Printing apparatus

Abstract

The present invention provides a printing device that can reduce the effort required to replace pages in a printed document when reprinting a print job after some pages have been corrected. [Solution] When the control unit 21 instructs the engine unit 22 to print based on a print job in which some pages of a completed print job have been modified, the control unit 21 instructs the engine unit 22 to print only the pages from the marker page up to the page that has a difference from the completed print job.

Description

[[Technical Field]]

[0001] The present invention relates to a printing apparatus. [[Background Art]]

[0002] In a printing apparatus, reprinting may be performed based on a print job obtained by modifying some pages of a print job for which printing has been completed. When performing such reprinting, a technique is known that prints only pages having differences with respect to the print job for which printing has been completed (see Patent Document 1). [[Prior Art Documents]] [[Patent Documents]]

[0003] [[Patent Document 1]] Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2024-86498 [[Summary of the Invention]] [[Problem to be Solved by the Invention]]

[0004] However, when only pages having differences are printed as in the above-described technique, it is difficult to find the corresponding location when replacing pages of a printed material, and replacement requires a great deal of labor. In particular, when some pages of a multi-page print job for which no page numbers are printed are modified and reprinted, the labor required for replacing pages of the printed material tends to increase.

[0005] The present invention has been made in view of the above, and an object of the present invention is to provide a printing apparatus capable of reducing the labor required for replacing pages of a printed material when performing reprinting after modifying some pages of a print job. [[Means for Solving the Problem]]

[0006] To achieve the above objective, the printing apparatus of the present invention comprises a printing unit and a control unit that causes the printing unit to perform printing based on a print job, wherein, when the control unit causes the printing unit to perform printing based on a print job in which some pages of a completed print job have been modified, the control unit causes the printing unit to print only the pages from a marker page up to the page that has a difference from the completed print job. [Effects of the Invention]

[0007] The printing apparatus of the present invention reduces the effort required to replace pages in a printed document when reprinting a print job in which some pages have been corrected. [Brief explanation of the drawing]

[0008] [Figure 1] This is a block diagram showing the configuration of the printing system according to the embodiment. [Figure 2] This is a diagram showing the differential print settings screen. [Figure 3] This is a flowchart of the job reception process. [Figure 4] This is a flowchart of the page information retrieval process. [Figure 5] This is a diagram showing the file used to save configuration information. [Figure 6] This is a flowchart for the differential printing process. [Figure 7] (a) is a diagram showing an example of the printed manuscript. (b) is a diagram showing an example of the manuscript in which some pages of the manuscript in (a) have been corrected. [Figure 8] (a) and (b) are illustrative diagrams of the page information acquisition process when a printing device receives a print job for printing the original documents shown in Figures 7(a) and (b), respectively. [Modes for carrying out the invention]

[0009] Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In addition, the same or equivalent parts and components are denoted by the same or equivalent reference numerals throughout the drawings, and their descriptions are omitted or simplified.

[0010] Figure 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a printing system according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in Figure 1, the printing system 1 according to this embodiment comprises a terminal device 2 and a printing device 3. The terminal device 2 and the printing device 3 are connected to each other via a network 4 such as a LAN.

[0011] Terminal device 2 generates a print job and sends it to printer device 3. Terminal device 2 is composed of a computer equipped with a CPU, ROM, RAM, hard disk, etc.

[0012] Terminal device 2 comprises an application unit 11, a printer driver unit 12, and a communication unit 13. The application unit 11 and the printer driver unit 12 are configured by the CPU executing a program stored on a hard disk or the like.

[0013] The application unit 11 generates source data such as documents and images. In this embodiment, the source data does not include page numbers.

[0014] The printer driver unit 12 generates a print job to print the document data generated by the application unit 11 to the printing device 3.

[0015] The communication unit 13 performs communication processing with the printing device 3 via the network 4.

[0016] The printing device 3 performs printing based on print jobs received from the terminal device 2. The printing device 3 comprises a control unit 21, an engine unit (corresponding to the printing unit) 22, an operation panel unit 23, a storage unit 24, and a communication unit 25.

[0017] The control unit 21 causes the engine unit 22 to perform printing based on a print job. Further, when differential print settings are enabled, and when causing the engine unit 22 to perform printing based on a print job obtained by modifying some pages of a completed job, which is a print job for which printing has been completed, the control unit 21 performs differential printing in which the engine unit 22 is caused to print only pages from the marker page to pages that have differences from the completed job. The control unit 21 is configured to include a CPU and the like.

[0018] Here, the marker page is a page that serves as a marker when a user replaces pages of a printed matter, and is the print start page in differential printing. A visually conspicuous page is used as the marker page. In the present embodiment, marker pages include a chapter start page and a page including a non-character region having a size equal to or larger than a specified size. The non-character region is a region that does not include characters, such as a blank region or an illustration region. The specified size can be set according to a user operation. Further, it is possible to set, according to a user operation, whether to use a chapter start page or a page including a non-character region having a size equal to or larger than a specified size as the marker page.

