Patent ID: 7109996

Claim:
A system for rendering a character in a font, the system comprising: a first memory having stored therein a data structure, the data structure including a plurality of font arrays; and a graphics controller coupled to the first memory, the graphics controller accessing a font array included in the data structure, the graphics controller comprising a first register for holding glyph information for a character in the font wherein the graphics controller reads the glyph information from the first memory into the first register, a second register that specifies an address for the font array for the font wherein the graphics controller locates the font array using the address, and a third register that contains an index to the character in the font array wherein the graphics controller locates the glyph information for the character in the font array using the index, wherein width and height information for the character is located in the font array using the address and the index in combination, wherein the size of the character is determined according to which of the font arrays is selected, and wherein for the graphics controller to render the character, a central processing unit transfers to the graphics controller only the address for the font array, the index for the character in the font array, an x-value indicating a horizontal position for the character and a y-value indicating a vertical position for the character.