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<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Greetings,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In the last review of IPP Driverless Printing Extensions v2.0, concerns were once again raised about extending the set of enum values for "print-quality" to solve the "Manufacturer-Deployed Print Quality Mode" and "Administrator-Deployed Print Quality Mode" use cases (3.2.20 and 3.2.21 in the <a href="https://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/ipp/wd/wd-ippjobprinterext3v20-20200204.pdf" class="">20200204 published draft</a>). I want to see if we can hash this out via email in between meetings.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Before we dive into the implementation choices, I want to focus on the use cases and the user experience(s) we want to support. The use cases I have articulated are important to HP, and I have to believe that they are also important to other printer vendors.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The "print-quality" attribute as defined originally in IPP/1.0 (RFC 2566) has remained unchanged for over 20 years:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class=""><div class=""><pre class="newpage" style="font-size: 13.333333015441895px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; break-before: page;"><span class="h4" style="display: inline; font-size: 1em; font-weight: bold;"><h4 style="display: inline; font-size: 1em;" class=""><a class="selflink" name="section-4.2.13" href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2566#section-4.2.13" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">4.2.13</a> print-quality (type2 enum)</h4></span>
This attribute specifies the print quality that the Printer uses for
the Job.
The standard enum values are:
Value Symbolic Name and Description
'3' 'draft': lowest quality available on the printer
'4' 'normal': normal or intermediate quality on the printer
'5' 'high': highest quality available on the printer
</pre></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></blockquote><div class="">Since semantically there is a linear progression from "draft" to "normal" to "high", a "Print Quality" UI selection control could be presented as a slider, or more generically as a radio button group or a pop-up or table list, where only one option can be chosen. The ordering of the three choices is clear and common sense dictates that they should be presented in order rather than out-of-order.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Unfortunately, though, this long-standing definition doesn't provide for the possibility that the Printer supports more than 3 quality levels. Nor does it provide space for vendor-defined or site-defined levels, which have existed for quite some time, but always been described in terms of vendor-unique attributes or via legacy (non-IPP) mechanisms. I strongly believe that we need to find a way to allow printers to express their additional print quality options in a way that allows simpler UIs to maintain their simplicity but still allows access to these printer-provided non-standard print quality levels.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So, my questions are these:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">1. Are there any specific objections to these use cases? I believe these are important to all printer manufacturers, not just HP, as a way of expressing an important vector of product differentiation without having to adopt vendor-unique or site-unique attributes, which many universal clients ignore. This undermines efforts to move away from model-specific drivers.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">2. Assuming agreement with the use cases, if we had a green field / blank sheet of paper, how to support the use cases in IPP?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Option 1: Extend "print-quality" as per the current proposal</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Option 2: "print-quality-percent" as per Mike's proposal, which I don't think adequately addresses the use cases</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Option 3: Define a new "print-quality-col", which could contain a "print-quality-percent" but could also have printer-provided localized labels and tooltips.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Option 4: ???</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Please share your thoughts and feedback!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">Smith<br class=""><br class="">/**<br class=""> Smith Kennedy<br class=""> HP Inc.<br class="">*/</div><br class=""></div></body></html>