JP2007030209A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To facilitate analysis of a problem and countermeasure against the problem by sampling the set value information and state information of a printer quickly. <P>SOLUTION: The printer has a function for printing the state of an apparatus and the setting content of setting items by the apparatus unit, and a function for displaying and setting the state of the apparatus and the setting content of setting items on the display of a computer through a network wherein the state of printing apparatus of the apparatus unit and the setting content of setting items are displayed on the display of the computer through a network. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a printing apparatus, and more particularly, to a printing apparatus that has a plurality of setting items for specifying operation contents and can print the setting items and the printing apparatus state alone.

  A function for printing the status and setting values of the printing apparatus and a function for fetching and setting the status of the printing apparatus using a network such as the Internet are known.

  In the conventional function, the printing process and the function via the network are separated, the printing item of the printing device status and setting value, and the data setting and printing device status in the browser on the computer connected via the network These display items do not necessarily match, and the contents of the print data of the single device cannot be confirmed unless the printing device is printed and the print result is taken out.

  The present invention has a function of printing the status of the apparatus and the setting contents of the setting items by itself, and a function of displaying the setting of the apparatus and the setting items of the setting items on a computer display device via a network and a setting process. The printing apparatus is characterized in that the status of a printing apparatus and the setting contents of setting items are displayed on a display device of a computer via a network.

  According to the present invention, data can be created by using the print data creation process for printing printer information alone, and data similar to printing can be collected from a remote location via a network. In addition, data can be collected even when the printer is not printable, and analysis at the time of occurrence of a problem can be performed quickly.

  Hereinafter, the present invention will be described by way of examples.

  FIG. 1 shows the configuration of the present invention. The printing apparatus 20 and the computer 10 are connected via a network 30 such as the Internet. The printer 20 includes a control unit 21 and a printing unit 22, and the control unit 21 includes a network interface unit 23, a data display unit 24, a data storage medium 25, and a data processing unit 26 on which a control program operates.

  The printer control program collects information inside the printer, adds simple layout information and print control information to create print information, and attaches job control information to it to create data as a print job. There is print data creation processing, and this program is also activated when actual printing is performed. Furthermore, a data conversion process for converting the print data created in the print data creation process into HTML format data, and a monitor process for starting the process and starting the operation in response to an instruction from the computer 10 received through the network interface unit 23 are included. .

  FIG. 2 shows a file creation process flow. A browser screen is opened from the computer 10 and activated. The instruction is an instruction from the network interface unit 23 and stores that the monitor process of the control program is a process of converting print data into an HTML file in step 110 of the flow, and starts the print data creation process.

  The print data creation process 120 collects information in the printer and lays out information in the same way as in normal printing to create print data. After the printing data is stored in the data storage medium 25, control is passed to the monitor process.

  The monitor unit uses the information stored before activation, determines whether the data should be printed at 130 or converted into an HTML format file based on the data stored at 110, and activates the file conversion process 140. When printing, at 150, the printing is started with conversion of the data into dot data. This is the same as a normal printing operation.

  The file conversion process 140 places the HTML file at a predetermined position in the data storage medium 25 and passes control to the monitor process.

  The monitor process confirms the end state, and when it ends normally, requests the network interface unit 23 to send data to the computer 10 at 160. Data is sent to the computer 10 via the network interface unit 23 and displayed on the browser.

  Next, the contents of the data conversion process 140 will be described. In the data conversion process 140, the setting contents of the setting items and the print data when printing the status of the printing apparatus are converted into HTML format data by the printing apparatus alone. The print data includes job control data, control data including position specifying information and line feed specifying data, and text data. Data necessary for the Web file is extracted from the print data and converted into HTML format data.

  FIG. 3 shows a flow of a data conversion process 140 for converting print data into HTML format data. A print data file is read, the data type is determined, and processing according to the data type is performed. This process is repeated until there is no more data.

The processing starts from determining the type of data, and is divided into job control data processing and print data processing conversion processing consisting of text data and control data. The print data conversion processing is divided into control data conversion processing and text data conversion processing. Each process will be described below.
(1) Processing contents of job control data processing 230 Since the data is basically not related to the display of the browser, the data is skipped. When job control data ends, control is passed to print data processing.
(2) Processing contents of control data processing 250 Control data that is unnecessary when displayed as a Web page on the browser is skipped and is not reflected in the converted data. Here, font designation data, position designation data, and line feed designation data will be described as control data necessary for data conversion in HTML format. Since the font in the printing apparatus does not necessarily match the font that can be displayed by the browser, the font is converted into an HTML heading or a font designation tag. When the standard font is used for display on the browser, the font designation data may be ignored.

  The position designation data and line feed designation data are converted into HTML control data assuming a display position in the Web page. For example, in printing, when data items and setting values are arranged in one line and printing is displayed in a table format on a Web page, processing for creating HTML format table data from the contents of position designation data is performed.

When there is position designation data and line feed designation data, the character string array stored so far is added to the necessary HTML tag information and stored in an HTML file. Also, other control data not related to WEB page display is ignored.
(3) Processing Contents of Text Data Processing 270 As text data, continuous text is stored in a character string array. After adding a necessary tag to the HTML format, it is stored in an HTML format file. The opportunity to store the file in the HTML format is when position designation data and line feed designation data exist. Data that does not require code conversion with text data is stored in a character string array as it is. Codes that require conversion, such as '<', '>', '&', '"', etc., are converted and stored in the character string array. Extended symbol processing is performed according to the code system being used. Store in column array.

The schematic block diagram which shows the structure of this invention. The flowchart of the data creation process in this invention. The flowchart of the data conversion process in this invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Computer 20 Printing apparatus 21 Control part 22 Printing part 23 Network interface part 24 Data display part 25 Data storage medium 26 Data processing part 30 Network

Claims (2)

  A printer that has the function of printing the status of the device and the setting contents of the setting item by itself, and the function of displaying the setting status of the device and the setting item on the computer display device and setting processing via the network. A printing apparatus characterized by displaying the status of a printing apparatus and setting contents of setting items on a display device of a computer via a network. 2. The printing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the display data is created, the print data is once created and the data is converted by a data conversion processing program.

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