[0019] The engine unit 22 performs printing on a print medium such as paper. The engine unit 22 has, for example, an inkjet printing mechanism.

[0020] The operation panel unit 23 includes a display unit configured of a liquid crystal display panel or the like that displays various screens and the like, and an input unit that has operation buttons, a touch panel and the like for accepting user input operations (neither is shown in the drawings).

[0021] The storage unit 24 stores various programs. The storage unit 24 also stores completed jobs. The storage unit 24 also stores a setting information saving file which will be described later.

[0022] The communication unit 25 performs communication processing with the terminal device 2 via the network 4.

[0023] Next, the differential print setting process in the printing device 3 will be described.

[0024] When an operation to start differential printing settings is performed on the operation panel 23, the control unit 21 displays the differential printing settings screen 31 shown in Figure 2 on the display unit of the operation panel 23.

[0025] The differential print settings screen 31 displays a button to disable differential print settings 32, a button to set the chapter start page 33, a size specification button 34, and an OK button 35.

[0026] The "Disable Differential Printing Settings" button 32 is used to disable the differential printing settings. The "Set Chapter Start Page" button 33 is used to set the page at the beginning of a chapter as the marker page. The "Specify Size" button 34 is used to set the page containing a non-text area of ​​a size greater than or equal to the specified size as the marker page. The "OK" button 35 is used to confirm the marker page settings.

[0027] When the "Disable Differential Printing Settings" button 32 is pressed and the "OK" button 35 is pressed, the control unit 21 disables the differential printing settings.

[0028] When the chapter start page setting button 33 is pressed and the OK button 35 is pressed, the control unit 21 sets the chapter start page as the marker page.

[0029] When the size specification button 34 is pressed, the control unit 21 displays a size input field 36 in the differential print settings screen 31 to accept the size specification. When a size is entered in the size input field 36 and the OK button 35 is pressed, the control unit 21 sets the page containing a non-text area of ​​a size greater than or equal to the specified size as the marker page.

[0030] Next, the job reception process in the printing device 3 when printing is performed in the printing system 1 will be explained with reference to the flowchart in Figure 3.

[0031] When printing is performed in the printing system 1, the application unit 11 in the terminal device 2 generates document data in response to user operations. The printer driver unit 12 then generates a print job based on the document data generated by the application unit 11 and transmits this print job to the printing device 3 via the communication unit 13.

[0032] The control unit 21 of the printing device 3 receives print jobs from the terminal device 2 via the communication unit 25. When it starts receiving print jobs, the control unit 21 first receives the header information of the print job. After this, the control unit 21 sequentially receives the print data for each page.

[0033] When the system starts receiving a print job and receives header information, in step S1 of Figure 3, the control unit 21 obtains job setting information from the print job header information.

[0034] Next, in step S2, the control unit 21 generates a configuration information storage file from the job configuration information. Then, the control unit 21 stores the generated configuration information storage file in the storage unit 24.

[0035] Next, in step S3, the control unit 21 reads the page information through a page information acquisition process. This page information acquisition process will be described later.

[0036] Next, in step S4, the control unit 21 determines whether the differential printing setting is enabled or not. If the differential printing setting has not been disabled in the differential printing setting process described above, the differential printing setting is enabled. At this point, once the reception of one page of print data is complete, the determination of whether the differential printing setting is enabled or not is made in step S4.

[0037] If the differential printing setting is determined to be effective (step S5: YES), in step S5, the control unit 21 executes the differential printing process. This differential printing process will be described later.

[0038] Next, in step S6, the control unit 21 determines whether the print start flag is on or off. If, in step S29 of Figure 6 (described later), it is determined that at least one of the page size and checksum does not match (step S29: NO), the print start flag is turned on in step S30.

[0039] If the control unit 21 determines that the print start flag is on (step S6: YES), it proceeds to step S7.

[0040] Furthermore, if the control unit 21 determines in step S4 above that the differential printing setting is invalid (step S4: NO), it skips steps S5 and S6 and proceeds to step S7.

[0041] In step S7, the control unit 21 notifies the engine unit 22 of the print command for the pages that differ from the updated print start page. The engine unit 22 prints those pages upon receiving the notification. After notifying the engine unit 22 of the print command, the control unit 21 proceeds to step S8.

[0042] Furthermore, if the control unit 21 determines in step S6 that the print start flag is off (step S6: NO), the control unit 21 proceeds to step S8.

[0043] In step S8, the control unit 21 determines whether or not it has finished receiving the print job. If it determines that it has not finished receiving the print job (step S8: NO), the control unit 21 returns to step S3.

