Patent ID: 8038358

Claim:
A tape printing apparatus that prints characters and/or symbols on a tape mounted in a detachable tape cassette, the apparatus comprising: an input device that inputs characters and/or symbols to be printed on at least one line of a plurality of lines; a setting device that sets a character size for each line, the character size being a size of respective characters and/or the symbols to be printed over the lines; a display device that displays an edit screen used for displaying characters and/or symbols inputted by the input device; a tape width acquisition device that acquires a tape width of the tape mounted in the tape cassette attached in the apparatus; an edit tape width image storage device that stores edit tape width images corresponding to respective tape widths, each of the edit tape width images indicating a tape width to be displayed on the edit screen; a character region width image storage device that stores a plurality of character region width images corresponding to respective character sizes, each of the character region width images indicating respective sizes of regions extending in a width direction of the tape, the regions being occupied by characters and/or symbols when characters and/or symbols are printed on tapes having respective tape widths indicated by the edit tape width images; an input character size acquisition device that acquires the character size of characters and/or symbols inputted by the input device for each line; an edit tape width image reading device that reads out one of the edit tape width images from the edit tape width image storage device, the one of the edit tape width images corresponding to the tape width acquired by the tape width acquisition device; a character region width image reading device that reads out at least one of the plurality of character region width images from the character region width image storage device, the character region width images corresponding to the character size acquired for each respective line by the input character size acquisition device; an edit guide image generation device that generates an edit guide image by combining the one of the edit tape width images and each of the at least one of the character region width images, the one of the edit tape width image being read out by the edit tape width image reading device, and each of the at least one of the character region width images being read out by the character region width image reading device; and an edit display control device that displays on the edit screen inputted characters and/or symbols for the at least one line of the plurality of lines with a predetermined display character size, and displays separately therefrom the edit guide image generated by the edit guide image generation device.