Tape printing device

In a tape printing device, pressing the print execution key when print data and size data are stored on the memory causes the tape printing device to perform a calculation to obtain the total character height based on the number of print lines L and the vertical size of the print image. The tape printing device further performs a calculation to obtain the total blank space width based on the total height and the print allowance area and distributes the total width into the upper blank space width, the lower blank space width and the blank space width between the print lines based on the result of the calculation. The blank spaces are positioned according to the blank widths. The dot pattern data is spread along the base lines and positioned in the process.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
1. Field of the Invention 
The present invention relates to a tape printing device for printing 
characters on a tape print medium, and, more particularly, to a tape 
printing device with a function to allocate a plurality of print lines 
across the width of the tape medium, so that the print lines are neatly 
arranged on the tape print medium. 
2. Description of Related Art 
The applicants of the present invention have developed a tape printing 
device for printing characters and marks on the tape print medium (e.g. a 
tape medium with a width of 10 mm, 24 mm) as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 
5,066,152. The tape printing device has a convenient application in 
printing tape labels to be secured on the back of file notes. 
In addition to the above disclosure, in Japanese Laid-Open patent 
publication No. HEI 1-152070, the applicants have disclosed a tape 
printing device with a function to print full scale characters in a 24 dot 
by 24 dot format and quadruple scale characters in a 48 dot by 48 dot 
format, a center printing mode to arrange the quadruple scale characters 
in the center of the tape medium and a bottom alignment mode to align the 
bottoms of quadruple scale characters on the tape medium. 
Conventional tape printing devices perform dual line printing by aligning 
bottoms of the characters and marks to the base alignment set on the 
bottom of the print allowance area and by aligning tops of characters or 
marks to the top alignment set on the top of the print allowance area. 
In the above construction, the width of the blank space between the two 
lines changes according to the sizes of the characters, bringing an 
unbalanced space between the middle blank space and a top blank space and 
the middle blank space and a bottom blank space, thus degrading the visual 
impression of the printed tape medium. 
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
An object of the present invention is to provide a tape printing device 
with a function to arrange multiple lines on tape print medium so that the 
top blank space, bottom blank space and blank spaces between the printed 
lines represent a well-balanced impression. 
In a tape printing device having a printing means including a printing head 
with a plurality of dot-like elements for printing on a tape medium, an 
input means for inputting characters, marks and various instructions, a 
data storage means for storing data for said characters and marks and a 
print control means for receiving said data sent from said data storage 
means and combining said data to form a dot pattern data to be sent to the 
printing means for print execution, said tape printing device comprises; a 
size setting means for setting sizes of characters and marks corresponding 
to an individual printing line, a blank space width calculation means for 
calculating the width of blank spaces so that the blank spaces between a 
plurality of printing lines and the blank spaces above and under the print 
allowance area have an identical width, wherein said print control means 
receives information on the width of the blank spaces from said blank 
space width calculation means for forming the dot pattern data. 
In a tape printing device, the data storage means stores data for 
characters and marks input from the input means, the print control means 
combines data read out from the character generator to generate dot 
pattern data based on the data sent from the data storage means, and the 
dot pattern data is fed to the printing means for print execution. 
The size setting means sets the sizes of characters and marks corresponding 
to each line, and the blank space width calculation means calculates the 
width of the blank spaces between the printing lines so that the blank 
spaces have an identical width as that of the top blank space and the 
bottom blank space. The print control means receives the data on the blank 
space width from the blank space width calculation means and generates dot 
pattern data including the blank spaces with the calculated width. The 
printing means executes printing based on the dot pattern data generated 
by the print control means. 
As is apparent from above description, in the tape printing device, the 
size setting means sets the sizes of the characters and marks on a 
plurality of print lines, and the blank space calculation means calculates 
the width of the blank spaces on both ends across the width of the tape 
medium and between the print lines. This function allows the tape printing 
device to perform printing on the tape medium with the total blank space 
width distributed into the blank spaces irrespective of the difference in 
the character sizes, thus giving the printed medium a neat impression.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
Hereinafter, a preferred embodiment of the present invention is described 
with reference to the accompanying figures. As used herein, the term 
"width", particularly with reference to the blank space width, means the 
distance from side to side of the blank space. For example, the width of 
the blank space between lines means the distance from the top of the 
characters in a lower line to the bottom of the characters in an upper 
line. 
