The invention generally relates to laser printers and, in particular, a continuous laser printer which can print successive forms of varying lengths.
Laser printers using the xerography process are well known in the prior art such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,383,755 and 4,384,297. In addition, video signal generators for laser printers such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,625,219 are also well known in the prior art. Such generators include a dot counter which counts the dots along the horizontal side of the recording area and a raster counter which counts the dots along the vertical side of the recording areas. In accordance with the outputs of these counters, a character pattern memory produces a character print dot signal, while a set value representing a ruled line size is calculated from the outputs of the dot counter and the raster, thus producing a ruled line signal. These two signals are combined to make up a video signal.
In general, such printers and video signal generators for controlling them are unable to print across page boundaries and must define pages having margins on all four sides. This approach unnecessarily limits the ability of the printer to print continuously or to print on pages of varying size.