Hi,
as chair of the group I am getting worried about us getting lost in the
discussion about the transport and I would like us to refocus on the IPP
functionality, the subject where I believe our real expertise as a group lies.
Here is my suggested list for high priority tasks for the group:
1) We need to thrash out the exact scope of what we try to do, e.g. what is
the minimum set of printer capabilities that we expect to cover with IPP.
For this I still think that the scenario work is useful, as long as we do
not get to isoteric.
2) We need to reach agreements about the meat in the IPP, e.g. have
agreement about the overall model and the attributes that we want to
support. E.g. how do we expect to give notifications back to the user, if
something goes wrong?
3) We need to decide how we will use MIME. What is the granularity of the
MIME types that we will define? Will we consider nested MIME types? Do we
want to have the option of using Secure MIME?
4) Which directory attributes do we want to use to support IPP?
These are all things that we need to sort out independently of the transfer
mechanism that we choose, and they all seem to be in the scope expected by
the IETF Area Directors.
I suggest that we give priority to solving the areas listed above. Once we
have these things in place, it will be possible to start some serious
prototyping on one or several of the suggested transports, to get some real
life feedback on any problems that we would run into. I am not sure yet how
many of the objections that we have seen so far are really based on fact
vs. fiction (or are only related to specific Web server implementations).
In the meantime, the HTTP group might be able to come up with some ideas
about how to realize Lite HTTP, which seems to be one valid transport
solution that we might be able to reach agreement about. We should be
prepared to give them feedback on what we need or not need, which again is
probably best found out through prototyping.
Let us discuss this in our face to face meeting tomorrow and on the list
for those that cannot attend the meeting.
Carl-Uno Manros
Xerox Corporation