Author: claimsbot

1. A printing apparatus including a manual feed tray capable of feeding printing paper sheets with a plurality of paper sizes, and a cassette tray, the apparatus comprising:
an instruction accepting unit configured to accept an instruction of printing on a mixture of a printing paper sheet fed from the cassette tray which stores the printing paper sheet, and a printing paper sheet fed from the manual feed tray;
a specifying unit configured to specify the paper size set for the manual feed tray, based on the paper size set for the cassette tray, in a case where the instruction is accepted by said instruction accepting unit; and
a setting unit configured to set, for the manual feed tray, the paper size specified by said specifying unit; and
a printing unit configured to perform printing on a mixture of a printing paper sheet fed from the cassette tray, and a printing paper sheet fed from the manual feed tray for which the paper size is set by said setting unit.
2. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said specifying unit further comprises:
a display control unit configured to display, on a display unit, a list of a plurality of paper sizes that can be set for the manual feed tray, based on the paper size set for the cassette tray; and
a selection accepting unit configured to select a paper size from the list,
wherein said specifying unit specifies the selected paper size, as a paper size set for the manual feed tray.
3. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:
a reading unit configured to optically read a bundle of documents as a mixture of documents with a plurality of paper sizes to generate read data,
wherein the instruction includes an instruction of printing based on the read data.
4. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the paper size is a length of a side of a printing paper sheet corresponding to a leading edge of the printing paper sheet in a conveyance direction thereof.
5. A printing apparatus including a manual feed tray capable of feeding printing paper sheets with a plurality of paper sizes, and a cassette tray, the apparatus comprising:
an instruction accepting unit configured to accept an instruction of printing on a mixture of printing paper sheets with a plurality of paper sizes;
a printing unit configured to perform printing on a mixture of printing paper sheets, fed from respective cassette trays which store the printing paper sheets with the plurality of paper sizes, in a case where the instruction is accepted by said instruction accepting unit;
a printing control unit configured to detect a paper-out condition and interrupt the printing; and
a setting unit configured to set, for the manual feed tray, a paper size set for a cassette tray for which the paper-out condition is detected.
6. The apparatus according to claim 5, further comprising:
a detection unit configured to detect that a printing paper sheet is placed on the manual feed tray,
wherein said printing control unit restarts the interrupted printing as said detection unit detects placement of a printing paper sheet with a paper size set by said setting unit.
7. A printing method executed by a printing apparatus including a manual feed tray capable of feeding printing paper sheets with a plurality of paper sizes, and a cassette tray, the method comprising:
an instruction accepting step of accepting an instruction of printing on a mixture of a printing paper sheet fed from the cassette tray which stores the printing paper sheet, and a printing paper sheet fed from the manual feed tray;
a specifying step of specifying the paper size set for the manual feed tray, based on the paper size set for the cassette tray, in a case where the instruction is accepted in the instruction accepting step; and
a setting step of setting, for the manual feed tray, the paper size specified in the specifying step; and
a printing step of performing printing on a mixture of a printing paper sheet fed from the cassette tray, and a printing paper sheet fed from the manual feed tray for which the paper size is set in the setting step.
8. A printing method executed by a printing apparatus including a manual feed tray capable of feeding printing paper sheets with a plurality of paper sizes, and a cassette tray, the method comprising:
an instruction accepting step of accepting an instruction of printing on a mixture of printing paper sheets with a plurality of paper sizes;
a printing step of performing printing on a mixture of printing paper sheets, fed from respective cassette trays which store the printing paper sheets with the plurality of paper sizes, in a case where the instruction is accepted in the instruction accepting step;
a printing control step of detecting a paper-out condition and interrupt the printing; and
a setting step of setting, for the manual feed tray, a paper size set for a cassette tray for which the paper-out condition is detected.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. An interactive program search apparatus which searches out a program using a search word, said apparatus comprising:
a program information storage unit configured to store program information indicating contents of programs on a per program basis;
an association dictionary storage unit configured to store an association dictionary in which words included in the program information are stored in association with each other;
an obtaining unit configured to obtain the search word;
an obtainment history storage unit configured to store, as obtainment history information, the search word obtained by said obtaining unit and an obtainment frequency of the search word;
a program search unit configured to search out programs from the program information using, as a search condition, the search word included in the obtainment history information;
an association-source word extracting unit configured to extract an association-source word which is associated with an associated word, from among the words included in the obtainment history information;
an associated word extracting unit configured to extract the associated word associated with the association-source word using the association dictionary;
a reason word extracting unit configured to extract, as a reason word indicating a relationship between the association-source word and the associated word, a word included in the obtainment history information from among words each having (i) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the association-source word and (ii) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the associated word; and
a display unit configured to display program search results which are the programs searched out by said program search unit, the associated word, and the reason word.
2. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein said obtaining unit is configured to further obtain an instruction to provisionally select one of the program search results displayed on said display unit,
said interactive program search apparatus further comprises
a provisional selection search unit configured to search out one of the programs from the program information using program information of a provisionally selected program and the obtainment history information, and determine the searched-out program to be the provisionally selected program,
said association-source word extracting unit is configured to extract the association-source word, based on the obtainment history information and the program information of the provisionally selected program, and
said associated word extracting unit is configured to extract the associated word associated with the association-source word in the association dictionary, from among words included in the program information of the provisionally selected program.
3. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 2,
wherein said association-source word extracting unit is configured to extract, as the association-source word, a word having a highest occurrence frequency in the obtainment history information among the words included in the program information of the provisionally selected program.
4. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 2,
wherein said associated word extracting unit is configured to extract words associated with the association-source word in the association dictionary from among the words included in the program information of the provisionally selected program, and extract, as the associated word, a word included in the obtainment history information from among the extracted words.
5. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein said reason word extracting unit is configured to extract words as reason word candidates from the association dictionary using the association-source word, the associated word, and the obtainment history information, and determine the reason word from among the extracted reason word candidates, based on the number of programs including the association-source word, the number of programs including the associated word, and the numbers of programs including the respective reason word candidates, the numbers of the programs being determined with reference to the program information stored in said program information storage unit.
6. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein said reason word extracting unit is configured to determine the association-source word to be the reason word in the case where the association dictionary that said associated word extracting unit has used to extract the associated word is a program association dictionary in which words co-occurring in a program are stored in association with each other, and to extract the reason word from the program association dictionary using the association-source word, the associated word, and the obtainment history information in the case where the association dictionary that said associated word extracting unit has used to extract the associated word is a law-of-transition association dictionary generated with consideration of a law of transition in a relationship between words co-occurring in a program.
7. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein said program search unit is configured to obtain, from the obtainment history information, occurrence frequencies of the respective words included in the program information of the program, calculate a sum of the obtained occurrence frequencies, and determine, to be a search result, a program having the sum of the occurrence frequencies equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value.
8. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein said obtainment history storage unit is configured to store, as the obtainment history information, either (i) words included in program information of a program watched by a user and a watching frequency of the program or (ii) words included in program information read by the user and a reading frequency of the program information.
9. An interactive program search method for searching out a program using a search word, said method being performed by a computer and comprising:
searching out programs from program information which indicates contents of the programs on a per program basis and is stored in the program information storage unit, using obtainment history information indicating the search word obtained in said obtaining and an obtainment frequency of the search word, the obtaining history information being stored in an obtainment history storage unit;
extracting an association-source word which is associated with an associated word, from among the words included in the obtainment history information;
extracting the associated word associated with the association-source word, using the association dictionary in which words included in the program information are associated with each other, the association dictionary being stored in an association dictionary storage unit;
extracting, as a reason word indicating a relationship between the association-source word and the associated word, the search word included in the obtainment history information from among words each having (i) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the association-source word and (ii) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the associated word; and
displaying, on a display unit, program search results which are the programs searched out in said searching out, the associated word, and the reason word.
10. A program for searching out a program using a search word, said program causing a computer to execute:
obtaining the search word;
searching out programs from program information which indicates contents of the programs on a per program basis and is stored in the program information storage unit, using obtainment history information indicating the search word obtained in the obtaining and an obtainment frequency of the search word, the obtaining history information being stored in an obtainment history storage unit;
extracting an association-source word which is associated with an associated word, from among the words included in the obtainment history information;
extracting the associated word associated with the association-source word, using the association dictionary in which words included in the program information are associated with each other, the association dictionary being stored in an association dictionary storage unit;
extracting, as a reason word indicating a relationship between the association-source word and the associated word, the search word included in the obtainment history information from among words each having (i) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the association-source word and (ii) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the associated word; and
displaying, on a display unit, program search results which are the programs searched out in the searching out, the associated word, and the reason word.

