1394 PWG Meeting
Feb. 26, 1997
Orlando, Florida
Mailing lists:=20
Web Page: http://www.pwg.org/p1394
General Discussion: p1394@pwg.org
To Subscribe: majordomo@pwg.org=20
Archive: ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/p1394
Since this meeting started without an official Secretary these minutes were
compiled from notes by Don Wright, Brian Batchelder and Larry Stein.
Larry Stein - Warp Nine Engineering
Alan Bream - HP Roseville
Brian Batchelder- HP Vancouver
Danny Mitchell - TI
Ron Norton - Printronix
Greg LeClair - Epson
Lee Farrell - Canon
Don Wright - Lexmark
Ozay Oktay- Canon
Randy Turner - Sharp
Started at 8:45
Discussion on agenda topics
1) What kind of organization is this?
=B7 coordination
=B7 SDO affiliation
2) Officers
3) Charter
Organization
=B7 Are we affiliated with any SDOs (Standards Development Organizations)?
=B7 How do we coordinate between the US side and the Japan side?
=B7 Let Japan side focus on camera-to-printer payload?
=B7 Let US side deal with DLC/transport part?
=B7 Everyone working on this effort needs to post their proposals to the ftp
server
How do we coordinate with other groups?
1394TA
TA sponsored groups must be chaired by a Steering team member and contain
only TA members. We want to be more open, so we won=92t be an official TA
sponsored group. We will coordinate our efforts with the TA, through their
architectural committee.
Japan
In Japan, a group referring to itself as "PWG-J" has formed. It is made up
of a bunch of companies, including Seiko-Epson, Canon and Sony. They are
working on solving the same problem we are. They seem to be a little more
focused on the consumer-device (e.g. camera) to printer connection. We
talked at length about coordinating our efforts. It is absolutely critical
to our success. Some of the options we discussed were:
1) periodic joint meetings
2) coordination through the chairmen
3) cross-membership on the e-mail reflectors
4) just "making them do it our way" (resoundingly vetoed)
5) working on the common problems first, to help drive interoperability at
the lowest levels
Charter
We decided that we were trying to avoid the adoption of a multiplicity of
printing models over 1394. We all remember too painfully how difficult it
was to support printing when each printer did everything differently, and
all apps were DOS apps and they required their own drivers. In 1394,
without standards, we run the risk of again having all of the printers do
everything differently. Since all 1394 devices can speak directly to every
other 1394 device, we will have to convince every device to support our
unique model of printing. Not an easy task, even for the biggest player in
the printing industry.
There was a definite issue of how much we specify? We decided that we
should specify as little as possible. We joked that we "wanted to avoid
being creative if at all possible." We simply meant that we want to
reference existing standards and specifications wherever possible. Only
where absolutely necessary will we invent anything new.
We are also concerned about the scope of the problem that we are trying to
solve. One of our first tasks is to work on defining our scope and keeping
it as small as possible. We need to move quickly, and a tight scope will
enable us to do so.
=B7 Reviewed charter developed at the Albuquerque meeting
Please see "CHARTER.PDF" or "CHARTER.DOC" on ftp site for final draft of
working charter.
=B7 Need to add to the charter a statement about producing a 1394 printing
architectural model document
=B7 How do we deal with the "urgency" of the consumer oriented companies
versus the normal standards process?
=B7 Should we work on the high level model, get that done and then attack th=
e
individual pieces?
=B7 Work to do:
=B7 CSR definitions
=B7 Image formats/PDL formats
=B7 Plug and Play
=B7 Config ROM contents
Charter Scope:
The 1394 Printer Working Group will be the focal point for the development
and coordination of a comprehensive printing solution for the IEEE
Std.1394-1995 interfaces.
This project will produce a specification to define a mechanism for
printing on IEEE Std.1394-1995 compliant links. This specification will
include existing standards or specification and any new specifications as
necessary.
Areas of review include:
Job Submission
=B7 push
=B7 pull
=B7 remote initiation
Transport and Link protocols
Data Formats
Device Management
Service Discovery
=B7 Config ROM=20
=B7 Plug =91n Play
=B7 Control and Status Registers (CSR)
The 1394 Printer Working Group is chartered by the PWG and coordinates with
the 1394 TA and is open to anyone interested in contributing to the
project. The 1394 PWG will seek the participation of other industry groups
and key representatives of the computer and consumer electronics industry.
----------
By consensus, the group elected the following officers:
Chair: Greg LeClair - Epson
Secretary: Larry Stein - Warp Nine Engineering
Editor: Brian Batchelder - HP
The group decided to seek status as a study group with the MSC.
This has since been requested of the IEEE MSC chair and approval has been
received. We are now a study group sponsored by the IEEE MSC. We have 6
months in order do decide whether or not to seek status as an IEEE working
group.
In order to better understand how printing on 1394 will be used, a set of
scenarios should be developed.
Examples scenarios:
1) PC to a Printer
2) Source to a Printer with a PC on the link as well
3) Source to a Printer without a PC on the link
4) Multiple printers and/or multiple sources
5) #4 plus more than 1 PC
6) Two or more 1394 busses interconnected by bridges
Concepts ---
1) What does 1394 printing mean? =20
2) Does it include printing a video stream being sent across the 1394 bus? =
=20
3) What initiates the print? =20
4) Is there a print button on the printer than captures a frame out of the
stream and print it? =20
5) Must the PC or other Source do something special to cause printing to
occur? =20
Should we limit the scope to:
1) Source initiated print operation - data sent from PC (in a PDL format)
or Camera (image)?
=B7 data pushed from source to printer
=B7 data pulled by printer from source
2) Sink initiated print operation?
=B7 push
=B7 pull
3) Source/Sink Crossbar
In general, we want to connect any sink to any source on a 1394 link.
4) The architecture consists of :
Service Discovery
=B7 Who I am=20
=B7 What I can support
Job Management
=B7 Connect source to sink
Job Submission
=B7 Source Initiated
=B7 Sink Initiated
Transport Type
=B7 Push
=B7 Pull
Transport Mode
=B7 Isochronous
=B7 Asynchronous
=B7 Multicast
Is the printing service required to simultaneously print to multiple
devices (1 to many)?
How does service discovery work? Is it really device discovery?
=B7 LDAP
=B7 Srv Loc
=B7 Something else
=B7 How does it interoperate with PnP?
=B7 What are "my" capabilities?
Next Meeting:
April 2, 1997
Austin, Texas
Sponsored by Dazzle
Meeting notice will be posted on this reflector.
-Larry Stein
Secretary
****************************************************************************=
*
Larry A. Stein Phone: (619)292-2740
Warp Nine Engineering Fax: (619)292-8020
Web: http://www.fapo.com
****************************************************************************=
*