TRYCKANORDNING FOR BILDALSTRING

An optical printer including a binary, i.e., on/off, spot forming device which traverses an electrophotographic copy drum with a raster pattern to reproduce thereon a latent image of a text, which text is stored in a page memory. All possible text characters are stored in a font memory. The characters which are needed to reproduce a particular page, as stored in page memory, are selectively modified and then presented, as variable length binary character words, to an output serializing buffer. This buffer comprises a plurality (N) of multistage (M) shift registers. A load distributing means is operable to load the first bit of a binary character word in the first stage of one of said registers, the 1+N bit in the second stage of said one register, and so on progressively. The first stage of the shift register whose first stage is next in read-order receives the second bit of the character word, the 2+N bit is placed in its second stage, and so on progressively. This process continues through all registers until the character word is completely loaded. A pointer is generated, to control the loading of the next character word so that continuous cyclic accessing of the first stages of the registers, in a read-order from 1 through N, provides a serial binary bit stream. This bit stream is operable to provide binary control of the spot forming device.