Seiko Epson Corporation

Tetsuya Suzuki

Sunao Murata

Takeshi Miyashita

Shinji Nozawa

Toshiyuki Hattori

Kazunori Chihara

Noriyoshi Chiba

Toshiaki Isobe

Michio Maruyama

Hiroyasu Ogata

Shinji Sumi

Kouji Tanaka

Kazuyuki Onuma

A driver program is provided for causing a host apparatus to execute a processing of generating color-converted image data and transferring it to a printing apparatus, this program making it possible to decrease the volume of image data to be stored in the host apparatus and to conduct data transfer without delaying the printing completion. A driver program causes a host apparatus to execute a processing of generating image data comprising data of a plurality of colors and transferring it to a printing apparatus. When the transfer of the image data of one plane is conducted, the driver program causes the host apparatus to execute a transfer processing conducted by intermingling a step of transferring by each band of the bands obtained by dividing the image data of one plane at the prescribed height, and a step of transferring by each color of the plurality of colors.

Driver program and transfer method for data

The invention is an image processing program to generate image data expanded into pixels of an image output device. The image processing procedure includes a procedure to generate second image data expanded into the pixels of the image output device by enlarging first image data expanded into pixels and contained in the rendering record, and a compression procedure that compresses the second image data. Further the generation procedure has an interpolation processing in which, when the difference in the luminance of the image data between adjacent pixels of the first image data is small, the image data of the second image data is rendered to the image data of any of the adjacent pixels, and when the difference is large, the image data of the second image data is rendered to image data that is found from the image data of the adjacent pixels by means of an interpolation calculation.

Image processing device and image processing program causing computer to execute image processing

A host sends each page of image data to a page printer in band units and the page printer writes the received each band data into a reception buffer in DRAM by DMA and transfers the band data from the reception buffer to an image formation section made up of members. The host gets an available buffer capacity from the printer just before transmitting each band data, and transmits the band data only when the printer can receive the band data. In the printer, a CPU permits transfer DMA to be started after reception data as much as the data amount calculated based on the data reception speed and the transfer rate is stored in the buffer to prevent an underrun error from occurring. If an underrun error occurs, the CPU sets an error flag, and sends the error flag to the host just before the host starts transmitting each band data. When receiving the error flag, the host drops image resolution and resends the page data with the resolution dropped.

Page printer and page print system

A printer driver is provided in a host computer. When a print job occurs, the printer driver automatically selects the format of a plotting command to be output to a printer. As the command format, there are available two kinds of formats: a high-level printer control language format (for example, PDL), and an intermediate code format expressed in an intermediate language. When the latter format is selected, the printer driver converts a plotting command from an application to an intermediate code and then outputs the intermediate code to the printer. The printer converts the intermediate code to another intermediate code specific to the printer by a very simple processing, and then develops the intermediate code to a bit image, thereby enabling high speed printing.

Print system printer driver and printer

A printer driver of a host computer checks the size of RAM of a dumb printer. There are prepared print data comprising a bit image, which has resolution and levels of halftone matching the size of the RAM. Print data are divided into data on a per-pagebasis or a per-band basis. While managing the sequence of band data pertaining to individual pages of the print data, a print monitor sequentially sends the band data to the dumb printer. Every time one of the band data sets is transmitted, the print monitor receives, from the dumb printer, data pertaining to the current status of or an error in the dumb printer. The thus-received data are indicated on a display. In accordance with the printer status or an error in the printer, the print monitor controls the dumb printer so as to transmit subsequent band data, suspend transmission of subsequent band data, or re-transmit subsequent band data. The print monitor retains print data pertaining to an individual page until the completion of printing of the page is reported by the dumb printer. If there arises a necessity for print data pertaining to individual pages as a result of occurrence of an error, the print monitor re-transmits the data pertaining to the page.

Print system and host device therefor

To convert gray-scale data of each pixel of image data into pulse-width data for each pixel, a RAM is provided. The RAM has nine pixel memory regions corresponding to nine pixels a to i for forming, for example, a 3.times.3 pixel matrix on the output image. In each of the pixel memory regions, there are stored pulse-width data items corresponding to values which are permitted for gray-scale data to have. Pulse-width data items in the pixel memory regions are slightly different from one another among pixel memory regions. Gray-scale data of each pixel of image data and address word composed of gray-scale data of each pixel of image data and coordinates of each pixel in the 3.times.3 matrix is supplied to the RAM. Thus, pulse-width data corresponding to gray-scale data is read from the pixel memory region so that a laser drive pulse having a pulse width corresponding to the read pulse-width data is generated.

Growing community of inventors

Nagano, Japan

Tetsuya Suzuki