Bill,
Your absence at the last PMP telecon was sorely missed (and noted by
the group, by the way), as we were hoping to get your input on these
issues. Perhaps then you would have understood the issue a bit better.
> The idea that "The printer (and only the printer) decides which alert
> codes are critical versus non-critical." was an original premise, and
> I have been confused by apparent recent attempts to "standardize" what
> is critical.
Bill, I have no idea what you're talking about here. To my knowledge,
there have been so such efforts to "'standardize' what is critical". If
anything I have posted makes you believe that, then I'm sorry to have
mislead you. What makes you think such an attempt at standardization
is going on?
> I would also say that the linkage of events (e.g., a
> critical alert and off-line) is also printer specific, and there
> should be no dictate here.
You should be proud that I carried that same "anti-mandate" position during
the telecon, but as I recall, it was never an issue in the first place, but
merely a clarification of the text proposed by Bob Pentecost.
The bottom line is: if a given critical condition results in the printer
taking itself offline, then that's fine--it's a printer implementation
choice. If it does, then it should add the Offline alert; however, adding
such an Offline alert is really quite separate from the addition of the
critical alert that caused the subsequent offline condition in the first
place.
> And, referring to the 'off-line' question,
> there are several other persistent implemenations of what off-line
> means. It is one of those things that non-printer people think is
> obvious, but has so many different implementations as to be
> conceptually useless.
You'll get no argument here. It's a shame, really. However, all I was
trying to do is put forth the functional concept of Pause/Resume (and
how useful it is) and to get the printer manufacturers to not tie that
functionality in with all other conditions that result in "Offline".
Thats all.
> Jay, The 'pause/resume' approach (using a new name) is probablly
> reasonable, but I wonder is the specific printer pause/resume
> implemmetation you mention functioannly the same as the Windows
> printer pause/resume function? Or are we creating more confusion?
(Rapid scurrying while Jay puts on his perennial UNIX hat... ;-)
Umm, er, how exactly does "pause/resume" work in Windows? That is,
what are the implementation ramifications involved? (I would guess
that perhaps the printer driver simply stops sending data to the
printer...or is this a completely naive view?)
...jay