Minutes from the IPP/IFAX meeting - October 1, 1998 Attendees: Ron Bergman - Dataproducts Corp. Lee Farrell - Canon Tom Hastings - Xerox Harry Lewis - IBM Carl-Uno Manros - Xerox Stuart Rowley - Kyocera Randy Turner - Sharp Labs These comments are directed at the paper by Richard Shockey titled "Memorandum on the Use of IPP and Facsimile Service Requirements and Protocol Mapping", dated 09/29/98. In general, it was agreed that Richard did an excellent job of defining these requirements. The information provided was extremely helpful to us printer folks. Most of the questions and comments are due to our limited background in facsimile. 1. We will establish an IPP/IFAX mail list on the PWG server. I suggest IFC, for IPP Fax Compatibility. 2. In the sub heading of section 2.2 titled "END-USER" (this is a quote from the IPP Requirements Document), it should be noted that "altering the attributes of a print job" is not a part of IPP 1.0. 3. The left column of the Functional Matrix on page 5 should be: (heading).......................IPP Addressing......................URL Protocol........................HTTP 1.1 "POST" Negotiation Capabilities........Get-Printer-Attributes or Validate-Job (operation) Allowable Content...............Any format supported by the printer, must have a MIME type Minimum Supported Content.......None Sender ID.......................job-originating-user-name (Job Description Attribute) requesting-user-name (Operation Attribute) Compression.....................compression-supported (Printer Description Attribute) Security........................TLS, Digest Authentication (DAA), and SSL3 Transmission....................Network Status Reporting-Tracking.......Notifications (work in progress) Gateway Addressing..............URL Notification & Confirmation.....Notifications and Real-Time Clock Error Coding....................IPP & HTTP specific codes 4. Information regarding the proposed IPP notifications can be found on the PWG ftp server. ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/ipp/new_NOT/ The three papers that provide a good view of the proposal are: ipp-notifications-very-short-980701.pdf (and .doc) ipp-notification-printer-980701.pdf (and .doc) ipp-job-prog-attr-980706.pdf (and .doc) For those who really are into this subject and have nothing to do, the complete IPP notifications paper is: ipp-event-notification-proposal.pdf (and .doc) 5. There was some discussion as to what is the concept of redirection within the scope of fax. Within IPP, this term has been used for the situation where an IPP server has determined that a different IPP printer should process a received job and "redirects" the job to another printer. (An IPP server can "front" for multiple printer devices.) This may be due to features available on the other printer, to balance the current print load on the devices, or any other reason. It was believed that this may not be the case for fax. In the case of a fax offramp, the job is "redirected" from the Internet to the PSTN for delivery to a legacy fax machine. Or, the job may be "redirected" by a distribution list to many destinations which may be on the Internet or PSTN. The IPP group requests additional information from the IFAX group regarding this subject. 6. The fax requirement of a header with the time and date generated significant discussion. The first question, from this discussion: "Where is the time stamp affixed to the document? (i.e. At the source or the destination?)" If the document image is ever stored between the two points these times could be very different, even without the consideration of time zone changes. Subsequent email discussion on this topic from IFAX participants has indicated that the header is generated at the document source. The image received by the printer should contain the required header and this is not a concern of the printing device. It was generally agreed by IPP participants that an IPP/IFAX compatible printer could be required to implement a real-time clock. The IPP/IFAX feature would be a superset of the present IPP version 1.0, as it most likely will require the inclusion of new attributes and other features beyond the current specifications. This is not a serious problem, since IPP is very extensible and is not restricted by any legacy printing applications. Email discussion has since indicated that a real-time clock is not required to create the document header. A time stamp may, however, be necessary to maintain a log of faxes received. This depends upon how many of the fax device's functionally is desired. (This may be more of a marketing decision than an absolute requirement.) The second question concerns the legal issues... "Would the legal requirements of a real-time clock for current fax machines automatically apply to an IPP/IFAX device?" This subject generated a significant number of email messages with no clear consensus. Again, this may degenerate to more of a market position issue. 7. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of downloading a printer driver (defined as a PDL in the paper). It should be noted that the ability to locate and download a driver is one of the eventual goals of IPP, it is not a feature of version 1.0. 8. Must a fax document be transmitted using TIFF? Adobe once had a PostScript version of fax. Are there others? 9. If the output is from an IPP printer, what would differentiate a fax job from any other print job? What are the set of requirements that are tied to a fax? 10. Section 5.2 mentions VCARD and Job Ticket. Is there a definition for these items?