Is there a way to convert a font, which is treated like a vector, to a bitmap?

I've done a few projects with extensive text.  The XCS software is engraving one letter at a time.  Every little punctuation mark is treated like its own vector.

I would like to engrave the text as if it was a big bitmap.  So the laser just works its way all the way down a paragraph.  It seems like this would be much more efficient.

Perhaps I'm missing something simple that everyone else knows already.