COMPRESSING IDEOGRAPHIC CHARACTERS

摘要

A compression/decompression method useful in communicating ideographic characters to communication devices. An ideographic character is represented by a compressed character codeword including information defining a structure type or layout of the character, together with primitive types that represent combinations of simple graphical elements. A character generator read-only memory (CGROM) (20) includes a compressed character codeword database (22) and a primitive type database (24). Character codes corresponding to a compressed character codeword are transmitted to a communication device (600) such as a selective call receiver. The communication device (600) includes a microprocessor/controller (50) that decompresses the compressed character codewords corresponding to the character codes based on the data stored in the character database (22) and the primitive type database (24).