JPH0969088A - Tabular data processor - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) Abstract: A tabular data processing device for creating, editing, and printing tabular data makes it easy to capture a print image during printing. A print management unit is provided that determines the size of a cell in a table to be printed according to a designated number of vertical and horizontal cells to be stored on one page of paper. in the case of,
If the amount of cell data is large, only part of it can be printed. Therefore, the size of the character is further determined so that the described content can be accommodated in the determined cell size.
Since the number of cells to be contained in one page of paper is specified only in the vertical (or horizontal) number, the vertical (or horizontal) size of the cell is determined. Next, the horizontal (or vertical) size of the cell is determined so that the maximum number of characters of the cell data in the table can be accommodated. In the above cases, the print management means
When the table to be printed does not fit on one page of paper, a mark indicating that there is an adjacent page is attached.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an apparatus for creating / editing and printing tabular data (referred to as a tabular data processing apparatus). In particular, it relates to a printing method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art FIG. 8 shows the concept of tabular data processing.
Examples of tabular data are tabular data handled by spreadsheet software, a state transition table used to create software, and the like.

The tabular data represents a plurality of related items as vertical or horizontal columns (hereinafter referred to as cells) of the table. As shown in FIG. 8, data is a table format that determines the format of the table (by array of pointers)
And the description contents (cell data) of the table for each cell. Each pointer in the table format indicates the position where the corresponding cell data exists. In addition, there are management data for displaying on a display device and the like, and management data for printing.

The number of cells in the table is not fixed, but increases or decreases as design and processing progress. Even if it increases or decreases, there is no problem in handling the table itself, and when displaying the table on the display screen, page division is not necessary even for a large table. By scrolling, the format of the table format can be seen, and only a part of the cell data or a part designated separately is displayed, and the whole cell data is displayed in another window when designated.

However, when printing it on paper, it is necessary to divide the page because the size of the paper is fixed. In the conventional printing method in the tabular data processing device, printing is performed based on the number of characters that can be described in each cell. In this case, it was difficult to know how many pages the whole table would be and where to divide it depending on the character size at the time of printing and the size of the printing paper.

[0006]

Therefore, there is a problem that it is not possible to perform easy-to-see and efficient allocation. For example, when printing is performed over a plurality of pages, the margins are large on the right edge or the lower side of the page, and it is difficult to see and paper is easily wasted. For example, if you have set up to print up to 5 cells in the vertical direction and 3 cells in the horizontal direction in one page, if you print the table with 6 cells in the vertical direction and 4 cells in the horizontal direction as it is, you can print it vertically as shown in FIG. A page with only one column is created for one cell or one horizontal cell. Even if it is attempted to print this on one page or divided into four pages of three cells vertically and two cells horizontally, the designation is troublesome.

An object of the present invention is to make it easy to capture a print image by specifying the number of vertical and horizontal cells in one page at the time of printing, regardless of the character size or paper size at the time of printing.

[0008]

According to the present invention, in a tabular data processing device for creating, editing and printing tabular data, printing is performed in accordance with a specified number of vertical and horizontal cells to fit on one page of paper. A print management unit that determines the size of the cell of the table to be printed is provided.

Since the number of cells to be stored in one page is fixed, the vertical size and horizontal size of the cells can be calculated from the print range of the paper. The print management unit determines the vertical and horizontal sizes of the cell, and determines the number of characters to be printed in the cell from the character size and the like.

In the case of (1), if the amount of cell data is large, only a part of it can be printed. Therefore, the print management unit further determines the size of the character so that all the description contents can be accommodated in the determined cell size. If there is a cell with a large amount of cell data, the size of the character will be smaller, but the entire description can be printed.

Since the number of cells to be contained in one page of paper is specified only by the number of vertical (or horizontal) lines, the print management means determines the vertical (or horizontal) size of the cells accordingly.
Next, the horizontal (or vertical) size of the cell is determined so that the maximum number of characters of the cell data in the table can be accommodated. This determination may be made for each horizontal direction (or vertical direction) or for the entire table. Even if there is a cell with a large amount of cell data, the entire description can be printed without changing the size of the characters.

In the above case, the print management means puts a mark indicating that there is an adjacent page when the table to be printed cannot fit on one page of paper. This makes it easier to see how the printed tables are adjacent.

[0013]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention. Hereinafter, embodiments will be described with reference to the drawings.

The hardware shown in FIG. 1 is a processor 20,
It is a general workstation or personal computer including a memory 10, a disk device 30, a keyboard 40, a display 50, and a printing device 60. In order to process tabular data, a program-based table creation / editing unit 1, a display management unit 2, and a print management unit 3 are provided on the memory 10. The table format data created by the user through the table creation / editing unit 1 is stored in the disk device 30 as a table format 1f, cell data 1d, display management data, and print management data. When changing / updating tabular data, the disk unit 30 to the memory 10
Read it out and process it. When creating / updating tabular data, the display management unit 2 performs a process of displaying on the display device based on the display management data 2d. When printing tabular data, the print management unit 3 performs processing for printing on the printing device 60 based on the print management data 3d. Below, based on the flowchart of the print management data forming process shown in FIG.
The print processing will be described.

