While quite an interesting problem (and which Lexmark has
solved with its Windows and OS/2 drivers) I do think it is out
of scope for IPP. This function is more than a simple turn on/
turn off operation like stapling, etc., it really changes the
appearance of the document. Then again, I think trying
to use late binding to do duplex is WRONG because it
cannot change the footers, for example, to keep the page
numbers on the outside edges of the bound pages. This is
just another example. Should the printer do a page eject
when the A4 lines exceed the US Letter page length? Should
it just shrink the A4 page to fit on US Letter? etc? etc? etc?
Late binding cannot propoerly solve this problem and a
half-baked solution won't work because every printer is not
capable of handling this and the server surely isn't. If you
don't format the document for the right paper size, don't
expect the spooling system or the transport layer to
fix it for you.
Sure I'd like for IPP to solve every problem but I don't
think this is one can be reasonably done on our schedule
nor do I think it falls in the 80% region.
My 2 cents worth....
Don
To: ipp%pwg.org @ interlock.lexmark.com @ SMTP
cc: (bcc: Don Wright)
From: carl%manros.com @ interlock.lexmark.com (Carl-Uno Manros) @ SMTP
Date: 03/16/97 10:59:12 AM
Subject: IPP> MOD - Paper size
It just occured to me that during the last IETF meeting several people
brought up the trouble with papersizes (US Letter vs. A4), a problem they
hoped that IPP would help solve.
As far as I can see there are two possibble approaches that we can take
(there may be more):
1) To have a "shrink to fit" attribute, which would cover both the need to
reduce the width of the page image of a US Letter formatted document to fit
on the more narrow A4 media, or to reduce the length of an A4 page image to
fit the shorter US Letter media.
2) To instruct people to use the "best fit" option for the media attribute
and hope that the printer is clever enough to figure out that it has to
reduce the page image to fit.
Whichever way we go, I think it is important that we have an answer on this
for the upcoming IETF meeting, as well as put it in as an example in the MOD
document.
My 2 cents..
Carl-Uno