Inkjet printhead assembly having infrared tag control

1. An inkjet printhead assembly comprising an inkjet printhead and at least one print controller for controlling printing performed by the printhead, the at least one print controller comprising:

an interface for receiving compressed page data;

a decoder for decoding any infrared tags in the received compressed page data;

a dot merger unit controlled by a color mask for mapping the decoded infrared tags into channels corresponding to what inks are supplied in the inkjet printhead; and

a printhead driver for outputting the mapped infrared tags to the inkjet printhead.

2. A printhead assembly according to claim 1 , wherein, in a test mode, the color mask is configured to control the dot merger unit to map the infrared tags to at least one channel other than a channel corresponding to infrared ink.

3. A printhead assembly according to claim 1 , wherein the print controller further comprises:

a contone image decoder for decoding any continuous tone image planes in the received compressed page data; and

a high resolution image decoder for decoding any high resolution image planes in the received compressed page data.

4. A printhead assembly according to claim 3 , wherein:

the print controller further comprises a half-toner/compositor for dithering any continuous tone image planes and compositing high resolution image plane data with any output plane; and

the printhead driver is configured to output the composite to the inkjet printhead.

5. A printhead assembly according to claim 4 , wherein the half-toner/compositor incorporates the dot merger unit, the color mask being configured to control the dot merger unit to map the decoded image planes into channels corresponding to what inks are supplied in the inkjet printhead.