Although I have no strong feelings on this, I recall several thoughts from "the early days" of this activity. Granted that much has happened since and these ideas may no longer be germain, some vestage may explain why the medi-ready requirement existed.
1. It was called QualDocs, not FAX. It was not intended to replicate facsimile, but was to implement peoples perception of FAX (a reliable, secure, sure way to "send a document over the wire" ) without the defficiencies of existing FAX ( speed, quality, flexibility). The fact that traditional fax is not necesarily reliable nor secure nor sure did not mean that QualDocs could have the same problems. The notion was that FAX was well established and prevalent and that there would need to be a compelling advanage to QualDocs for it to be accepted.
2. The "sure" perception was that as an input sheet is being scanned in the scanner, a facsimile of that sheet is comming out of the receiver. This perception would be addressed by determining whether there was proper media ready, and signalling when the last sheet was correctly printed. Presumably, if the tranmission would be stored rather than printed, the user would be notified, would have the option of cancelling and would have the option to ask for an asynchronous notification when the document was printed.
Bill Wagner
-----Original Message-----
From: Hastings, Tom N [mailto:hastings@cp10.es.xerox.com]
Sent: Thu 6/5/2003 7:50 PM
To: Gail Songer
Cc: ifx@pwg.org
Subject: RE: IFX> Media-Ready [and is IPPFAX a Device Protocol or an Electronic Document Exchange Protocol?]
Gail,
Sounds like there is growing consensus to get rid of the "media-ready" Receiver attribute in IPPFAX and get rid of the RECOMMENDATION that the Sender query it. This makes IPPFAX even simpler.
Also with the choice media type, there is yet another reason for the Sender not to query the Receiver's "media-ready" attribute. The Sender can assume that the choice a4 or letter is supported for IPPFAX and doesn't even have to query the Receiver's "media-supported" attribute.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Gail Songer [mailto:gail.songer@peerless.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 08:12
To: Hastings, Tom N
Cc: ifx@pwg.org
Subject: RE: IFX> Media-Ready [and is IPPFAX a Device Protocol or an Electronic Document Exchange Protocol?]
Hi Tom,
I’ve been mulling this topic and I believe that media-ready was required because we were going to require the client to format the job based on the size of the paper that could be printed (sender makes right).
However, now that we allow scaling and that we are focusing repositories, maybe this requirement can be lifted.
Gail Songer
Peerless Systems Corp
-----Original Message-----
From: Hastings, Tom N [mailto:hastings@cp10.es.xerox.com]
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 3:06 PM
To: Gail Songer
Cc: ifx@pwg.org
Subject: RE: IFX> Media-Ready [and is IPPFAX a Device Protocol or an Electronic Document Exchange Protocol?]
Gail,
I suspect that the reason that the IPPFAX spec says that the Receiver MUST support "media-ready" was because the spec says that the IPPFAX Sender SHOULD query the "media-ready" Printer attribute.
I also think that the mind set of IPPFAX had been a single Device, so that the fan-out to multiple devices wasn't even a consideration in being difficult to reflect the "media-ready" value(s) correctly. For example, the statement in the Introduction:
"The target market for an IPPFAX receiver is a midrange imaging device that can support the minimum memory requirements that are required by the data format PDF/is, but the image format is structured in such a way that the Receiver is not required to include a disk or other permanent storage."
On the other hand, the definition of Receiver is:
"Receiver The Printer object that accepts IPPFAX protocol operations and receives the Document sent by the Sender. A Receiver offers the IPPFAX Print Service (by definition)."
So the real question is:
OK that the IPPFAX Sender not bother with querying "media-ready", but should send the IPPFAX PDF/is document whether the media is ready or not?
If the Sender doesn't query "media-ready", then the IPPFAX protocol is an Electronic Document Transfer Protocol, i.e., get the bits from the Sender to the Receiver, rather than get the Quality Document Successfully Printed onto Paper Service. The mind set of the WG does shift from one paradigm to the other from time to time (and from place to place within the IPPFAX Protocol spec itself).
As another example of this vacilation between defining a Device Protocol versus an Electronic Document Exchange Service, is the idea that the IPPGET notification is going to indicate whether the paper got printed OK. To me that means we are talking about getting the document successfully transferred to paper. Therefore, with that mind set, having the Sender query the "media-ready" makes a lot of sense if the Sending User cares about knowing for certain that the document was correctly imaged onto paper.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Gail Songer [mailto:gail.songer@peerless.com]
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 06:32
To: ifx@pwg.org
Subject: IFX> Media-Ready
At Wednesday’s telecom, we discovered that Media-Ready was Required in one spot and optional in another. Ira was of the opinion that it should be PROHIBIED.
Does anyone else have opinion (or remember why it was “Required”?)
Gail Songer
Peerless Systems Corp
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 05 2003 - 20:40:21 EDT