Report of the PWG standard Printer-Interface meeting January 21, 1999 The meeting was not as well attended as anticipated. There were early indications that appx. 30 people would participate in the January meeting. It is possible that an analogous effort occurring within the Finishing industry and/or confusion related to project scope (inline vs. standalone or networked finishers, cutsheet vs. continuous forms pre and post processing) may have confused and detracted from this meeting. Attendees: Raymond Balmes - Oce Ron Bergman - Dataproducts Tom Hastings - Xerox Jan Idomir - HP Harry Lewis - IBM Concepts related to a standard Printer-Finisher interface were discussed and reviewed for the 4th session in the PWG. In general, a standard interface would alleviate Finisher vendors from having to develop custom interfaces to their equipment for every printer vendor. Printer vendors would be alleviated from architecting and maintaining private interfaces and would be able to produce Finishers based on finishing function rather than interface compliance. Overall product development cycles would be shortened. In addition, a standard Printer-Finisher interface would address: 1. Finisher "plug-and-play" 2. Automatic population of the Finisher MIB attributes 3. Facilitating automatic driver configuration in bi-di environments. While the PWG remains interested in the concept of a standard Printer-Finisher interface, we do not have the expertise to drive this topic. In 4 consecutive (incubation) sessions, the topic has failed to product a charter, requirements proposal or model document. The PWG is suspending this topic and recommending someone from the Finishing Industry submit a draft charter and requirements document prior to scheduling any more meetings. Upon receiving an acceptable charter, requirements and model proposal, the PWG will gladly schedule a meeting within the following 6-week period. The PWG encourages continued discussion regarding the standard Printer-Finisher interface and will provide the "fin@pwg.org" e-mail reflector (with sub topic PFX) for such discussion. Anyone interested in furthering or discussion this topic is encouraged to join this mailing list by sending e-mail to majordomo@pwg.org with the words "Subscribe FIN" in the body. A web link category for Finishing will be added to the PWG web site at www.pwg.org. This category will contain a pointer to the Finisher MIB as well as any standard Printer-Finisher submissions that may be received in the future. Report submitted by Harry Lewis - 2/5/99