Fecha de publicación: 25/09/1997 Fuente: Wipo "digitalization" A copier (10) for rendering an image of an object onto a physical medium includes a scanner (60), a printer (80) and an external processor (30). The scanner (60) and the printer (80) are coupled to the external processor (30) by a high-speed serial bus (61) having a latency and a maximum signal transmission rate sufficient to enable transmission to the external processor (30) of the digital image signal generated by the scanner (60) which represent the image of the object without prior interim storage of the digital image signals in a buffer on board the scanner (60). The high-speed serial bus (61) further has a latency and a maximum signal transmission rate sufficient to enable transmission of the digital image signals from the external processor (30) to the printer (80) for rendering the digital image signals in a buffer on board the printer (80). In an embodiment, the external processor (30) is capable of processing the digital image signals and the scanner (60) is capable of transmitting the digital image signals without prior on-board digital processing of the digital image signals in the scanner (60) and the printer (80) is capable of rendering the digital image signals without prior on-board digital processing of the digital image signals in the printer (80).