I apologize for my absence of the three months, but a 2 week
vacation unwillingly turned into three months off.
I have been reading the various discussions about Job URI/URL and Job IDs,
and there are always various objections raised involving 'job movement'.
At this point I would like to point out that during initial
discussions of the IPP protocol, the following issue was raised
(at San Diego, and at several teleconferences prior to this):
Patrick Powell: "Is IPP a 'submit job to printer' protocol or
a 'submit job to spooler' protocol?"
Summary of Answers: It is a 'submit job to printer' protocol. We do not
want to deal with spooler management issues in the first draft.
In the discussions that are going on, I notice that most of the effort
is given to worrying about 'moving jobs' or 'job spoolers'. I would like to
then ask the question:
Is IPP now a 'submit job to spooler' protocol?
If you treat a printer like a 'leaf' at the end of the 'print tree'
of client->spooler->spooler....->printer or even client->printer,
it simplifies the understanding of the requirements considerably.
If you want IPP to be a 'client->spooler' protocol AND a 'client->printer'
protocol AND a 'spooler->printer' protocol, I think that you are
trying to undertake a major set of problems.
One of the difficulties with LPR (RFC1179) was that it was a 'client->spooler'
protocol, and did not deal with the 'client->printer' or 'spooler->printer'
problems. I would like to solve the 'client->printer' and 'spooler->printer'
problems as well as we can.
I would like to note that 'moving jobs' from one printer to another can
be accomplished at a higher level by having a spooler 'remember' the job
and then 'remove' it from the printer and 'send' it to the new printer.
There is a cost to this, of course - the spooler has to save the job.
However, there is also a cost to 'moving jobs' from the printer - the
PRINTER has to save the job.
I would like to suggest that we focus on client->printer and spooler->printer
issues, and not try to deal with client->spooler or designing spoolers.
Let the print spooler vendors/developers do this and do not try to build all
the necessary spooler functionality into a printer.
Patrick Powell