. After that, the typesetting simulation is performed in S16. During the simulation, the original document read in S14 is actually poured into the selected typesetting style. Here, various processes that have been conventionally performed to improve readability, such as narrowing the katakana pitch, matching the right end of the end of each line, and evenly allocating, based on the prohibition rules. , So-called “exit” and “enter” of characters.
In order to perform these processes, the final image of the typesetting cannot be obtained unless the original document is actually poured. If there are multiple selected composition styles, S
18, the simulation is repeated.

After the temporary typesetting, a simulation evaluation is performed in S20. Here, the number of excess and deficient lines and the margins of paragraph lines are evaluated for each of the typesetting styles A to C. Here, it is assumed that, as a result of the typesetting simulation, it is found that the number of characters of the original document is equivalent to 1150 characters. The reason for "equivalent" is that the number of characters in the original document is generally different from the number of characters at the time of printing due to the above-described eviction process.

[1] Evaluation of excess and deficiency lines The maximum number of characters and 1150 characters in each typesetting style, and 1
As a result of considering the number of column closings, the number S of excess and deficient lines is as follows.

S _A = −5 S _B = −2 S _C = + 3 For example, the number S _A of −5 causes a blank space of 5 lines at the end of the paper when the original document is poured into the typesetting style A. It is shown that.

[2] Evaluation of Blanks Associated with Paragraph Lines Here, the evaluation parameter V is defined by the following formula.

V = (number of paragraph lines having 3 or less characters)
/ (Number of all paragraph lines) Here, it is assumed that the value of V corresponding to the typesetting styles A to C is as follows.

V _A = 0.1 V _B = 0.3 V _C = 0.05 Here, it should be noted that in order to accurately obtain the value of V, S
It is necessary to perform 16 simulations with high accuracy. In the simulation evaluation process of this embodiment,
The optimum typesetting style is judged based on these evaluation values. In this embodiment, the following three determination conditions are introduced as an example.

(Condition 1) S ≦ 0 (Condition 2) V <0.2 (Condition 3) When both Conditions 1 and 2 are satisfied, S is close to 0 where S _{A to} S _C and By referring to V _{A to} V _C , it can be seen that the typesetting style A satisfies the three conditions. As a result, the typesetting style A is finally selected in S22.

The above is the outline of the present embodiment. Once the final typesetting style is determined, printing can be performed through the conventional steps.

The following applications or modifications can be considered for this embodiment.

(1) The above condition 2 was introduced in order to avoid a situation where it becomes difficult to read due to too many blanks. In order to avoid the situation where there are too few spaces, the value of V may be set to 0.05>V> 0.2.

(2) In this embodiment, the editing condition is "B
However, this may of course be under different conditions. As an example, "B5" may be simply input. In this case, in the typesetting style selection step of S12, the number of columns that is the most readable when the paper size is B5 is searched and selected. Therefore, a format or the like that is not specified as an editing condition is used as one of the elements that determines the typesetting style as necessary. As another example, a case where only the total number of characters of the original document is given as the editing condition can be considered. In this case, in S12, a large number of typesetting style candidates that are easy to read are selected according to various paper sizes. As described above, the present invention is characterized in that the typesetting can be performed by designating only a part of the conditions necessary for the typesetting.

(3) In this embodiment, three typesetting styles are selected in S12. However, in reality, it is considered that the editing conditions are too complicated and the corresponding typesetting style may not be registered. In this case, the editing conditions are deleted while searching, and the corresponding typesetting style is registered to enhance the database.

(4) In the present embodiment, the sheet size is given as an example of the item of the editing condition, but it is needless to say that it is not limited thereto. The size of the area frame arranged on the page can also be adopted as an item of the editing condition. At this time, conditions such as the area frame size, the number of rows in the frame, and the number of lines may be set.

(5) In this embodiment, the quality of the result of the temporary typesetting is evaluated by the simulation evaluation section 10.
However, the simulation evaluation unit 10 may not be provided, and the result of temporary typesetting by the typesetting simulation unit 8 may be displayed on a monitor or the like (not shown). In this case, the worker may determine whether or not to adopt the selected typesetting style after viewing the displayed result of the temporary typesetting.

[0043]

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to automatically select a typesetting style that is empirically easy to read, and apply the original document to this to perform typesetting. Therefore, even an operator with little experience in typesetting can find the optimum typesetting style in a short time.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram that can be used to implement a typesetting style decision support method of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing each step when performing typesetting using the system of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing attributes of a typesetting style selected according to the editing conditions of the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

2 document input section, 4 condition input section, 6 style database, 8 typesetting simulation section, 10 simulation evaluation section.

Continuation of front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification number Office reference number FI Technical indication location G06T 11/60 G06F 15/62 325A (72) Inventor Hideaki Kitamura 4th, Horikawa-dori Temple, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto Tenjin Kitamachi No. 1 1 Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A document input process for inputting an original document to be formatted, a condition input process for inputting editing conditions of the formatting, and a formatting style that complies with the input editing conditions are set in advance in a readable formatting style. A style selection step of selecting from the style holding means held, a typesetting simulation step of performing the temporary typesetting by pouring the original document into the selected typesetting style, and an evaluation step of evaluating the validity of the result of the typesetting simulation, A typesetting style decision support method including: 2. The typesetting style decision support method according to claim 1, wherein the editing condition is a part of various types of conditions necessary for typesetting, and the typesetting style is a character size and a line. Feed amount, and 1
A typesetting style decision support method, characterized in that the typesetting style is stored in the form of a combination of the number of line closing characters, and the style selecting step selects a typesetting style that meets the editing conditions in the form of this combination. 3. The typesetting style decision support method according to claim 1, wherein the evaluation step evaluates the excess or deficiency of the total number of lines to be printed which is found as a result of the typesetting simulation. Style decision support method. 4. The typesetting style decision support method according to claim 1, wherein the evaluation step evaluates a margin amount associated with a paragraph line found as a result of a typesetting simulation. Style decision support method. 5. The typesetting style decision support method according to claim 1, further comprising a display step of displaying a typesetting simulation result instead of the evaluation step.