[IPP] Specifying landscape orientation for PWG-Raster

[IPP] Specifying landscape orientation for PWG-Raster

Michael Sweet msweet at msweet.org
Tue Jun 17 12:09:51 UTC 2025


Michael,

> On Jun 16, 2025, at 12:49 PM, Michael Ziller via ipp <ipp at pwg.org> wrote:
> ...
>  Would it make sense to add an attribute such as landscape-orientation-desired (or some better name) where the printer would specify either 4 (landscape) or 5 (reverse-landscape) to carry this PPD information?

So you are conflating raster orientation with finishings orientation.

In the case of raster orientation, that other IPP profile spec I wrote all those years ago for Apple added a "landscape‑orientation‑requested‑preferred (boolean)" attribute for this, however we quickly realized that such a simple solution didn't meet the needs of modern printers.  That led to defining "media-source-properties" in the PWG which (for CUPS and PPD files) gets encoded per PageSize/Region by setting the PostScript Orientation key in the page device dictionary.  So you might see (for a given printer):

    *PageSize Letter: "<</PageSize[612 792]/Orientation 0>>setpagedevice"

and/or:

    *PageSize Letter.Transverse: "<</PageSize[792 612]/Orientation 1>>setpagedevice"

Thus, raster data is sent long or short edge as necessary with the correct orientation for a given tray.

....

That said, in the case of finishings orientation the Client is better off to look at the supported finishing corners or edges in order to apply/supply the correct "orientation-requested" value.  This is because finishings are always specified WRT a logical portrait sheet, regardless of feed direction/orientation.

For example, if a printer *only* supports 'staple-top-left' (20), a portrait document should use the 'portrait' (3) value for "orientation-requested" but there is no value of "orientation-requested" you can use to get that staple in the top left corner of the landscape page (as you look at it) - it will either be in the bottom left for 'reverse-landscape' (5) or the top right for 'landscape' (4).

To get the "correct" (top left) staple location you'd need to use 'staple-top-right' (20) for the 'reverse-landscape' orientation or 'staple-bottom-left' (21) for the 'landscape' orientation.

________________________
Michael Sweet



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