1. Meeting Attendees

		1394	UPD	Plenary/IPP	FIN/JMP
Akihiro Shimura	Canon	x
Casey Shida	Canon			x
Nobuhiko Shinoda	Canon			x
Osamu Hirata	Canon	x
Shigeru Ueda	Canon	x		x
Tomoaki Endoh	Canon			x
Lee Farrell	Canon Info Systems	x	x	x	x
Peter Johansson	Congruent Software	x
Ron Bergman(1)	Data Products			x	x
Greg LeClair(2)	Epson	x	x	x
Fumio Nagasaka	Seiko Epson	x
Brian Batchelder	Hewlett Packard	x
Alan Berkema	Hewlett Packard	x
Scott Bonar	Hewlett Packard	x
Ben Brezinski	Hewlett Packard		x	x
Sandra Matts(3)	Hewlett Packard		x	x
Greg Shue	Hewlett Packard	x
Harry Lewis(4)	IBM		x	x	x
Brian Nagy	Kodak	x
Michael Wu	Kodak		x	x
Stuart Rowley	Kyocera			x	x
Jerry Thrasher	Lexmark	x
Don Wright(5)	Lexmark			x
John Fuller	Microsoft	x
Paul Moore	Microsoft		x	x
Hugo Parra	Novell		x	x
Norimi Kawashima	Ricoh	x		x
Randy Turner	Sharp	x	x	x	x
Mauro De Ponti	ST Microelectronics	x
Peter Groz	ST Microelectronics	x
Bob Herriot	Sun			x
Chuck Adams	Tektronix			x
Tom Hastings	Xerox			x	x
Carl-Uno Manros(6)	Xerox		x	x
Pete Zehler	Xerox			x

⁽¹⁾ JMP Chairman

⁽²⁾ 1394 PWG Chairman

⁽³⁾ UPD Chairman

⁽⁴⁾ FIN Chairman

⁽⁵⁾ PWG Chairman

⁽⁶⁾ IPP Chairman

 

2. Administrivia

Wednesday morning, Don Wright opened the PWG Plenary and provided details for the next meeting:

He also reviewed the 1999 schedule that was approved at the previous meeting:

• Jan 18-22 Maui (Joint PWG/PWG-C)
• Mar 1-5 Tampa/St. Pete
• Apr 12-16 New Orleans
• May 24-28 Philadelphia
• Jul 5-9 Copenhagen, Denmark (other European?)
• Aug 16-20 Alaska (Joint PWG/PWG-C)
• Sep 27-Oct 1 Denver
• Nov 1-5 Raleigh, NC
• Dec 13-17 Los Angeles/Santa Barbara area

A few people commented that a meeting in Alaska might present some difficulties with obtaining their manager’s approval. Vancouver was suggested as a possible alternative, but no change in the schedule was made.

1. Status Reports

Each of the Project Leaders provided a brief status of the individual projects.

1. Printer MIB Project (PMP)

Only 3 votes have been received on the mailing list to proceed to Proposed Standard. This does not seem to be a clear consensus, so votes are encouraged from everyone on the reflector. When sufficient votes are received, the group can officially move forward within the IETF.

Don Wright asked if anyone objected to the idea of forwarding the MIB to Proposed Standard (instead of Draft Standard.) No one at the meeting objected.

2. Job Monitoring MIB Project (JMP)

Comments and feedback on the latest Draft have been received, and the group plans to move forward on the document within the IETF. Ron Bergman mentioned that he prefers to forward the document as an Informational RFC rather than as Experimental. However, he says the most important goal is to get it published—in either form.

3. Finisher MIB Project (FIN)

The FIN MIB has been completed. Some companies are currently prototyping it, and will be providing feedback on their experience.

Harry Lewis explained the latest goal of the group is to develop a standard interface between the Printer and Finisher Device. He said that Duplo has submitted a proposal—which is mostly a list of attributes desired for the Finisher protocol interface.

The FIN group will need to develop a Charter to define the efforts for the Printer/Finisher Interface (PFI).

Harry commented that this effort would benefit from more participation of other Finisher vendors. Currently, Duplo seems to be the primary (only?) Finisher vendor participant.

4. Universal Printer Driver Project (UPD)

Last night, the UPD Charter was reviewed and re-worded to further clarify that the focus of the group will be to develop a "Universal Printer Description Format for Printer drivers"—not a driver. [Perhaps the UPD group should change their name?] The Charter was also thinned down to state the Charter goals more concisely. Sandra Matts plans to update and issue another Charter draft and distribute it for review and approval. Her goal is to gain the UPD group agreement via e-mail and submit to the PWG for formal voting at the next meeting.