The present embodiment is an application of the present invention to a tape 
printing device for printing alphabetic characters and marks. 
As shown in FIG. 1, the tape printing device 1 has a keyboard 3 in the 
front of the main frame 2. A print mechanism PM is provided behind the 
keyboard 3 inside the main frame 2, and a liquid crystal display 22 is 
provided behind the keyboard 3 for displaying characters and marks. 
The keyboard 3 has character keys for inputting alphabetic characters, 
numeric characters and marks, a space key, a carriage return key, cursor 
keys to locate the cursor, a composition key for editing text data, a 
format setting key for setting print format, a size setting keys for 
setting sizes of characters, a font setting key for setting character 
fonts, a print key for initiating print execution and a power key for 
controlling power supply to the tape printing device. 
A brief description of the print mechanism PM is given with reference to 
FIG. 2. The print mechanism PM accommodates a tape cassette CS generally 
in the shape of a rectangular block. The tape cassette CS has a tape spool 
6 to which a transparent tape medium 5, preferably with a width of about 
24 mm, is wound, a ribbon supply spool 8 to which an ink ribbon 7 is 
wound, a take up spool 9 for taking up the ink ribbon 7, a supply spool 11 
to which a double-sided adhesive tape 10 with an identical tape width as 
the tape medium 5 is wound with a releasable sheet facing outside of the 
spool and a contact roller 12 for contacting the tape medium 5 with the 
double-sided adhesive tape 10. 
A thermal head 13 is provided upright at a position where the tape medium 5 
and the ink ribbon 7 overlap. A platen roller 14 for urging the tape 
medium 5 and the ink ribbon 7 against the thermal head 13 and a sending 
roller 15 for urging the tape medium 5 and the double-sided adhesive tape 
10 against the contact roller 12 are rotatably provided at the supporting 
member 16. The thermal head 13 has a thermal element group 18, as shown in 
FIGS. 9 and 11, provided in a perpendicular line. The thermal element 
group 18 preferably extends about 20 mm in length, shorter than the width 
of the tape medium 5 of 24 mm, thus limiting the print allowance area G on 
the tape medium 5. Consequently, the print inhibit areas e are evenly 
allocated on the top and bottom of the tape medium as shown in FIG. 11. 
With the above construction, applying power to the thermal devices with the 
tape sending motor 24 (shown in FIG. 3) driving the contact roller 12 and 
the take up spool 9 in synchronism to a prescribed direction causes the 
print execution on the tape medium 5 by a plurality of dots. The tape 
medium 5 is sent in the tape sending direction A with the double-sided 
adhesive tape 10. The print mechanism PM is described in detail in 
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. HEI 2-106555. 
The control scheme of the tape printing device 1 is described with 
reference to the block diagram in FIG. 3. 
A keyboard 3, a display controller (LCDC) 23 with a display RAM for storing 
display data for the liquid crystal display (LCD) 22, and a driving 
circuit 25 for driving the thermal head 13, a driving circuit 26 for 
driving the tape sending motor 24 and a driving circuit 21 for driving a 
warning buzzer 20 are connected to the input/output interface 27 
respectively. 
The controller C has a CPU 29, an input/output interface 27 which is 
connected to the CPU 29 via a bus 28, a CGROM 30, a ROM 31, a ROM 32 and a 
RAM 40. 
The CGROM 30 (pattern data memory) holds dot pattern data for each one of a 
plurality of characters, and the data stored on the CGROM 30 corresponds 
to a code data for each character. The ROM 31 (outline data memory) holds 
outline data on the contouring of each character classified in different 
fonts (Gothic fonts, Mincho-KANJI fonts) corresponding to code data. Each 
outline data representing one character holds a horizontal size and a 
vertical size of the printed image of the character. 
