Today in the Semantic Model teleconference, the 'IPP: "-actuals" attributes
extension' was discussed for the first time. Here is a summary of that
discussion, or at least a summary of the conclusions.
1) There seemed to be general agreement that this proposal was a step in
the right direction.
2) The discussion first veered into how the "-actual" attributes would fit
into the Semantic Model schemas. I would feel more comfortable with Peter
Zehler reporting the conclusion, but essentially I believe the conclusion
was that Peter's proposal for a ProcessingActual group was accepted.
Within the scope of SM, then, the "-actual" attributes do not need the "
-actual" suffix, since they are distinguished by XML schema structure from
the corresponding Job Processing attributes.
3) We discussed whether the "-actual" attributes should be Job Description
attributes or whether they should be part of a new attribute group,
something like the Job Actual attributes. It was decided they should be
Job Description attributes.
4) However, a new keyword for the "-actual" attributes needs to be added to
the possible keywords for the "requested-attributes" operation attribute
that is part of the Get-Jobs and Get-Jobs-Attributes operations. That is,
a client would be able to do a Get-Job-Attributes and ask for only the "
-actual" attributes by providing one single keyword, the new 'job-actual'
keyword.
5) A question was raised as to the intended use case this proposal was
written for. I said it was anybody trying to monitor jobs, whether they
were the job submitter or not. A question came up as to whether this could
be used for billing: "the job used 13 pages of letter paper, so charge them
$.26". I said this proposal was not detailed enough to handle complicated
billing issues (job printed some transparencies, some letterhead, some
staples, and so on), and it was mentioned I should add some comments to
this effect to the document.
6) We had a good discussion about whether the "-actual" attributes should
be multi-valued. For more details on this, I will point you to Tom
Hastings' email from a few hours ago, entitled 'SM> ACT - ISSUE:
multi-valued at job level vs. using "document-overrides-actual" and
"page-overrides-actual"'. The gist: some thought yes, some thought no, Tom
has three ISSUEs in his email.
7) There was a discussion of whether the operation attribute
"document-format" should have a corresponding "document-format-actual"
attribute. This would be an exception to the rule that "-actual"
attributes correspond only to Job Template attributes. It was decided that
there would NOT be a corresponding "-actual" attribute for this, but that
the Document Object spec would possibly address the flawed situation with
the "document-format" attribute and possibly create the equivalent of an
"actual" attribute for it.
8) It was pointed out that the "job-k-octets", "job-impressions", and
"job-media-sheets" attributes are already-existing "pseudo-actual"
attributes, in that these values can be provided by the client on job
creation, and can be overridden by the printer if it determines the
client-provided values are inaccurate. It was suggested to add a mention
of these three attributes in the "-actual" attributes document.
8a) There was some confusion (in my mind at least!) whether the document
should also mention "document-format" as an example of a "pseudo-actual"
attribute--it is confusing because at present, "document-format" *doesn't*
act this way, so it is hard to add a mention that it does. Maybe if the
Document Object spec makes it act this way, I can then add a mention of
that? Or maybe the request was that I mention "document-format" as an
example of an attribute that could/should be a "pseudo-actual", but isn't?
Or?
9) There was an high-level issue that arose frequently: whether the "
-actual"s concept should be extended to the Document Object, and if so,
how. I said I thought it should be extended and I didn't sense any
opposition, but this issue was never really discussed sufficiently, I don't
believe, to claim there was a conclusion.
The discussion was continuing as we ran out of time, so it will be
continued at the face-to-face next week, in one-half of the afternoon of
the Semantic Model time-slot (thanks Peter!). I will try in the next few
days to publish a list of ISSUEs as a result of the discussion today.
For those that were part of the discussion, if I have misrepresented or
forgotten anything, please post!
Dennis