Patent US 5,422,985

An output apparatus comprises: a producing circuit for receiving code data indicative of a pattern to be generated and for producing a pattern based on the code data; an interruption instructing circuit for instructing the interruption of the outputting process; and a retreating circuit for retreating the code data which had already been received before the interruption was instructed in the case where the interruption has been instructed by the interruption instructing circuit. The code data is expressed by a page describing language. The preceding code data is retreated by a different data format when the outputting process has been interrupted. The recording process which has been interrupted can be restarted from the interrupted state by returning the retreated data from the auxiliary memory.