The ROM 32 stores a drive control program for controlling the display 
controller 23 based on the character codes for the characters, numeric 
characters and marks input from the keyboard, an image process program for 
converting outline data into dot pattern data and overlaying the dot 
pattern data on the print buffer 44, a print drive control program for 
retrieving the dot pattern data on the print buffer 44 and driving the 
thermal head 13 and the tape sending motor 24, and a control program 
unique to the present invention for controlling the tape print control 
(described later). The ROM 32 also stores a width of the print allowance 
area and a width of the print inhibit area. The image process program 
includes such character modification subroutines for modifying characters 
in bold font, underline and reversed printing. 
The text memory 41 in the RAM 40 stores code data for characters and marks 
input from the keyboard 3. The print format memory 42 holds print format 
data including character size data PZ and font data input by an operator. 
The print line number memory 43 stores number of lines L to be printed on 
the tape medium 5. The print buffer 44 stores dot pattern for a plurality 
of characters and marks decoded from the code data. The print buffer 44 
has a memory capacity to store vertical 128 bits (16 bytes) corresponding 
to 128 dots by horizontal width corresponding to 50 characters. The dot 
pattern data for one line or a plurality of lines are decoded from the 
code data along the base line (BL) (described later). 
The tape print control routine executed by the controller C of the tape 
printing device is now described with reference to the flowchart in FIG. 
4. The sign Si (i=10, 11, 12 . . . ) represents each step in the routine. 
Operating a power switch and applying power to the tape printing device 
initiate the subroutine, and pressing the composition key allows an 
operator to edit the text by typing keys such as a character key, the 
space key and the carriage return key (S100). In this input/edit process, 
the operator can set specific modifications to parts of text by operating, 
for example, the size key or the font setting key so that printed images 
reflect the modifications. 
After the above operation, operating the format setting key initiates the 
format setting routine for setting character sizes and character 
modifications (S200). The format setting routine is followed by the dot 
pattern data generation process (S300) and the dot pattern data on the 
print buffer is sent to the print mechanism for print execution. 
Now, the dot pattern data generation process executed in S300 is described 
according to the flowchart in FIG. 5. In this description, it is assumed 
that two strings of characters "ABCDE" and "09876" are loaded to the text 
RAM 41 so that two lines of characters are printed on the tape medium. 
Each line of characters is preceded by size data. 
After the initiation of the dot pattern generation process, if text data 
exists on the text memory 41 (S310:YES), the controller C calculates the 
number of lines L and stores it on the print line number memory 43 (S311). 
The controller C further performs a calculation to obtain a total height 
of characters H from the number of lines L and a height of printed image 
of characters (S312). For example, as shown in FIG. 8, the total height H 
is calculated from the number of lines, in this example, two, and the size 
data, in this example, 24P, by totaling the height hl for the first line 
and h2 for the second line. 
In the next step (S313), if the total height of characters H is smaller 
than or equal to the width of print allowance area G, the blank space 
width Y is calculated in the following expression. 
EQU Y=(G-H)/(L+1) 
The upper end blank space width Yu, the lower end blank space width Yd and 
the blank space width between the lines Yg is set at Y respectively 
(S314). In the next step (S315), base lines BL for the print lines are 
allocated based on the blank widths Yu, Yd, Yg, the print allowance area 
G, and character heights h1, h2, . . . corresponding to print lines. For 
example, as shown in FIG. 8, the vertical bit-width of the print image 
stored on the print buffer 44 is identical to the number of thermal 
elements provided on the thermal element group 18, allowing the tape 
printing device to perform dual line printing by setting the BL2 
corresponding to the second print line with a margin of the lower end 
blank space width Yd above the lower end of the tape medium, the BL2 
corresponding to the first print line with a margin given by totaling the 
character height h2 for the second print line and the blank space width 
between the lines Yg above the BL2. 
