Abstract: 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.