Patent ID: 6982799

Claim:
A printer for printing of a page, the printer including at least one inkjet printhead, a printhead controller; an interface for receiving data relating to the page to be printed, the data including a page description comprising a bi-level black layer and a contone color layer; at least one raster image processor adapted to raster the received data and compress the rastered data; the printhead controller including: a decoding unit that extracts from the compressed rastered data first data relating to the bi-level black layer and second data relating to the contone color layer; memory that temporarily stores the first and second data; a ditherer/compositor unit operable to: produce a dithered bi-level color layer based on the second data, produce a bi-level black layer based on the first data and composite the bi-level black layer on the color layer after dithering thereof to produce a page image; wherein the printhead controller controls the printhead to print the dithered/composited page image.