I have several comments. I'm glad that these media naming problems are
being addressed in the Printer MIB and that the PWG Media Name standard
(IEEE-ISTO 5101.1) is being used. However, there appears to be some
Description text in the Printer MIB that didn't get updated to reflect this
change.
1. So the description of prtInputMediaName needs to be fixed (see below),
since the sentence:
"This description is intended for display to a human operator."
suggests to me that the client application just takes the string and
displays it directly. No reformatting and no localization need be done by
the client.
Instead, the description needs to suggest that the client MAY do some
reformatting and/or localization before displaying.
2. And the example should be changed from a very human-readable value (but
not localizable by the client, since its not a standard keyword from either
the PWG standard or Appendix C): 'legal tender bond paper' to ones from
IEEE-ISTO 5101.1, such as, say, the two examples from 5101.1 section 5.1.6:
The letter size (8.5 inches by 11 inches) used in North America:
na_letter_8.5x11in
The iso A4 size (210 mm by 297 mm) used in metric countries:
iso_a4_210x297mm
prtInputMediaName OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX OCTET STRING (SIZE(0..63))
MAX-ACCESS read-write
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A description of the media contained in this input sub-unit;
This description is intended for display to a human operator.
This description is not processed by the printer. It is used
to provide information not expressible in terms of the other
media attributes (e.g. prtInputMediaDimFeedDirChosen,
prtInputMediaDimXFeedDirChosen, prtInputMediaWeight,
prtInputMediaType). An example would be 'legal tender bond
paper'."
REFERENCE
"The PWG Standardized Media Names specification [PWGMEDIA]
contains
the recommended values for this object. See also Appendix C,
'Media Names', which defines the values suggested in RFC
1759."
::= { prtInputEntry 12 }
3. Printer MIB Appendix C Media Names also that the following sentence which
needs fixing to indicate that the client application may wish to do some
reformatting and/or localization:
The object prtInputMediaName is
intended for display to an operator and is purely descriptive.
4. Printer MIB Appendix C should clarify that the list of keywords are the
ones from RFC 1759.
5. Printer MIB Appendix C should also clarify that it is OK to use the RFC
1759 values as well, right?
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: McGarigle, Sean
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 07:04
To: Adams, Charles A; 'pmp@pwg.org'
Cc: XCMI Editors
Subject: RE: Printer MIB - prtInputMediaName Query
This was discussed at some length long ago (Ira McDonald, XCMI, et.
al.).
The decision was to use the 5101 self-describing names.
Sean
-----Original Message-----
From: Adams, Charles A
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 3:07 PM
To: 'pmp@pwg.org'
Cc: XCMI Editors
Subject: Printer MIB - prtInputMediaName Query
Hello all,
One of the SNMP guys is updating our the Xerox SNMP Printer
MIB implementation guide and send out some new wording for us to review.
Specifically he was working on the variable prtInputMediaName variable
description in our implementer guide and trying to updated based on printer
MIB v2 changes. The printer MIB now has the following
Appendix C - Media Names
For the convenience of management application
developers ... Management applications that present a dialogue for choosing
media may wish to use these names as an alternative to separately
specifying, size, color, and/or type ... The object prtInputMediaName is
intended for display to an operator and is purely descriptive.
prtInputMediaName
SYNTAX OCTET STRING (SIZE(0..63))
... This description is intended for display
to a human operator. ... An example would be 'legal tender bond paper.
This led to some confusion. The more I think about this I
think the implementer guide writer has taken the correct approach with this
variable. He is under the impression that this variable was to be a string
returned in a machine-readable form , i.e. based on the strings in IEEE-ISTO
5101-1-2002 not a human-readable form. My interface gurus think of
"na-10x13-envelope" as machine-readable string as and "Envelope -
10x13inches" as human-readable string. Your mileage may vary as you have
your own gurus.
Do you all concur that the string returned should be from
IEEE-ISTO 5101-1-2002? And that the wording in these sections of the printer
MIB is a bit confusing? Are we still able to make editorial changes to the
MIB. If you say yes to these questions would you like me to propose new
wording or would someone else like to step up and do a bit of editing to
make this less confusing?
On the other hand I could imagine there are implementers
like myself that believed this really should be a description and thus have
put things like "Letter - 8.5x11inches" in this variable. And now
applications are expecting this to a human-readable string. I hope this is
not the case but something to consider.
Chuck Adams
Common Software Team
Office Printing Business
Xerox Corporation
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