Print engine controller utilizing on and off chip memory for dot data formatting

1. A print engine controller for a pagewidth printhead, the controller comprising:

contone and bi-level decompression circuitry for decompressing a contone layer of compressed page data and a bi-level layer of compressed page data, respectively;

halftoner and compositor circuitry for halftoning the decompressed contone layer to associated bi-level versions and compositing the decompressed bi-level layer over the halftoned contone layers;

printhead interface circuitry for receiving the halftoned and composited data, and to generate therefrom print data suitable for printing by the printhead; and

line loader and formatter circuitry for receiving dot data from the halftoner and compositor circuitry, loading dot data for a given print line into buffer storages, and formatting dots of a given print line into an order required by the printhead interface circuitry, wherein

the line loader and formatter circuitry loads the dot data into a combination of an integrated circuit and external storage buffers.

2. The print engine controller of claim 1 , further comprising tag encoder circuitry for establishing infrared tag data on infrared tags according to protocols associated with the compressed page data.

3. The print engine controller of claim 2 , wherein the halftoner and compositor circuitry composites the infrared tags with the halftoned and composited data.

4. The print engine controller of claim 1 , wherein the contone decompression circuitry is in the form of JPEG decoder circuitry.

5. The print engine controller of claim 1 , wherein the bi-level decompression circuitry is in the form of G4 fax decoder circuitry.

6. The print engine controller of claim 1 , further comprising buffer circuitry for buffering data transfer to the halftoner and compositor circuitry.