Esselte N.v.

Paul Martin

Michael Andrew Beadman

A label printing apparatus for printing characters on a label. The apparatus includes a controller operable to perform various functions, such as (1) recalling stored common font data for each character selected and being operable to apply a scaling factor to the font data to produce print pixel data for printing the character; (2) deriving characters from the font data to determine sequentially intersections of lines and/or curves of the character with a print line extending heightwise to generate therefrom a set of pixel data for directly printing a column of dots corresponding to the set of pixel data defined at that print line; and/or (3) implementing a preview function which enables all characters of an entire label to be displayed at one time on a display even when the length of the label is greater than the size of the display. The preview function is implemented by the controller reducing the size of the characters to be displayed to such an extent that all of the characters of the label can be displayed simultaneously. Also, the characters that are printed resemble the characters which are displayed.

Label printing apparatus

A label printing apparatus having an input device for determining a predetermined label length and selecting one or more of plurality of characters for composing a label having one or more lines of characters in the length; a memory for storing font data defining the plurality of characters; a display for displaying the characters selected at the input device; a printer for printing the selected characters on an image receiving tape to produce a label; and a controller operable to determine an appropriate character size such that the number of characters selected by a user can be accommodated on the predetermined length of tape, wherein the controller is operable to apply a scaling factor to the font data according to the appropriate character size to optimize the size of the characters within the predetermined label length. Also a method of formatting a variable length character string to fit within a region of fixed dimension, by retrieving a string of characters from an input device; determining the length of a region of fixed dimension; determining an appropriate character size such that the number of characters can be accommodated with the region of fixed dimension; and optimizing the sizes of the characters within the region of fixed dimension so that said characters of the character string may be placed within the region of fixed dimension.

A label printing device is disclosed in which font data for a plurality of characters is stored. Characters are derived from the font data for displaying and printing in sizes determined by appropriate scaling factors. In this way, characters derived for printing have the same proportion and appearance as characters derived for displaying. Moreover, a large variety of character sizes can be produced both for printing and displaying.

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Great Shelford, United Kingdom

Paul Martin