Abstract: In a digital printer, method and apparatus for formatting printer control signals. According to the invention, characters to be printed are stored in ASCII format in the memory of a microprocessor system. Successive characters are formatted into an on/off bit mapping where a bit signal corresponds to a blank region and a bit signal corresponds to a darkened region. Eight bit slices of the characters are formatted until an entire print width is completed and stored in an 8 bit.times.N buffer where N varies with the desired printer resolution. In the preferred embodiment two buffers are used so that while the contents of one buffer are used to control the printer the second buffer can be bit formatted under microprocessor control.

Abstract: In a digital printer, method and apparatus for formatting printer control signals. According to the invention, characters to be printed are stored in ASCII format in the memory of a microprocessor system. Successive characters are formatted into an on/off bit mapping where a bit signal corresponds to a blank region and a bit signal corresponds to a darkened region. Eight bit slices of the characters are formatted until an entire print width is completed and stored in an 8 bit.times.N buffer where N varies with the desired printer resolution. In the preferred embodiment two buffers are used so that while the contents of one buffer are used to control the printer the second buffer can be bit formatted under microprocessor control.