The PWG held its August 2021 Virtual Face-to-Face Meeting on August 17-19, 2021 via Webex teleconferences. Representatives from Brother, Canon, High North, HP Inc., Kyocera Document Solutions, Lakeside Robotics, Lexmark, Ricoh, TIC, and TCS attended the meetings, among other individuals. Attendees reviewed work in progress, including drafts of a number of in-progress specifications, and discussed liaisons with partner groups. Here is a summary of the proceedings.
The F2F event began with the PWG Plenary session, where the PWG Chair began by reviewing the overall state of the PWG,
its programs and initiatives, and briefly discussed upcoming
face-to-face meeting scheduling. We noted that there are
currently 725 printers certified under the PWG's IPP
Everywhere™ Self Certification program with more on the way. We discussed the PWG
Steering Committee's activities and initiatives, including
progress on Process 4.0, new policies, and recently approved
documents. Officers from the IDS Workgroup and IPP Workgroup
briefly summarized their Workgroup's status, and PWG Liaison
Officers also briefly reported on the status of our partners' work
in Linux Foundation OpenPrinting Workgroup, Mopria Alliance, ISO
JTC1 WG12, and INCITS.
On the first day, Ira McDonald (IPP WG Co-Chair) and Mike Sweet
(IPP WG Secretary) surveyed the status of current IPP Workgroup
works in progress. The IPP Everywhere v1.1 Update 3
self-certification tool set is available, and an Update 4 will be
built and published soon, with a fix for a non-critical error in the
"ippeveselfcert" tool. The group then briefly discussed the state of IPP
Encrypted Jobs and Documents, which is awaiting prototyping. The IPP WG
moved on to IPP Finishings 3.0, where we began review of a new draft
recently posted after completing review of the previous draft about a
week earlier. Most of the issues are editorial and it is hoped that
prototyping can begin soon on this as well.
After a break, we reviewed the recently posted new draft of IPP
Production Printing Extensions, which contains some updates for roll
feed printing and Impression / Media Sheet placement. Several new
figures are included that also help to illustrate the "scope" influenced
by different Job Template attributes. Also added were several new Job
Status attributes including "date-time-at-completed-estimated",
"date-time-at-processing-estimated", "time-at-completed-estimated" and
"time-at-processing-estimated", which can be useful in production
environments. IPP Production Printing Extensions is also ready for
prototyping. The group then moved to discuss plans and scoping for
IPP/2.x Fourth Edition and IPP Everywhere v2.0. In particular, it was
decided to not pursue full MFD services at the initial release of IPP
Everywhere v2.0 because of a lack of industry adoption of IPP Scan.
On the second day, the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting group briefly summarized the status of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) work efforts recently completed, using a video motage. The students' work was impressive. Next, the group completed a review of the latest draft of IPP Driverless Printing Extensions v2.0, which was started at the May 2021 F2F. We discussed the new recommendation to use "printer-output-tray" and "output-bin" as an alternative to the deprecated 'jog-offset' value for "finishings" and "finishing-template". A number of editorial changes were also suggested. Smith agreed to produce a new draft in the next couple of weeks, with the objective that it will reach prototype phase in Q1 2022. After a lunch break, the group began a review of the latest draft of IPP Enterprise Printing Extensions v2.0, which had been published the day before. There was some discussion about whether it made sense to have a "Store Only" Stored Job that is also a Release Job. After a bit of discussion, Smith found a presentation from the previous year that illustrated the use case. The group completed the review of that new draft in one session, which seems to indicate its maturity. The group agreed publishing a new draft and prototyping the additions were proper next steps to moving it towared Stable status.
On the third day, following the morning's IDS session and lunch
break, Paul Tykodi led the group in a discussion of the status of the
PWG's 3D printing related liaison engagements. After a year of intense
virtual participation in the various standards bodies, the group's
efforts would be best focused in the near term on developing several
articles on the value proposition provided by IPP in the 3D space. For
2021-2022, the PWG should continue AMSC and ASTM F42 participation and
continue to evangelize PWG semantics, IPP 3D, and other features of IPP.
