Trace and debug tool for high speed printer systems

A printer system stores a trace of a printer job in storage that is either local or accessible to the printer system. A remotely implemented tool accesses the stored printer job trace. The tool includes a graphical interface that displays the printer commands in the printer job trace in a human readable format. The commands may be displayed in a first window of the interface. In one embodiment, the interface includes a second window where details of a command selected or highlighted in the first window are displayed. The tool may be implemented as a secure web browser that requires password verification to access the printer job trace. The tool may include the ability to replace confidential print data with generic or non-confidential data. The tool might further be able to display text that is embedded in a printer job trace command in ASCII and EBCDIC format.