[0044] If the control unit 21 determines that it has finished receiving the print job (step S8: YES), the job reception process ends.

[0045] Next, the page information acquisition process performed in step S3 of Figure 3, as described above, will be explained with reference to the flowchart in Figure 4.

[0046] After reading the page information, in step S11 of Figure 4, the control unit 21 uses a subset command to determine whether or not a subset has been started.

[0047] If it is determined that a subset has been initiated (step S11: YES), in step S12, the control unit 21 updates the configuration information storage file. Specifically, as shown in Figure 5, the control unit 21 stores the section delimiters as subsets in the configuration information storage file. After this, the control unit 21 proceeds to step S13 in Figure 4.

[0048] If the control unit 21 determines in step S11 that the subset has not been started (step S11: NO), it skips step S12 and proceeds to step S13.

[0049] In step S13, the control unit 21 obtains character position information from the page information. Here, since the character content is unknown, character position information is obtained.

[0050] Next, in step S14, the control unit 21 detects the largest non-character area on the page, which is the maximum non-character area, based on the character position information acquired in step S13.

[0051] Next, in step S15, the control unit 21 starts receiving image data.

[0052] Next, in step S16, the control unit 21 obtains the start and end positions of the pages in the print data and calculates a checksum for this section.

[0053] Next, in step S17, the control unit 21 determines whether or not it has received data up to the page break in the print data. If it determines that it has not received data up to the page break (step S17: NO), the control unit 21 repeats step S17.

[0054] If it is determined that data has been received up to the end of the page (step S17: YES), in step S18, the control unit 21 updates the configuration information storage file. Specifically, as shown in Figure 5, the control unit 21 stores the start position (start address), end position (end address), and checksum of the page in the configuration information storage file. This completes the page information acquisition process.

[0055] Next, the differential printing process performed in step S5 of Figure 3, as described above, will be explained with reference to the flowchart in Figure 6.

[0056] In step S21 of Figure 5, the control unit 21 determines whether there is a completed job stored in the storage unit 24 that matches the job name and owner name of the currently received print job. If the control unit 21 determines that there is no completed job that matches the job name and owner name of the currently received print job, the differential printing process is terminated.

[0057] If the control unit 21 determines that there is a completed job whose job name and owner name match the currently received print job (step S21: YES), in step S22, the control unit 21 turns off the print start flag. When the print start flag is off, the control unit 21 does not notify the engine unit 22 of a print command.

[0058] Next, in step S23, the control unit 21 determines whether or not the setting is to use the page at the beginning of the chapter as the starting page (marker page) for printing differential prints.

[0059] If it is determined that the setting is to use the page at the beginning of the chapter as the starting page for printing (step S23: YES), in step S24, the control unit 21 uses the subset command to determine whether or not the subset has been started.

[0060] If it is determined that a subset has started (step S24: YES), in step S25, the control unit 21 updates the print start page. Specifically, the control unit 21 determines the most recently received page, which is the first page of the subset (the first page after the section break), as the print start page. After this, the control unit 21 proceeds to step S29.

[0061] If the control unit 21 determines in step S24 that the subset has not been started (step S24: NO), it skips step S25 and proceeds to step S29.

[0062] If, in step S23 described above, it is determined that the setting is to use a page containing a non-text area of ​​a size greater than or equal to the specified size as the starting page for printing (step S23: NO), the control unit 21 proceeds to step S26. The processing in steps S26 and S27 is the same as the processing in steps S24 and S25 described above.

[0063] If the control unit 21 determines in step S26 that the subset has not been started (step S26: NO), it skips step S27 and proceeds to step S28.

[0064] In step S28, the control unit 21 determines whether the largest non-character size in the most recently received page, as detected in step S14 of Figure 4 above, is greater than or equal to the specified size. If it determines that the largest non-character size is less than the specified size (step S28: NO), the control unit 21 proceeds to step S29.

[0065] If the control unit 21 determines that the maximum non-character size is greater than or equal to the specified size (step S28: YES), in step S25, the control unit 21 determines the page being processed as the starting page for printing. After this, the control unit 21 proceeds to step S29.

[0066] In step S29, the control unit 21 determines whether the page size and checksum of the most recently received page match those of the page corresponding to the most recently received page in the comparison print job, which is a completed job whose job name and owner name match those of the currently received print job. Here, the control unit 21 obtains the page size and checksum of each page from the file used to store the settings information for each print job.

[0067] If the control unit 21 determines that at least one of the page size and checksum does not match (step S29: NO), it assumes that there is a difference between the two pages and turns on the print start flag in step S30. This completes the differential printing process. If the control unit 21 determines that the page size and checksum match (step S29: YES), it considers both pages to be the same page and terminates the differential printing process.

