Method and apparatus for replacing or modifying a postscript built- in font in a printer

摘要

An improved printer is provided in which one of the "built-in" resident fonts can be effectively replaced by downloading from a host computer (into either Flash memory or the printer's hard disk drive) new or modified data under the same font descriptor as the built-in font. After the replacement font has been received by the printer and stored into a non-volatile memory storage device, the user can choose whether to use the replacement font or the built-in font for a particular document, by use of a printer setting named the "Font Priority." This Font Priority setting has the values of either "Resident" or "Flash/Disk. " When the Font Priority setting is set to "Resident," the printer preserves Adobe compatibility by having the PostScript interpreter search the virtual memory first to locate a font that is requested by a print job. If the particular font is found, no other font memory storage device is searched and the copy of the font reference in the virtual memory is selected. If the Font Priority is set to "Flash/Disk," the PostScript interpreter will still search for the requested font in virtual memory. However, if the interpreter finds that a resident font has been requested, then the non- volatile memory storage devices are searched for a replacement version of that font. If a replacement font is found, it is loaded into virtual memory and will now be used to print the document (instead of the original built-in resident font).