1. A frequency divider comprising:
a function selector unit selecting a signal so that the selected signal in one of two feedback paths is dominantly input to a buffer unit, in synchronism with a clock signal frequency of which satisfies a certain condition;
the buffer unit buffering the signal input from the function selector unit and outputting the buffered signal;
the two feedback paths feeding back the output signal of the buffer unit to an input of the buffer unit; and
an inverter unit provided in one of the two feedback paths and inverting a signal value.
2. The frequency divider according to claim 1, wherein
the function selector comprises:
a first switch unit provided in one of the two feedback paths and turning on and off in synchronous with the clock signal in order to open and close one of the two feedback paths; and
a second switch unit provided in the other of the two feedback paths and turning on and off in an opposite timing to the first switch unit in order to open and close the other of the two feedback paths.
3. The frequency divider according to claim 1, wherein the function selector comprises:
a switch unit turning on and off in synchronous with the clock signal, wherein one of the two feedback paths is opened and closed by the switch unit while another of the two feedback paths including the inverter unit is always closed.
4. The frequency divider according to claim 2, wherein the first switch unit and the second switch unit transistor.
5. The frequency divider according to claim 1, wherein an operational delay of the inverter unit is adjustable.
6. The frequency divider according to claim 5, wherein the inverter unit comprises a variable resistor and the operational delay of the inverter unit is adjusted by changing the resistance of the variable resistor.
7. The frequency divider according to claim 1, further comprising:
a control unit turning off the inverter unit when the frequency divider is in a stand by mode.
8. The frequency divider according to claim 1, wherein
the certain condition is expressed by
1{2*(t_inv+t\u2014sw+t_buf)}<the frequency of the clock signal<min{1{2*(t\u2014sw+t_buf)},1(t_inv+t\u2014sw+t_buf)},
where t_inv is a delay time of the inverter unit, t_sw is a delay time of the function selector unit, t_buf is a delay time of the buffer unit and min{A, B} means smaller one of A and B.
9. A multiplexing system using the frequency divider according to claim 1.
10. A phase locked loop system using the frequency divider according to claim 1.
11. A clock generator using the frequency divider according to claim 1.
12. The frequency divider according to claim 3, wherein the switch unit is a transistor.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package, comprising in combination,
a) a continuous web of substantially constant thickness packaging material, said web having width and selectable running length, said width defining the side edges of said web, and
b) a plurality of discrete strips of substantially constant thickness flexible material, each said strip having length and width, said strip width defining the strip ends, said strip length having top and bottom edges and being substantially greater than said strip width, said strip length of successive ones of each of said plurality of discrete strips being secured at package length intervals transversely to the running length of said web of packaging material along the strip top edge and being substantially unsecured along its bottom edge.
2. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1, wherein one end of each of said plurality of discrete strips is substantially congruent with one of said side edges of said web.
3. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1, wherein one end of each of said plurality of discrete strips is substantially congruent with one side edge of said web, and the other side edge of said web is disposed at a distance beyond the other end of said strips sufficient to provide a margin of web material for the formation of an overlap package seal.
4. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1, wherein both side edges of said web are disposed at a distance beyond the ends of said strips sufficient to provide side margins of web material for the formation of a package fin seal.
5. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein each of said plurality of discrete strips is secured to said packaging material substantially continuously along its top edge.
6. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein each of said plurality of discrete strips is secured to said packaging material substantially continuously along its top edge and opposite ends.
7. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein each of said plurality of discrete strips is secured to said packaging material for a short length substantially centrally along its bottom edge.
8. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein said packaging material and said plurality of discrete strips are both single thickness mono-layer materials.
9. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein said packaging material is a single thickness multi-layer material.
10. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein each of said plurality of discrete strips is a single thickness multi-layer material.
11. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein said packaging material and said plurality of discrete strips are both single thickness multi-layer materials.
12. A composite web of packaging material for forming a flexible package as set forth in claim 1 wherein each of said plurality of discrete strips is secured to said packaging material for a length along its bottom edge.