[0068] By performing the job reception process, page information acquisition process, and differential printing process described above, when the differential printing setting is enabled, the printer 3 performs differential printing, printing only from the marker page up to the pages that differ from the completed job when printing based on a print job in which some pages of the completed job have been modified. If there are multiple pages that differ from the completed job, differential printing is performed for each of them.

[0069] Depending on the settings, either the chapter start page or a page containing a non-text area larger than the specified size will be used as the marker page. If the setting is to use a page containing a non-text area larger than the specified size as the marker page, and there is no such page up to the page with a difference from the completed job, the chapter start page will be used as the marker page.

[0070] Next, I will explain the example of differential printing mentioned above.

[0071] Figure 7(a) shows an example of a printed manuscript. Figure 7(b) shows an example of a manuscript in which some pages of the manuscript in Figure 7(a) have been corrected.

[0072] In the examples in Figures 7(a) and 7(b), page 1 is the beginning of the chapter. Illustrations are included on pages 3 and 5, and page 6 is blank. As shown in Figure 7(b), there is an edited section on page 4. This edited section is where text has been corrected from the original manuscript in Figure 7(a).

[0073] Figures 8(a) and 8(b) are illustrative diagrams of the page information acquisition process when the printing device 3 receives a print job for printing the original documents shown in Figures 7(a) and 7(b), respectively.

[0074] In the original document shown in Figure 7(a), the largest non-character areas are detected on pages 1, 3, 5, and 6, as shown in Figure 8(a). Page 1 contains two large non-character areas. Note that the example in Figure 7(a) is not a case where only some pages of the completed job were modified; no differential printing was performed during printing, and all pages were printed.

[0075] In the original document shown in Figure 7(b), the maximum non-characters shown in Figure 8(a) are detected, similar to the original document in Figure 7(a). However, as shown in Figure 8(b), a checksum difference occurs on page 4 compared to the original document in Figure 7(a), and the difference is considered to be on page 4. Therefore, pages 1 and 3 can trigger the start of differential printing.

[0076] In other words, if the setting is to use the chapter start page as the marker page, pages 1-4 will be printed in the differential printout. Also, if the setting is to use a page containing a non-text area larger than the specified size as the marker page, and the maximum non-text size on page 3 is larger than or equal to the specified size, pages 3 and 4 will be printed in the differential printout. In either case, pages 5 and beyond will not be printed.

[0077] Unlike this embodiment, when printing only the pages with differences from the completed job, in the example of Figures 7(a) and 7(b), when printing the original document in Figure 7(b), only page 4, which contains the edited section, will be printed. However, in this case, it is difficult to find the relevant section when replacing pages in the printed document.

[0078] In contrast, in this embodiment, by printing from the visually prominent marker page to the page with the difference during differential printing, it becomes easier to find the relevant section when replacing pages in a printed document.

[0079] As explained above, in the printing device 3, when the differential printing setting is enabled, the control unit 21 instructs the engine unit 22 to print only the pages from the marker page up to the page that differs from the completed job when printing based on a print job in which some pages of the completed job have been modified. This makes it easier to find the relevant section when replacing pages in the printed material. Therefore, even for print jobs that do not print page numbers, the effort required to replace pages in the printed material when reprinting a print job in which some pages have been modified can be reduced.

[0080] In the embodiment described above, the manuscript data did not include page numbers, but it may include page numbers.

[0081] The present invention is not limited to the embodiments described above, and the components can be modified and implemented in practice without departing from the spirit of the invention. Furthermore, various inventions can be formed by appropriately combining the multiple components disclosed in the embodiments. For example, some components may be deleted from all the components shown in the embodiments.

[0082] [Note] This application discloses the following invention:

[0083] (Note 1) The printing department, The system comprises a control unit that causes the printing unit to perform printing based on a print job, The printing apparatus is characterized in that, when the control unit causes the printing unit to print a print job in which some pages of a completed print job have been modified, it causes the printing unit to print only the pages from a reference page up to the pages that differ from the completed print job. [Explanation of symbols]

[0084] 1. Printing System 2 Terminal devices 3 Printing device 11. Application Section 12 Printer Driver Section 13 Communications Department 21 Control Unit 22 Engine section 23 Control Panel 24 Memory section 25 Communications Department 31. Differential Print Settings Screen 32. Disable differential printing settings button Chapter 33 Start Page Setting Button 34 Size selection button 35 OK button 36 Size input field

Claims

[Claim 1] The printing department, The system comprises a control unit that causes the printing unit to perform printing based on a print job, The printing apparatus is characterized in that, when the control unit causes the printing unit to print a print job in which some pages of a completed print job have been modified, it causes the printing unit to print only the pages from a reference page up to the pages that differ from the completed print job.

Images