(1) Invention of Claim 1: When printing is instructed, the print management unit 3 determines the number of vertical and horizontal cells to be printed on one page of the printing paper from the print setting value and within the printing paper. The range of printing the table and the size of characters used for printing are acquired from the printer setting values and format information, and the size of one cell is calculated from the acquired values. Find the number of lines and characters that can be written in a cell. These values are summarized as print management data 3d. Unless otherwise specified, the print management data read from the disk device is used as it is. Based on this data, the table data created by the user (table format 1f, cell data 1d) is printed.

For example, as shown in FIG. 3 (1), a table stored in four pages is edited, and even if the size of the table is increased by one row and one column, it is specified that the number of vertical and horizontal cells is increased. As a result, as shown in Fig. 3 (2), the same 4
Can fit on page. If the designation is not changed, there will be 9 pages as shown in FIG.

(2) The invention according to claim 2: When the description amount in the column (cell) is large, there may occur a cell in which the entire description content cannot be printed by the above method. In this case, printing is performed by calculating the character size such that all the description content can be printed from the size of the cell that cannot be printed and the description amount of the cell.

For example, when printing a table having cells that cannot be printed as shown in FIG. 4A, all such cells are listed (FIG. 4B). A cell having the largest description amount is found (FIG. 11C), and a character size is calculated so that all the description contents of the cell can be printed (FIG. 11D). Print the table using the calculated font size.

As described above, even for a table that cannot be printed in a cell due to the large amount of description, the entire description content can be printed by using this method. (3) Invention of Claim 3: In the above (1), when only one of the number of cells in the vertical direction or the horizontal direction is designated, the print management unit designates the value which is not designated. It is calculated from the weighted value, the printing area on the printing paper, the character size, and the description amount in the field. The table is printed from these values and the table data.

An example will be described in which the number of cells in the vertical direction is omitted and only the number of cells in the horizontal direction is designated as shown in FIG. First, as shown in (a) of the figure, from the horizontal size of the print range of the table in one page and the number of cells in the specified horizontal direction,
The horizontal size Cx of one cell is calculated. The vertical size of the cell can be obtained from this value, the character size used for printing, and the description amount in each cell, as shown in Fig. 2 (b). You can ask for the largest of the. As shown in FIG. 6C, the maximum vertical size in the same line is calculated for all lines, and the table is printed.

Even when the number of cells in the horizontal direction is omitted and only the number of cells in the vertical direction is designated, printing can be performed by similarly obtaining the horizontal size of the cells. In this way, by designating only the number of cells in either the vertical direction or the horizontal direction, it is possible to print all the cell data even if the character size is fixed.

(4) Invention of Claim 4: FIG. 6 is shown by extending the ruled line of the table in order to indicate that there is an adjacent page when the table extends over a plurality of pages in the above-mentioned case. Here is an example.

[0023]

As described above, according to the present invention,
When printing a table, it is easy to avoid unnecessary pages that are mostly blank, regardless of the size of the printing paper, the size of characters, or the content of the table. You can

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of print management data formation processing.

[Fig. 3] Printing example when the number of cells in the table increases

[Figure 4] Processing when there is a large amount of description in a cell

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram when the number of cells in the horizontal direction in the page is specified.

[Fig. 6] Example of presence / absence indication of adjacent pages

FIG. 7 Conventional table printing method

FIG. 8 is a conceptual diagram of tabular data processing.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 Memory 20 Processor 30 Disk device 40 Keyboard 50 Display 60 Printing device 1 Table making / editing section 1d Cell data 1f
Table format 2 Display management section 2d Display management data 3 Print management section 3d Print management data

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A device for creating / editing / printing tabular data, wherein the size of a cell of a table to be printed is determined according to a specified number of vertical and horizontal cells to be fit on one page of paper. A tabular data processing device having print management means. 2. The tabular data processing device according to claim 1, wherein the print management means further determines a character size so that all the description contents can be accommodated in the determined cell size. A tabular data processing device characterized by: 3. A device for creating / editing / printing tabular data, the vertical or horizontal size of a cell of a table to be printed according to a specified number of vertical or horizontal cells to be fit on one page of paper. A table format data processing device having print management means for determining the horizontal size or vertical size of a cell so that all the description contents of the table can be accommodated. 4. The tabular data processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the print management means indicates that there is an adjacent page when the table to be printed does not fit on one page of paper. A tabular data processing device characterized by marking.