Method and apparatus for typographic glyph construction including a glyph server

• US 6,714,199 B1
• Filed: 12/23/1998
• Issued: 03/30/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 03/29/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Computer Incorporated (Apple Inc.)
• Inventors: Becker, Richard W., Opstad, David G., Beaman, Alexander B., Reed, Michael R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Razavi, Michael
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chung, Daniel J
• Application Number:
  US09/221,276
• Time in Patent Office: 1,924 Days
• Field of Search: 345/467, 345/469, 345/468, 345/472, 345/502, 707/542
• US Class Current: 345/469
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/109 Font handling; Temporal or kinetic typography
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/203 Drawing of straight lines or curves

Abstract

A system for typographic glyph construction includes a graphics system, a glyph server coupled to the graphics system, and an operating system coupled to the glyph server. An apparatus for typographic glyph construction of input text in a graphics system running on a computer system and output on an output device of the computer system includes a line layout core unit, a glyph cache unit coupled to the line layout core unit, an open font architecture services unit coupled to the glyph cache unit, at least one scaler unit coupled to the open font architecture unit, a font object management unit coupled to the at least one font scaler, and an attribute group support unit supporting a data structure for communication among the units of the apparatus. A method for processing input text in a graphics system running on a computer system and displaying typographic glyphs on a display device of the computer system includes mapping the input text into glyph codes, forming an initial glyph record array, the initial glyph record array comprising a plurality of glyph records for the glyph codes, processing a layout of the glyph codes to produce an updated glyph record array, rendering the updated glyph record array to produce a final glyph record array, and rendering a display of the typographic glyph output from the final glyph record array.

Claims

1. A system for glyph construction of a line of text in a single computer system, wherein font data tables are stored in the single computer system, the system comprising:

at least one software client running on the single computer system, the at least one software client including means for requesting glyph data for the line of text; and

a glyph server means in the single computer system in communication with the at least one software client, wherein the glyph server means includes a glyph cache unit for managing a plurality of requests for glyph data at a time and managing a memory to store a maximum amount of glyph data, wherein the glyph cache unit is in communication with the single computer system for accessing the font data tables, and wherein the glyph server further comprises a line layout core module for receiving glyph codes and determining glyph data descriptions, the glyph cache unit coupled to the line layout core module for receiving the glyph data descriptions and determining if glyph data is in the memory, and an open font architecture services module coupled to the glyph cache unit for permitting support of multiple font file formats;

wherein the glyph server means allows the at least one software client to share glyph data stored in the memory, thereby decreasing glyph construction time.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the glyph server means further comprises at least one scaler module coupled to the open font architecture module for receiving requests from the open font architecture module and interpreting font data within a font file.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the glyph server means further comprises a font object management module coupled to the at least one font scaler module and handling requests for the font data.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the glyph server means further comprises an attribute group support module supporting a data structure for communication among the line layout core module, the glyph cache unit, the open font architecture services module, the font scaler module, and the font object management module.