Firstly, thanks to all who attended the initial IPP Fax (as I must now learn to
call it) meeting in Chicago.
The passionate (did I hear heated, even) debate was a good sign; people think
this is important and we all have strong ideas about what should be delivered.
Ron Bergman has posted detailed minutes for the meeting (thanks Ron) but I will
repeat here the major points.
1. The name was changed from Qualdocs to IPP Fax. Most people felt Qualdocs was
not clear and did not translate well for non USA attendees.
2. The charter was updated and accepted. No major changes were made to the
charter except to specifically state the we were building on IPP. Tee modified
version is on the web site http://pwg.org/qualdocs/index.html.
3. We thrashed out what we meant by 'high bars' low bars' 'negotiated' , etc.
with regards to image parameters.
What did become apparent was a split in people's views about how this technology
is to be used. The FAX attendees saw this as a 100% FAX product - whereas the
broader imaging attendees (printers, copiers, scanners) saw wider usefullness in
having a standardised, negotiated image format (as well as Faxing).
The wider uses include things like copier to copier copying, network scanning,
ad-hoc printing, etc.
Specifically the debate came down to whether or not the transmitted documents
needed to be watermarked or stamped in some way. For the pure fax people this
was a must, for the wider uses this would be a disaster. I am sure there will be
other divisions too. I had crafted the charter to allow for the wider uses as
well as the fax case but no form of word crafting can get round this fundamental
divide. The solution I propose is that we split the spec into two pieces.
A) A common agreed image format with some form of negotiation / discovery. This
can be used regardless of whether or not the transport is doing 'IPP fax' or
not. We will end up specifying the rules associated with saying that you support
'application/tiff-fx' as a document format.
B) A set of enhancements to IPP to get 100% into Faxing on the internet.
Includes identity exchange, security, watermarking, etc. We would make A a
pre-requisiste
Actually splitting might well speed things up (divide and conquer)
What do people think?
Paul Moore
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