This is a draft for the charter for the proposed Printer Working Group to be discussed in the PWG BOF at the San Jose IETF meeting on Dec 12th 1996. The proposal involves using HTTP and a lightweight version of ISO10175 Document Print Application.
PWG Charter 4.0 11/12/96 Internet Printing Project (ipp) Chair(s): Carl-Uno ManrosApplications Area Director(s): Keith Moore Harald Alvestrand Area Advisor: Mailing lists: General Discussion: ipp@pwg.org To Subscribe: majordomo@pwg.org in body: subscribe ipp Archive: ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/ipp Editor: Scott Isaacson Description of Working Group: Internet printing involves using Internet technologies and services to find networked resources such as printers and share documents and then printing using those resources. This working group will define a new application level distributed printing protocol as well as naming and service registration mechanisms. The protocol can be used in a global, distributed environment where print service users (clients, applications, drivers, etc.) cooperate and interact with print service providers (servers, printers, gateways, etc.). Guiding principles for the working group include: - platform independence, - leverage existing technology, - support all types of output devices (not just printers), - keep it simple enough to embed in network attached printers, - hide printing complexity and implementation details, and - support all existing page description languages (including HTML). There are several roles in which humans act with respect to a given printer. These roles include: User, Operator, and Administrator. For example, Users submit jobs and then manage their own jobs. Operators monitor printer status and control and manage all jobs at the printer. Administrators create the printer instances and control the authorization of other Users and Operators. The working group will generally limit its scope to include only User functionality, however, there may be a need to define some basic Operator functionality as well. Users want to find and locate printers to which they are authorized to print. They want to search for printers using a standard Web browser. They search for printers based on name, geographic location, and other device related capabilities and attributes. Users also need a way to limit the scope or context of their searches. This includes support for searching for print devices both inside and outside their organizational fire walls. NOTE: Throughout this document, the term browser specifically means an Internet Web Browser (HTML, HTTP, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Mosaic, etc.). The term does not include MIB browsers or other browsers specific to a proprietary product or technology. Once users find printers, they want to be able to 'install' the printer into the native, desktop operating system on which they are running. This installation process includes installing any device specific components that are needed (e.g., the correct printer driver). This allows printing from any application (e.g., spreadsheet, word processor, browser, etc.). Users also want to print by reference. This means that instead of submitting a print job that contains the entire document contents, a job can be submitted that contains only a reference to some existing document or set of documents. This reference is resolved prior to actually printing the document(s). Users want to set certain print job parameters at the time the job is submitted (e.g., number of copies, priority, job defaults, etc.). The underlying protocol must support job-to-printer capability matching. This involves knowing both printer attributes and job attributes as well as having the ability to reason about relationships between the values of these attributes. This is useful for rejecting print jobs that can not be printed (at submission time rather than at print time) as well as automatically locating a printer that is capable of printing a certain job. Once a print job has been submitted and is being processed, users need to be able to cancel their own print jobs. Users want to verify both the characteristics and status of both jobs and print devices by using a browser. When checking the status of a device, users want to know how many jobs are being processed by the device as well as how many jobs are 'in front of' a given job. Users also want to be able either to turn on or turn off job and device status reporting. The working group will define a set of printing related events and also specify the notification methods that can be used. The working group shall leverage existing (and emerging) technologies for: authentication, authorization, privacy, and commercial transactions. The working group must define solutions that do not preclude the notion of multi-tiered configurations consisting of both logical and physical printers. Also, the new job submission protocol must not preclude submitting jobs to any type of output device (e.g., fax, printer, gateway). Also, the working group shall define extensibility paths so that similar extensions will interoperate and proprietary, dissimilar extensions will never conflict. The working group will not undertake defining a standard API set for Internet printing, but will support redirection from current print subsystems and interfaces as well as support direct programmatic implementations by vertical applications. The working group shall encourage and solicit the input and participation from all printing related individuals and companies. For example, the working group will not only encourage participation by experts from printer vendors, but representatives from browsers, client desktop operating systems, network operating systems, Internet service providers, Page Description Languages (PDLs), and commercial service bureaus. Also, the working group shall coordinate its activities with other printing-related standards bodies. The working group will not re-invent nor concern itself with the following issues: - how operating systems 'temporarily' install printers - command line tools and interfaces - input devices such as scanners and fax-in - nested HTML documents This working group may define work that will replace RFC 1179 'Line Printer Daemon Protocol' LPR/LPD was designed a long time ago with line printers in mind. It does not fit with current page oriented printing technologies. Most printer vendors have made their own proprietary extensions which are mutually incompatible. The specifications out of this working group must enhance RFC 1179 in the following ways: - Useful yet practical mechanisms for interoperability and extensibility - Support for the more complex, multiple content, multiple document, page oriented languages and printers of today - Support for the new Internet and Web technologies of today This effort will be developed and prototyped within a 6 month period since there has been considerable prior work done in this area. This prior body of work includes: - ISO/IEC 10175 Document Printing Application (DPA) parts 1 and 3. - POSIX System Administration - Part 4 (POSIX 1378.4) - X/Open, 'A Printing System Interoperability Specification(PSIS)' - RFC 1759, Printer MIB Goals and Milestones: Weekly teleconference - Wednesdays, starting November 13, 1997 Mailing list - up and working November 22, 1996 - issue Internet-Draft document to IETF December 12, 1996 - attend BOF in IETF meeting in San Jose End December, 1996 or earlier - have IETF WG created April 1997 meeting of IETF - final polishing of specification April 1997 meeting of IETF - demo of prototype(s) May 1997 - First RFC(s) ready for publishing (further milestones between January - April 1997 to be added) Internet-Drafts: No Current Internet-Drafts. Request For Comments: RFC Stat Published Title ------- -- ---------- ----------------------------------------- RFC1759 PS Mar 95 Printer MIB