Subject: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Proposal for a PWG project/standard for Media - for PWG discussio n in Toronto

From: "Hastings, Tom N" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:56:59 -0700

Now that the Media Standardized Names PWG standards is complete (still needs
a PWG Last Call), there has been discussion about a new PWG standard project
that would provide additional ways to convey media characteristics than only
in a name.

Such a PWG Media standard would need to be compatible with and build on our
existing standards as well: Printer MIB (RFC 1759), IPP/1.1 (RFC 2911), IPP
Production Printing Extensions (IEEE-ISTO 5100.3), PWG Media Standardized
Names standard (IEEE-ISTO 5101.1).  It also needs to build on the on going
work in the UPDF on Media. 

The standard would have two parts A and B:

A. A single semantic description of each of the attributes of media

Start with the media attribute definitions in the PWG Media Standardized
Name standard (MediaType, MediaColor, and MediaSize) and the IPP Production
Printing Extensions (IEEE-ISTO 5100.3 standard (media-key, media-type,
media-info, media-color, media-pre-printed, media-hole-count,
media-order-count, media-size, media-weight-metric, media-front-coating,
media-back-coating, media-recycled) for the common description in A above.
Add the printer media attributes that Harry has been proposing (needs manual
input tray, etc.) and attributes from JDF.

B. Four standard representations/encodings/bindings:

Have 4 standard representations/encodings/bindings of the media semantics.
Each representation/encoding/binding would have an appropriate algorithmic
mapping from the attribute name and data type in the common semantic
definitions in A above.  The 4 suggested bindings are:

1. An XML representation (building on the UPDF work), but completely
impendent of other XML.

2. A single self-describing name which can be used in IPP/1.1 "media"
attribute or any existing system where a single name string is used.  It
builds on the syntax from the Media Standardized Names standard, using "_"
to separate fields.  Each field is a media attribute.  Only non-default
fields are included in a standardized self describing name.  See
ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/media-sizes/simple-all-in-one-names-010725.doc

3. Additional member attributes added to the "media-col" (collection) Job
Template attribute in the IPP Production Printing Extensions (IEEE-ISTO
5100.3).  

4. An IPP Media Object binding with operations on the Media object as we
agreed a year ago when reviewing the general Resource object proposal and
decided that we should have separate object and operations tailored for each
object.  The attributes of the Media Object would be the same as for the
other three bindings.

I hope that we could discuss this on the mailing list and at the PWG meeting
in Toronto, August 1.
Please reply on the IPP DL ([email-masked]), like we have for the Media
Standardized Name standard, not to this DL (PWG-ANNOUNCE).

Comments?

Thanks,
Tom