Status and control panel for a remotely located printer. The panel includes input keys and a display device which can display various text strings, icons, screens, and multiple screen sequences. Each display format is prestored in volatile memory in the panel and addressed by display instructions from the associated device over a serial communications line. The display formats are pre-loaded in the memory at the time the device is first powered-up. Some of the input keys on the control panel are defined by the display on the LCD. Icon description language is used to store data about standard icon images, and an interpreter on the panel is used to convert these descriptions into dot-matrix format for use by the LCD.