The group agreed that it makes sense for the PWG to sign up for another
year of membership in American Concrete Institute (ACI), and continue
G-code testing with IPP sample code in that enviornment. The PWG should
also continue collaborating with PDF Association on embedded Job Ticket /
Job Receipt work. The PWG should also continue its liaison with INCITS
Digital Manufacturing TC (US TAG for ISO/IEC JTC 1 WG12 3D Printing and
Scanning), and
monitor or engage in work pertaining to 3D scanning,
workflow/orchestration, and possibly other areas. We spent a little time
talking about materials and how that contributes to the current
process-based focus, and what challenges the industry as a whole has in
moving to a more intent-based focus (e.g. the "what" instead of the
"how"). The group posited that the maturity of the devices and the
characterization of materials contributes to the maturity limitations
that exist today. We finished up with IPP Workgroup next steps.
Complete minutes are available here: https://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/ipp/minutes/ippv2-f2f-minutes-20210817.pdf
At the start of the third day, Alan Sukert (IDS WG Chair and Secretary) led the IDS Workgroup status and progress session. The group reviewed the results of latest Hardcopy Device international Technical Community (HCD iTC) meetings and the status of the HCD collaborative Protection Profile (cPP)/Supporting Document (SD) v1.0.
The HCD iTC issued the 3rd Internal Drafts of both the HCD cPP
(2021-06-09) and the HCD SD (on 2021-06-29). There were 184 comments
submitted against all three drafts of the HCD cPP, all of which have
been reviewed and addressed by the HCD iTC. There have been 79 comments
submitted against all three drafts of the HCD SD, 75 of which have been
reviewed and addressed by the HCD iTC.
The HCD iTC formed a Hardware-anchored Integrity Verification subgroup to address a key Essential Security Requirements (ESR) document requirement, which states “The HCD shall verify the hardware-anchored integrity of firmware/software, including initial boot, operating system, and applications”. This subgroup completed its work in August 2021 after 9 months of effort.
The group reviewed the next issues the HCD iTC has on its backlog, which include considering a few technical changes such as removing support for TLS 1.1, but also include coming to consensus on several process issues such as how to update the list of referenced standards while taking care to not inadvertently change the requirements in those updated referenced specifications. It is unlikely the HCD iTC will include any new SFRs beyond what is already in the pipeline, including a new SFR to include support for TLS 1.3. Ira noted that several European countries may not accept MFD certifications that do not support TLS 1.3, and suggested updating the TLS requirement to be “TLS 1.2 or later”. As for other SFRs, if any come in from external sources such as from NIAP or JBMIA or the Japanese or Korean Schemes, those would need to be addressed. Al presented a proposal for an update to the schedule presented at the May F2F, and received feedback that the schedule might be too aggressive because it doesn't allow for enough time for comments.
Al then presented an abbreviated version of a presentation he gave at
an earlier IDS Workgroup meeting discussing the recent US Executive
Order Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity issued by the White House on
May 12, 2021, which was issued in response to the Solar Winds supply
chain attack. This will have a non-trivial impact on the software
development lifecycle and deployment pipeline.
Ira briefly discussed the status on the HCD Security Guidelines. The
latest version was published May 4, 2021 Ira plans to post an Interim
Draft in Sep 2021 with additional content in Section 4, then post
another Interim Draft in Q4 2021 to include content in Section 5 Local
Security (OS, Hypervisors, Peripherals, Apps) and Section 6 System
Architecture (Firewall, AV, Process Isolation), and then post a full
Prototype Draft in Q2 2021. Finally, Ira gave a Liaison Report on
current standards
developments for the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Complete minutes are available here: https://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/ids/minutes/ids-f2f-minutes-20210819.pdf
The next PWG Face-to-Face meeting will be held November 9-11, 2021 via Webex teleconference. Be sure to subscribe to the pwg-announce@pwg.org mailing list to receive announcements about upcoming events and event changes or check the PWG Meetings page for updates on plans for upcoming meetings.