Ron Bergman
Dataproducts Corp.
Minutes from the IPP/IFAX meeting - October 1, 1998
Attendees: Ron Bergman - Dataproducts Corp.
Lee Farrell - Canon
Tom Hastings - Xerox
Harry Lewis - IBM
Carl-Uno Manros - Xerox
Stuart Rowley - Kyocera
Randy Turner - Sharp Labs
These comments are directed at the paper by Richard Shockey titled
"Memorandum on the Use of IPP and Facsimile Service Requirements and
Protocol Mapping", dated 09/29/98.
In general, it was agreed that Richard did an excellent job of defining
these requirements. The information provided was extremely helpful to
us printer folks. Most of the questions and comments are due to our
limited background in facsimile.
1. We will establish an IPP/IFAX mail list on the PWG server. I suggest
IFC, for IPP Fax Compatibility.
2. In the sub heading of section 2.2 titled "END-USER" (this is a quote
from the IPP Requirements Document), it should be noted that
"altering the attributes of a print job" is not a part of IPP 1.0.
3. The left column of the Functional Matrix on page 5 should be:
(heading).......................IPP
Addressing......................URL
Protocol........................HTTP 1.1 "POST"
Negotiation Capabilities........Get-Printer-Attributes or
Validate-Job (operation)
Allowable Content...............Any format supported by the
printer, must have a MIME type
Minimum Supported Content.......None
Sender ID.......................job-originating-user-name (Job
Description Attribute)
requesting-user-name (Operation
Attribute)
Compression.....................compression-supported (Printer
Description Attribute)
Security........................TLS, Digest Authentication (DAA),
and SSL3
Transmission....................Network
Status Reporting-Tracking.......Notifications (work in progress)
Gateway Addressing..............URL
Notification & Confirmation.....Notifications and Real-Time Clock
Error Coding....................IPP & HTTP specific codes
4. Information regarding the proposed IPP notifications can be found on
the PWG ftp server.
ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/ipp/new_NOT/
The three papers that provide a good view of the proposal are:
ipp-notifications-very-short-980701.pdf (and .doc)
ipp-notification-printer-980701.pdf (and .doc)
ipp-job-prog-attr-980706.pdf (and .doc)
For those who really are into this subject and have nothing to do,
the complete IPP notifications paper is:
ipp-event-notification-proposal.pdf (and .doc)
5. There was some discussion as to what is the concept of redirection
within the scope of fax. Within IPP, this term has been used for the
situation where an IPP server has determined that a different IPP
printer should process a received job and "redirects" the job to
another printer. (An IPP server can "front" for multiple printer
devices.) This may be due to features available on the other
printer, to balance the current print load on the devices, or any
other reason. It was believed that this may not be the case for fax.
In the case of a fax offramp, the job is "redirected" from the
Internet to the PSTN for delivery to a legacy fax machine. Or, the
job may be "redirected" by a distribution list to many destinations
which may be on the Internet or PSTN. The IPP group requests
additional information from the IFAX group regarding this subject.
6. The fax requirement of a header with the time and date generated
significant discussion. The first question, from this discussion:
"Where is the time stamp affixed to the document? (i.e. At the
source or the destination?)" If the document image is ever stored
between the two points these times could be very different, even
without the consideration of time zone changes.
Subsequent email discussion on this topic from IFAX participants has
indicated that the header is generated at the document source. The
image received by the printer should contain the required header and
this is not a concern of the printing device.
It was generally agreed by IPP participants that an IPP/IFAX
compatible printer could be required to implement a real-time clock.
The IPP/IFAX feature would be a superset of the present IPP version
1.0, as it most likely will require the inclusion of new attributes
and other features beyond the current specifications. This is not a
serious problem, since IPP is very extensible and is not restricted
by any legacy printing applications.
Email discussion has since indicated that a real-time clock is not
required to create the document header. A time stamp may, however,
be necessary to maintain a log of faxes received. This depends upon
how many of the fax device's functionally is desired. (This may be
more of a marketing decision than an absolute requirement.)
The second question concerns the legal issues... "Would the legal
requirements of a real-time clock for current fax machines
automatically apply to an IPP/IFAX device?"
This subject generated a significant number of email messages with no
clear consensus. Again, this may degenerate to more of a market
position issue.
7. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of downloading a
printer driver (defined as a PDL in the paper). It should be noted
that the ability to locate and download a driver is one of the
eventual goals of IPP, it is not a feature of version 1.0.
8. Must a fax document be transmitted using TIFF? Adobe once had a
PostScript version of fax. Are there others?
9. If the output is from an IPP printer, what would differentiate a fax
job from any other print job? What are the set of requirements that
are tied to a fax?
10. Section 5.2 mentions VCARD and Job Ticket. Is there a definition
for these items?