The July PWG meeting was held in Monterey, CA during the 2nd week of July. A summary of the status and activities of various PWG subgroups was presented, Wednesday morning, and is reported below.
Next meeting...
August 17-21
Toronto, Canada
Toronto Marriott at Eaton Centre
Price: $175CN + Meeting expenses
Deadline: July 24, 1998
For reservations call 888-440-9300. Ask for the "PWG" rate or "Lexmark"
Minor updates to the PWG process were reviewed. PDF is the only mandatory format for PWG documents. Issues were raised regarding the Intellectual Property section. Several people objected to the default actions outlined in the first paragraph of that section. We do not want to say that you give up rights to IP based on discussions in the PWG. We do want to encourage revealing your intent regarding IP, whether it be patented, copyright, pending or otherwise in process. Don Wright has volunteered to rewrite the section on Confidentiality which may become an addendum. The process document may need to be revised to indicate how the PWG will deal with "dormant" projects including possible reactivating and archival, using SENSE as an example.
Following the IP update, a "last call" will go out on the reflector.
Review your business and personal (school breaks etc.) schedules prior to the next meeting. In Toronto, the first pass at a PWG meeting schedule for 1999 will be discussed. The dates will actually be set at the September meeting but please have your information handy in Toronto to facilitate a multi-pass process.
The Toronto schedule will be the first in a new pattern with
Monday/Tuesday - P1394
Tuesday evening - MIBs and MIB related (PMP, JMP, FIN)
Wednesday - PWG Plenary (morning), IPP (afternoon)
Thursday - Notification (morning), SDP (afternoon)
Friday - UPD (break by 3pm).
The agenda may be modified by the PWG chair as the meeting approaches, but this general pattern is expected throughout the rest of the year. In particular, Tuesday evening 8/18 we anticipate the possibility of a Printer/Finisher Interface BOF as a spin-off from the Finisher MIB project.
Progression of our latest (albeit cob webbed) Printer MIB draft is still waiting on the Host Resources MIB. PMP officers are attempting to quicken the pace, if possible. Chris Wellens will initiate a weekly call to the author of the HR MIB changes and Harlod Alvestrand has vowed to assist in progressing these two MIBs.
An issue was regarding use of the "unavailable because broken" status bit was discussed. The intent of this bit was to distinguish from "unavailable on request" which means some feature is basically "not installed" vs the "broken" bit which means the feature is in the machine but not currently operational. For example, if an input drawer is jammed the "broken" bit is appropriate. Some vendors are evidently shy about using this status bit due to the implications of the terminology. Also, the top 25 alerts list is somewhat ambiguous because it calls for the "broken" bit when (for example) a tray is missing. Again, it is up to the implementation to realize that tray is "installed" but has been pulled out. This can involve some extreme heuristics on part of the management agent.
Tom Hastings will write and submit an entry to the Printer MIB FAQ to address this situation.
Tom Hastings expressed interest in adding extensions for Scan and FAX. There was no time to evaluate Tom's specific proposals. These will be addressed in Toronto. Tom also has a proposal for (optionally) counting blank sheet sides. Currently, only sheetsides are counted. Following discussion, Tom will modify his proposal to optionally count impressed sheet sides.. Blanks may be determined by subtracting impressed from the total.
The P1394 group is stepping back from some of their detailed specifications to reevaluate the need for extensibility and how it relates to their current design. The imaging profile is still expected to be SBP2 with unordered execution to accommodate bi-directional operation. There will be a simplified command set. The Config ROM device ID) is pending p1212 reaffirmation. This will be the scheme for discovery of services and functions such as print, scan and fax.
SENSE will be removed from further agenda. At some point, this project will either be reactivated or archived. A separate and distinct notification effort has evolved from IPP, the Job MIB and SDP requirements.
UPD is considered to be in stage-1 of the PWG process. This means they are concentrating on requirements, charter and justification. The first pass of documents relating to these areas will soon be accessible via the PWG web or ftp site. Sandra Matts (Chair - HP), conducted a meeting Tuesday night. Both Microsoft and Adobe were expected to be at the Monterey meeting but neither attended. This may have been due to the irregular, evening, agenda slot. Sandra presented 2 proposals, both of which are extensions of the initial, basic, GPD/UPD suggested by Microsoft. Sandra's first proposal adds platform independent callbacks and is enhanced to support bi-directional communications with the device. These would definitely be desirable in a standard UPD architecture. The 2nd proposal is similar to the first but further adds the concept of a Printer Language Independent Marking Definition as an interim data format. The group brainstormed regarding requirements and usage scenarios. See the UPD minutes for a full report.
IPPv1 was reviewed by the IETF area director (Keith Moore) and most of Keith's comments have been addressed. Two topics were unresolved going in to the Monterey meeting.
1. The need for and correct use of an IPP:// scheme in place of HTTP://
2. The definition of security methods for IPP.
A response was drafted to Keith's concerns regarding the IPP scheme. PWG members, in a brief session held separate from the official IETF WG meeting, voted to adopt the June 30 drafts of the IPP documents as a PWG standard. This will insure a fall back position for implementation should the IESG fail to ratify IPP at the Chicago IETF meeting in August.
No IPPv2 topics (Notifications, SDP, Administration) were discussed.
An "on-site" IPP interoperability bakeoff was proposed. Peter Z. is arranging the details. Some people would still rather see interoperability demonstrated across the WEB, remotely, rather than on a LAN in the lab. .
No news about the possibility of taking IPP to ECMA, a topic which had been considered in the past..
Because this topic relates heavily to what might be thought of as IPPv2 activity, discussion was postponed in Monterey to allow the members to focus all their energies on bringing IPPv1 to closure. This topic will be reopened in Toronto.
This topic binds the need for follow-on enhancement to IPP with both store-and-forward (e-mail) and real time notifications, Job MIB traps and eventual SDP unsolicited status. Discussion of Notifications was postponed in Monterey to allow the members to focus all their energies on bringing IPPv1 to closure. This topic will be reopened in Toronto.
While not a PWG project, in itself, status was reported as follows. The group is defining how printing will work on Network Computers. The first version will consists of a well defined derivative of LPR/LPD. Second, the NC print standard will migrate to IPP, a Metadata definition and Server generated print jobs.
While not a PWG project, status was reported as follows. IBIP is the US Postal Service strategy for printing postage from the WEB. IBIP has concluded the work of 3 issues groups, the Issues Management, Certification and Customer Segmentation groups. Beta tests are now taking place in predefined geography's.
The Finisher MIB underwent what we expect to be it's final working session in Monterey where a few minor changes were made. The MIB will now be issued for last call. Thanks to Duplo, this time, for bringing their Finisher Industry expertise to bear on the topic. Duplo has also proposed a BOF in Toronto to discuss the idea of using the Finisher MIB, or at least a common set of data, as the basis for forming a working group to standardize the printer to finisher interface for status, control and management.