Hitachi, Ltd.

Mitsuhiro Amari

Kenji Suzuki

Tomoya Nishi

Hayateru Mashima

In a printer control apparatus having a two-dimensional address type full dot memory, this full dot memory is constituted by a longitudinal/lateral-direction highspeed memory with a highspeed access operation along an x address direction, an oblique-direction highspeed memory with both access speeds in x address and y address direction, and another longitudinal/lateral-direction highspeed memory with a highspeed access operation along a y address direction. A directivity of a dot pattern is judged by a memory control unit, and this dot pattern is expanded from print data by a data processing unit, and then is written into a full dot memory. Any one of the longitudinal/lateral-direction highspeed memory, the oblique-direction highspeed memory, and the longitudinal/lateral-direction highspeed memory is selected based on the directivity judgment result to expand the dot pattern into the selected memory.

Memory apparatus and method for controlling memory access based on

The line size of character lines constituting a page of print paper is compared with the limited line size. If a line has its line size larger than the limited line size, it is divided into several lines having a smaller line size. An edit control circuit appends a divisional character code to each divided portion of a character which is divided into several lines. An expansion control circuit receives a divisional character code, extracts the divided portion of the character from the patterns of available characters and writes it into a line buffer memory. Patterns in the line buffer memory are written sequentially into a page memory which stores patterns of characters printed in a page of print paper.

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Atsugi, Japan

Mitsuhiro Amari