Abstract: A font compression method and apparatus operates by: compressing different components of a font file with separate compressors having varying compression schemes to produce a plurality of intermediate compressed data sets; separating compressed glyph table components of the font file into different ones of the intermediate compressed data sets; and further compressing the intermediate compressed data sets to produce corresponding compressed output data sets. A corresponding decompression method and apparatus is used to decompress fonts which have been compressed using the above method.

Abstract: A method for construction of a scaleable font database comprised of data stored in a compact form for retrieval in one of several usable forms common in digital typography. The method comprises the steps, for each text character of a font collection of: generating a digital representation of the character and identifying it with respect to character code and typeface design, determining segment endpoints and associations within a model of the character, measuring actual dimensions for the associations, and determining segment descriptors for each contour segment comprising the complete outline of the character.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for storing scaleable font data in a compact form and retrieving it in one of several usable forms common in digital typography. The retrieval process can be influenced by parameters to produce not only the original typeface designs that were compressed, but also variations on those typeface designs. Variations produced in this manner are related typeface designs which therefore effectively add new fonts to the family originally stored. Individual character pixelmaps and scaleable character outlines are two of the forms which can be retrieved from the compressed font data. The storage and retrieval methods are designed so that the time needed to produce a single character pixelmap from the internal form is less than that required for producing the same pixelmap from an uncompressed hinted outline font stored in an industry-standard format.