I agree that the issues before us are more "process" than
technical.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger K Debry [mailto:rdebry at us.ibm.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 1998 7:21 AM
> To: ipp at pwg.org> Subject: IPP> Microsoft Presentation
>>> o Much of the prototyping work will have to be reset
Granted, there is some work involved, however, we can
cut out the more complicated binary parsing work and
depend on XML parsing to simplify things.
Keep in mind that as a guide, we are offering code.
> o The standard will be at least six months late in being approved
Maybe
> o We lose credibility with the consultants and analysists
> we've talked to
> o We lose credibility with the IETF
I totally disagree. You will gain credibility with the IETF.
Your area director and other members of the community presently
feel that the pwg has proceeded on its own and disregarded
input given in the past. While we may be guilty of not
pressing hard enough in the past, like everyone, we have
limited resources.
> o We bind ourselves (I believe) too closely to one company's
> strategy and their view of how Browsers and the web play
> in the desktop.
We have not decided to make this "last minute" objection to
make IPP fit into "our" model of the universe, as you imply.
It was our standards group, (myself, yaron and others)
who have pressed our printing group to reconsider.
If there is anyone who is in danger of slipping a product
or being pressured by business ship reasons to avoid
a last minute change, it is us.
> o We open the door for consideration of the NEXT cool technology to
> come along six months from now, or Microsoft's next O/S change.
Again, this has nothing to do with Microsoft's next OS world
or the "next big thing". We are pursuing this because we really
beleive it is the right thing to do.
XML offers us a uniform way to model data in a portable manner.
This functionality is something IPP needs. In the past, XML
did not have the momentum it does now, and the IPP group rightfully
decided to build its own way of doing that. I assert that
the world around us has changed. While pwg invented a wheel
to structure the data, the rest of the world really appears
to be adopting XML as a standard way to do this.
If we ignore that and say "well we already spent all this time
building our own wheel", I fear that the world will be
searching for a "more standard" or more interoperable
(with other protocols) way of doing what IPP does.
The worst case isnt slipping a few months. The worst
case is that IPP is obsoleted the day it is released.
That would truly make the work done on IPP a waste.
>> We can debate the technical issues ad nauseum (and probably will),
> but I believe we need to take a stand on what we have done and say
> "It is good enough".
"No, It isnt" :)
>>> Roger K deBry
> Senior Technical Staff Member
> Architecture and Technology
> IBM Printing Systems
> email: rdebry at us.ibm.com> phone: 1-303-924-4080
>