Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Hiroshi Yahiro

Koichi Kaji

Kazuyoshi Kameda

Kenichiro Kobayashi

The font compression method according to the present invention comprises the steps of (a) dividing a first type font matrix to be compressed into a plurality of sections consisting of an equal number of bits in the direction of the columns and/or rows of the matrix; (b) comparing information bits in the bit positions in each divided section and in the first bit position in the adjacent next section in accordance with a predetermined rule; (c) determining information bits to be dropped in accordance with the result of the comparison, extracting the remaining information bits in each section other than the dropped information bits successively, and classifying the information bits thus extracted into predetermined bit patterns; and (d) repeating the operation of the steps (b) and (c) until the processing of the last column and /or the last row terminates. By the font compression method according to the present invention, a font of characters and figures arranged in a 24.times.24 matrix for instance, can be compressed into another font, arranged in a 16.times.16 dot matrix, for instance, but maintaining the features of the original characters and figures. A font compression apparatus for automatically compressing a font of characters and figures through a microprocessor is also disclosed.

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Yokosuka, Japan

Hiroshi Yahiro