Font access, registration, display and printing method and a method for processing electronic documents having variant fonts

Abstract

To provide a method for font access, a method for font registration, a method for font display, a method for font printing and a method for handling an electronic document in which a variant font is included, and a recording medium therefor, whereby the creator of an electronic document can use many more characters than those to which restricted by the conventional character codes. According to the method for font access, the method for font registration, the method for font display, the method for font printing, and the method for processing an electronic document in which a variant font is included, a variant font file is used that includes a variant font data file and an index conversion table having a primary index table and a secondary index table. Based on a character code and a variant character number of a regular character of a target variant font that is indexed in an electronic document; a pointer to a corresponding secondary index can be obtained from the character code of the regular code; the position of entry data of a secondary index in the secondary index table pointed to by the obtained pointer can be moved a distance equivalent to the variant character number; and a font image at the position of the pointer to the first byte of the target variant font can be obtained as the target variant font. Then a recording medium in acquired to record the electronic document in which the above described variant font is included.