The controller C retrieves the character code data from the text memory 41 
and performs the image enlarge/condense process to combine the outline 
data to generate image data. The locations of base lines BL calculated in 
the above step are used in the image generation process (S316). After the 
image generation process, the controller C resumes the tape print control 
(FIG. 4) for print execution according to the dot pattern data stored on 
the print buffer 44 (S400). Prior to the print execution, the controller C 
examines the text memory 41, and if the text data does not exist on the 
text memory 41 (S310:No) or if the total character height H is larger than 
the width of the print allowance area G (S313:No), the controller C beeps 
the buzzer 20 (S317), notifying an operator that the print execution is 
impossible, and performs the operation in S100. For example, as shown in 
FIG. 8, the dot pattern data for the character string "ABCDE" 
corresponding to single print line is spread on the memory along the base 
line BL1, and the dot pattern data for the character string "09876" is 
spread along the base line BL2. As shown in FIG. 9, the blank spaces Yu 
and Yg over and under the print allowance area G and the blank space width 
between the lines Yg are well-balanced even if the characters have 
different heights. 
Besides the above function, as shown in FIG. 6, a partial modification can 
be made in the above dot pattern data generation process by replacing S313 
with S320 through S322. The modification enables the tape printing device 
to perform multiple line printing with the total blank space evenly 
distributed to Yu, Yd and Yg. In other words, after calculating the number 
of print lines L and total character height H (S311,S312), if the total 
character height H is smaller than or equal to the width of the print 
allowance area G (S320:Yes), the blank width Y is calculated in the 
expression Y=(W-H)/(L+1), and the blank space widths Yu, Yd and Yg are set 
at Y respectively (S321). In the calculation, if L is found to be 1, Yu 
and Yd are set at e respectively so that the characters are printed across 
the entire width of the print allowance area G (S322:No). FIG. 12 shows 
the printed medium with single print line. 
The size data on the tape width W is stored on the ROM 32 and referred to 
in the calculation. In the next step, if the blank space width Y is larger 
than the width of the print inhibit area e and print execution is possible 
(S322:No), the residual lower blank space width Yd is calculated by 
subtracting the width of the print inhibit area e from the lower end blank 
space width Yd, the base lines BL are positioned according to the residual 
lower blank space width Yd, the upper blank space width Yu, the blank 
space width between the print lines Yg, and the tape width and the 
character heights h1, h2, . . . (S323). The positioning process is 
followed by the image generation process illustrated above and subsequent 
print execution (S400). 
As shown in FIG. 10, for example, when print is executed in a dual print 
line mode, the controller C positions the BL2 corresponding to the second 
print line above the bottom of the print buffer 44 with a margin of the 
residual lower blank space width Yd calculated by subtracting the width of 
the print inhibit area e from the lower blank space width Yd. The 
controller C also positions the BL1 corresponding to the first print line 
above the BL2 with a margin given by totaling the character height h2 for 
the second print line and the blank space width between the print lines 
Yg. The dot pattern data for the character string "ABCDE" is spread along 
the base line BL1, and the dot pattern data for the character string 
"09876" is spread along the base line BL2 respectively. As a result, as 
shown in FIG. 11, the blank space widths are arranged so that the printed 
medium represent a well-balanced impression irrespective of the 
irregularity in character sizes. However, if the tape medium 5 with the 
tape width W smaller than the width of the print allowance area G is used, 
the tape width W brings a limitation on the print allowance area G. In 
this case, the blank space width Y is set to be identical to the Yu, Yd 
and Yg. 
If the blank space width Y is smaller than the width of the print inhibit 
area e and print execution is found to be impossible (S322:Yes), the base 
lines BL are re-positioned in the steps S314 through S316, followed by the 
image combination process for spreading the dot pattern data generated in 
the above process on the print buffer 44 and subsequent print execution 
(S400). In this case, the width of the top blank space and the bottom 
blank space is set at the width of the print inhibit area e, and the 
difference in the width between the print allowance area and the total 
character height is evenly distributed to the blank spaces between the 
print lines as shown in FIG. 13. 
Besides the above description, modifications can be made to the present 
embodiments within the scope of the present invention. For example, 
various tape medium with a tape width other than 24 mm can be used in the 
tape printing device. In this modification, an indicator may be provided 
on the cassette case for informing the tape printing device of the tape 
width. In this embodiment, a detector provided on the print mechanism PM 
detects the tape width, and retrieves the character size data by referring 
to the ROM 32. Another modification can also be made to the present 
embodiment by altering the data storage operation so that the memory holds 
the dot pattern data for characters rather than the outline data.