I have been requested by some members of the Printer Working Group (PWG)
to specifically invite key companies to the upcoming dinner discussion
on the concept of a "Universal Print Driver" (UPD):
Thursday evening, May 15
Marriott Suites
Symphony Towers
701 A Street
San Diego, California
(619) 696-9800
You have been selected for distribution of this message either due to
your subscription to one or more relevant PWG mailing lists, or by
previous contact with a PWG participant.
Concerns have been raised regarding the viability of a standard Universal
Print Driver without the support of key companies having critical
involvement with printing facilities in general computing environments.
Such companies may be characterized as being prominent players in one
or more of the following areas:
- Operating systems and platforms
- Page description languages and interpreters
- Printer drivers
- Printing system software
The participation of these companies is particularly encouraged:
Adobe
Dazel
Digital
Hewlett-Packard
IBM
Microsoft
Novell
Sun Microsystems
Xerox
Printer manufacturers are, of course, equally important in this discussion;
representatives of the printer industry have already been made aware of
this new topic of discussion by virtue of their participation in the PWG.
Strong support has been demonstrated within the printer industry to
investigate the potential for a Universal Print Driver.
Currently the relationship of a Universal Print Driver with the emerging
Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) standards is not clear; however, most PWG
participants expect a strong binding between these two technical areas.
(In fact, the Universal Print Driver concept was the result of one of the
recent IPP Model teleconferences.)
You and your company are strongly encouraged to attend this preliminary
discussion meeting on May 15. This meeting is designed to be an ad hoc
discussion of interested parties; no decision has been made whether to
formally create a PWG project to commence a standardization effort for the
Universal Print Driver.
If you or your company believe a Universal Print Driver standardization
effort would be useless or counter-productive in any way, then by all means
please send a representative to this meeting and state your views.
An electronic mailing list has been setup within the PWG to conduct open
discussions of the Universal Print Driver; instructions for joining this
list are attached.
If your company can not send a representative to the meeting, then feel
free to either post your comments to this new list (mailto:upd@pwg.org),
or send me email and I'll be happy to post it to the list on your behalf.
The PWG looks forward to your company's participation in this discussion.
Feel free to contact me for additional information. A complete "package"
of recent email messages on this topic can be sent to you directly, if
necessary, to quickly bring you up to speed on this new technical topic.
Jay Martin
PWG Secretary
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-- JK Martin | Email: jkm@underscore.com --
-- Underscore, Inc. | Voice: (603) 889-7000 --
-- 41C Sagamore Park Road | Fax: (603) 889-2699 --
-- Hudson, NH 03051-4915 | Web: http://www.underscore.com --
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 13:41:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: JK Martin <jkm@underscore.com>
To: pwg@pwg.org
Subject: PWG> New PWG mailing list: upd@pwg.org (Universal Print Driver)
A new PWG email discussion list has been created for the purpose of
discussing the concepts and potential for "Universal Print Driver"
technology.
Note that the formation of this list does not imply that the PWG
has decided to commence a standards development effort in this
technology area. Rather, the new "upd" mailing list currently
serves as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas among all interested
parties. (Should a standards effort result from the discussions
on this list, then it is likely that the list will also serve as
the official distribution list for the standards effort.)
Interacting with the "upd" mailing list is the same as for all
other PWG mailing lists. To subscribe to this new mailing list,
send a message to:
majordomo@pwg.org
The body of the message should contain the following line:
subscribe upd
The originating email address is then subscribed to the list.
If for some reason an email address other than the originating
address is to be used as the subscribing address, then add the
target address to the end of the above line.
For example, if you have an internal distribution list called
"upd-dist", then you would subscribe that address to this mailing list
by using this line as the message body:
subscribe upd upd-dist@foo.com
Note that when dealing with majordomo, the "Subject:" line is
always ignored (ie, it can be blank).
Once your subscription request is received, you will receive
a message describing the mailing list, as well as instructions
on how to remove yourself from the list at a later date.
Let the discussions begin...
...jay
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-- JK Martin | Email: jkm@underscore.com --
-- Underscore, Inc. | Voice: (603) 889-7000 --
-- 41C Sagamore Park Road | Fax: (603) 889-2699 --
-- Hudson, NH 03051-4915 | Web: http://www.underscore.com --
----------------------------------------------------------------------