An Efficient Algorithm for Storing/Restoring Font Images in the Unicode for Small-Memory Embedded Systems

摘要

The Unicode Standard is the universal character encoding scheme for written characters and text. It defines a consistent way of encoding multilingual text that enables the exchange of text data internationally and creates the foundation for global software. While the Unicode has the merit of universality, it has a drawback that the repertoire must he large enough to encompass all characters that are likely to be used in general text interchange. Since font images are usually stored in ROM or flush memory for efficient processing, the requirement for a large amount of memory is becoming unacceptable especially for small-memory embedded systems, such as digital camcorders, cellular phones, and PDAs. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm to store and restore the Unicode font images. Using an indirect mapping of characters into font images, we could reduce the required memory size by about 66% and 74% for the Korean Hangul and the Chinese Han, respectively, which are the most two largest character sets among the world's scripts.