Patent
1992-03-03
1995-04-25
Evans, Arthur G.
395117, G06F 1500
Patent
active
054106397
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a novel automatic installation for the composition and the continuous printing of small texts, especially such as visiting cards. It also relates to an installation of the type in question for composition and continuous printing in traditional format, and especially in A4 type format.
Small printing machines have already been available for a long time, making it possible for non-professionals to rapidly print small texts. However, although widely used, these installations require staff and are not as rapid as the consumer would wish.
An automatic installation has been described in the document FR-A-2 576 437 in which the user types in on a keyboard the elements which he wants to see appear on the visiting cards, menus, etc., by showing these elements on a screen. This installation additionally comprises a printer which prints on a medium of paper of relatively heavy weight, stored in the form of a reel, the text composed by the user. A computer manages the operation of the machine and of the printer. However, while constituting significant progress with respect to the known devices, this installation does not make it possible to compose the page layout at leisure and allows only one type of format.
Then in the French patent FR-A-2 621 153 an automatic installation of the same type has been described, incorporating similar elements to the preceding installation, but in which the printer is able to pivot by 90.degree. so as to be able to permit printing of texts according to at least two formats perpendicular to each other. Nevertheless, the page layout remains fixed, so that choice for the user remains very limited.
In addition, no installation is known of the type in question which is able to permit, on demand, the production of texts or parts of texts in A4 format, in a variable series and in a short timeframe.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention aims to diminish all of these different drawbacks. It provides an integrated automatic installation for the composition and the continuous printing of small texts or parts of texts, comprising: the composed text; and for composing the text to be printed; between the screen and keyboard on the one hand, and the microcomputer on the other hand, the microcomputer being intended for processing the instructions transmitted by the keyboard, and for transmitting them partly to the screen and to a printer intended for printing the composed text onto a medium, the microcomputer being additionally intended for managing the whole of the installation and the interaction between the latter and the user.
This installation is characterized: managed frame by frame by the microcomputer, in the memory of which are previously stored, in digital form, one or more character fonts, each printed character corresponding to a plurality of frames, in each of which a defined sequence of pixels, stored in the form of digital signals, permits the final restoration of the character in question, program adapted to this end and loaded into the memory of the microcomputer, the user with the aid of the program, then is downloaded into a buffer memory associated with the microcomputer which is able to manage the printing of this text by downloading into the memory of the printer, in step with the printing, the digital signals corresponding to each successive frame of the printer, representing the set of pixels to be reproduced on the medium.
Put another way, the invention consists in providing a means able to show the composition of the text to be produced which, as a function of character fonts stored in digital form in memory, manages the total space of the document, so that any type of printing can be obtained according to several possible formats, and this in both directions, i.e. transversely as well as longitudinally on the medium.
The production of character fonts in digital form is carried out by scanning of each of the fonts at actual size, resulting in a digitized image of each of the characters, then by reduction of the format
REFERENCES:
patent: 4616327 (1986-10-01), Rosewarne et al.
patent: 4745561 (1988-05-01), Hinosawa et al.
patent: 4939670 (1990-07-01), Freiman et al.
Evans Arthur G.
KIS
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