14. A printing system comprising: (a) a font storage means including a font storage memory for storing a plurality of characters to be printed, each stored character being comprised of a matrix of pixels contained in a plurality of lines having a first line, a plurality of intermediate lines, and a last line, each line having one or more successively addressed words, with the beginning word having a lowest address, with each successive word having a higher address, and with a last word having the highest address, each word having a plurality of pixels; (b) means, coupled to the font storage means, for causing the readout of words stored in the font storage memory in either a first direction or a second direction, the first direction being from the first line thru the last line with each line being read out in a direction from the lowest addressed word to the highest addressed word and the second direction being from the last line thru the first line with each line being read out in a direction from the highest addressed word to the lowest addressed word, and the storage of the words of a character, which have been readout from the font storage memory, in a page memory contained within a raster storage means which stores one or more pages of information to be printed; and (c) printing means, coupled to the raster storage means, for printing on a printing medium pages of information stored in the page memory.
18. A printing system in accordance with claim 14, further comprising: (a) a processing unit, coupled to the font storage means and the raster storage means, for controlling the retrieval of characters from the font storage memory and the storage of retrieved characters in the page memory; and (b) means, coupled to the page memory, for generating addresses where words of a character are to be stored in the page memory, the address of a first word of a character to be stored in the page memory being specified by the processing unit but all addresses of any other words of a character being generated by the means for generating addresses independently of the operation of the processing unit.