A computer system and method for outputting printer commands to a printer in
response
to a print request from an application program are presented. The printer includes
a device font whose characters are addressed for printing via a single, double,
or n-byte code. The text data, however, utilizes the Unicode Standard to identify
its characters. The system, therefore, includes a graphics device interface, which
is compatible to read the Unicode data, to invoke the printer driver functions
for controlling the outputting of the text data to the printer. A printer OEM supplied
minidriver contains a characterization of the printer, including information identifying
the device font resident in the printer and the code used to identify the individual
characters of the font. A printer driver uses this information to translate the
text data to be printed from the Unicode Standard to a code capable of selecting
a device font provided character.
