From: Michael R Sweet (msweet@apple.com)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2008 - 13:52:29 EDT
Paul Tykodi wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> As far as I know, IPP support is slowly working its way into network printer
> interfaces for the label printing niche (both impact and direct
> thermal/thermal transfer print technologies) and into some of the dot matrix
> printer NIC's as well.
>
> These types of printers do not support the same document formats as the
> inkjet and laser technology based printers.
>
> If IPP were to become involved with specifying document formats, I think it
> would be a good idea to create a separate IPP document formats track with
> its own RFC or PWG based specification that could be referenced by the ippv2
> documents.
Well, the PWG already had done a lot of work in this area, including
XHTML-Print. There are other groups that have standardized on JPEG
for consumer devices (PictBridge and others), the ISO and IETF have
standards for PNG, and of course the ISO has defined PDF profiles.
I don't think the problem is having a standard or referencing other
standards!
These formats are already supported by a wide variety of devices in
different ways - it would be nice to guarantee support for at least
one common format in every IPP 2.x printer, as it solves a major
(IMHO) problem with IPP that the PWG hasn't yet tackled - all
printers require a device-specific client-side printer driver to do
even basic printing.
If IPP 2.x printers did support one (or all) of the formats I've
listed, then a customer would know they could print from any client.
Obviously there would still be a use for device-specific drivers,
e.g. higher speed print modes and support for complex jobs, but
*basic* printing (email, web pages, photos) could be done without
all of that.
IMHO, adding a (short) list of required document-formats to IPP 2.x
will just make it *more* compelling as a standard. Right now we are
just stapling all of the different IPP specs together to make
profiles - chances are most vendors will look at their product and
say "we already conform to IPP 2.0, just add 2.0 to our supported
versions and move on". That doesn't ultimately help us promote IPP
2.x, since nothing will have really changed. However, if we can
make IPP really useful by requiring support for at least one common
document format, then IPP can truly be marketed as an enabling
technology rather than being listed along side AppSocket, LPD, and
50 other "supported" printing protocols.
In short, let's make IPP more than just a replacement for LPD.
> Best Regards,
>
> /Paul
> --
> Paul Tykodi
> Principal Consultant
> TCS - Tykodi Consulting Services LLC
>
> Tel/Fax: 603-343-1820
> Mobile: 603-866-0712
> E-mail: ptykodi@tykodi.com
> WWW: http://www.tykodi.com
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-ipp@pwg.org [mailto:owner-ipp@pwg.org] On Behalf Of Michael R
>> Sweet
>> Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 5:26 PM
>> To: ipp@pwg.org
>> Subject: IPP> RFC: Add required document-format values for IPP v2?
>>
>> All,
>>
>> In today's telecon I brought up a question about whether it would be
>> a benefit to define a set of document formats that devices must
>> support. This would have large benefits for interoperability and
>> the ability for clients of all shapes and sizes to print without
>> specialized printer drivers.
>>
>> The wording I am thinking of is:
>>
>> REQUIRED DOCUMENT FORMATS
>>
>> IPP v2 devices MUST support one of the following document
>> formats:
>>
>> document-format Details
>> ----------------------------------------------------
>> application/pdf ISO 32000-1:2008,
>> ISO 19005-1:2005 (PDF/A),
>> or PDF/IS?
>> application/xhtml+xml XHTML-Print
>> image/jpeg W3C JFIF* encapsulation
>> image/png ISO 15948, RFC 2083
>> ----------------------------------------------------
>> * http://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/jfif3.pdf
>>
>> I have not included application/postscript in the list because it
>> isn't standardized beyond simple page descriptions, both in the
>> official and real-world senses, and in many cases PostScript
>> printers require some level of device-dependent commands to be
>> used (think PPD files).
>>
>> Likewise, I have not included image/tiff since TIFF is a catch-all
>> for thousands of sub-formats, and the most common sub-formats
>> (TIFF-G3 and TIFF-G4) are limited to reproduction of monochrome
>> graphics which make them less useful as a general printing format.
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> --
>> ______________________________________________________________________
>> Michael R Sweet Senior Printing System Engineer
-- ______________________________________________________________________ Michael R Sweet Senior Printing System Engineer
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