Patent ID: 8044960

Claim:
A character display apparatus comprising: a storage means for storing a plurality of vector font data each having character attributes; a display image generating means for applying a display color to a character image which is based on vector font data so as to generate display character image data in a data format which can be displayed by a display device; a first cache means for holding the display character image data generated by said display image generating means; a luminance image generating means for generating luminance image data in which luminance values of pixels of a character image based on vector font data are described; a second cache means for holding the luminance image data generated by said luminance image generating means; a third cache means for holding vector font data; a first acquiring means for searching through said third cache means for vector font data which match character attributes of a character to be displayed to acquire the vector font data, and for, when no vector font data which match the character attributes of the character to be displayed are held by said third cache means, acquiring the vector font data which match the character attributes of the character to be displayed from said storage means; a second acquiring means for searching through said second cache means for luminance image data which match character attributes of said character to be displayed to acquire the luminance image data, and for, when no luminance image data which match the character attributes of said character to be displayed are held by said second cache means, acquiring luminance image data which said luminance image generating means generates on a basis of the vector font data acquired by said first acquiring means; a third acquiring means for searching through said first cache means for display character image data which match character attributes of said character to be displayed to acquire the display character image data, and for, when no display character image data which match the character attributes of said character to be displayed are held by said first cache means, acquiring display character image data which said display image generating means generate on a basis of the luminance image data acquired by said second acquiring means; and a display control means for displaying the display character image data which are acquired by said third acquiring means and which match the character attributes of said character to be displayed on said display device.