Hi folks, Saturday (24 May 2003)
Per my action item from our last IPPFAX telecon (21 May), here's the
write-up of our new special media size, for addition to Section 7 'New
Values to Existing Attributes' of the IPP JobX spec:
7.2 New media (type 3 keyword | name(MAX)) Values
This section specifies one new value for the "media" Job Template
attribute:
'pwg_letter-or-a4_choice': The client has explicitly allowed a choice
of media for the Job. The Printer MUST choose physical media of size
na_letter_8.5x11in (approximately 216x279mm) or iso_a4_210x297mm. The
Printer MUST NOT choose physical media of any other size.
ISSUE 1: What suffix for media size should be used? Alternatives are:
(a) Adding a 'choice' suffix - this makes clear that this special media
name does NOT identify a single physical size.
(b) Omitting the physical size field - this seems ambiguous and highly
dangerous, because the name would APPEAR to be a legacy name.
(c) Appending the UNION size (i.e., 210x279mm) - this is also not
truth in advertising, because this is never the size that would
result from isomorphic scaling of na-letter or iso-a4 documents,
as required by IPPFAX.
ISSUE 2: This new special media size should eventually be registered in
a (future revision of) the PWG 5101.1 standard in a _new_ table of PWG
standardized choice media sizes. For example:
Table 9 'PWG Choice Standard Sheet Media Sizes'
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| PWG Choice Name | Self-Describing Name Alternatives |
|-----------------------------|----------------------------------------|
| pwg_letter-or-a4_choice | na_letter_8.5x11in (~216x279mm) |
| | <or> |
| | iso_a4_210x297mm |
|-----------------------------|----------------------------------------|
| pwg_legal-or-b4_choice | na_legal_8.5x14in (~216x356mm) |
| | <or> |
| | iso_b4_250x353mm |
|-----------------------------|----------------------------------------|
Comments?
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald
High North Inc
PS - I was tempted to suggest finessing the media size by adding this
new value as a Media Type (like 'envelope'). Tom Hastings talked me out
of this approach, by pointing out that we _were_ restricting explicitly
the Printer choices to satisfy the client media request.