It has been suggested that the original idea of providing "call-backs" within the resulting file should take a secondary priority to be addressed in a subsequent version (i.e. "put it off until later.") Paul Moore suggests that the UPD group should consider methods for providing extensibility within the resulting file format.

During the UPD status report, the PWG group engaged in a speculative discussion about requirements and features of the final file format. Several comments and concerns were raised about the interaction with transport layers and IPP.

ACTION: The PWG organization should develop/adopt standard templates for a working group Charter and Requirements document.

5. Internet Printing Project (IPP)

Carl-Uno Manros identified two important events: the Chicago IETF Plenary meeting and the IPP interoperability "Bake-off" event.

1. IETF Plenary Session

Carl-Uno said that the IESG was concerned that very few people had attended the IPP session. (Only three PWG members attended.) During the Plenary, Carl-Uno had some discussions with the IETF Area Directors. They said that there is a lot of information to review [in the IPP documents], and they are still looking at it. A proposal for adding security parameters to the IPP URL was presented and discussed at the IPP session. The proposed method would allow IPP to exist on the same port for both secure and non-secure connections.

At the session, Carl-Uno pointed out the IPP history of milestones and deliverables that the group has accomplished. (He also noted the long periods of waiting for IETF/IESG responses that the group has suffered.) Additionally, a discussion was held about the possible merging or cross-over of the IPP and IFAX technologies.

Tom Hastings mentioned that some new rules from the IETF have been published recently. As part of these rules, the IPP Chairman needs to post the planned agenda for upcoming IPP meetings. Carl-Uno indicated that he did publish the agenda for today’s meeting—and it did not seem to result in any increased attendance.

 

2. IPP Interoperability Test

The Bake-off was very productive and beneficial. Microsoft did an excellent job at hosting the event. Carl-Uno said that the results were more positive than he had hoped. However, there is still work to be done. Don Wright asked if we could claim that at least two independent implentations were successfully interoperable. The answer was a qualified yes—because not all features were proven.

6. 1394 PWG

Greg LeClair reported the highlights of this week’s meeting progress:

• A proposal for additions to the Command Set was submitted, reviewed and essentially rejected.
• The Profile document was reviewed and will be revised and posted
• The group is currently resolving issues about multiple LUNs
• The OUI purchase is in progress—and should be complete by the end of October

Greg said that for future meetings, the group could consider reducing the 1394 PWG meeting from two days to one.

[This comment led to a discussion of the possible re-scheduling of time for projects in future PWG meetings. Don Wright will change the schedule as appropriate.]

1. Liaison Reports
1. USPS Information Based Indicia Program (IBIP)

Work is continuing within the US Post Office. A meeting was held in September and the latest status was presented. A significant issue has been raised regarding troubles printing a "FIM" mark within 1/8 inch of top edge of envelopes. The USPS is requesting printer manufacturers to support this requirement, but so far the response has not been very positive.

2. IEEE 1284r

The IEEE 1284 standard has been around for five years and is now due for re-affirmation. The 1284r group had its first meeting in September. Several updates have been proposed and are being considered for inclusion in the next update. The next meeting is planned for the first week in December in Tampa.

3. PWG-C

Shinoda-san reported that the 1394 TA Board of Directors approved the Direct Printing Protocol (DPP) specification on September 15. The next goal is to establish asynchronous channel support over the AVC scheme. This will be discussed mainly in the 1394 AV group—not DSI—at the next TA meeting.

4. NCMG

The Network Computer Management Group has released their latest print specification. Currently, it is based on LPR, but in the future they plan to move to IPP. Their next meeting is October 14.

5. 1394 TA

A significant issue with Bridges has been identified. Legacy devices will (apparently) not work over Bridges. This topic has created many comments over the e-mail reflector and will be discussed further at the next 1394 meeting.

2. PWG Process

Lee Farrell submitted a proposal via e-mail (on September 11) for Section 8 of the Process document. The proposal suggests a detailed policy for addressing Intellectual Property issues within the PWG. However, the PWG server was not working properly when it was issued and not all members received a copy via e-mail. At the meeting, a hard copy of the proposal was distributed to the group. However, because several attendees had no time to review the proposal, it was agreed that discussions should be deferred.

ACTION: Lee will send another copy of the proposal to the PWG list.

A brief examination of the document caused a few people to note the "legal-ese" wording that was contained in the proposal. Concern was raised that review of the proposal will lead to months of additional legal review and discussion before all the companies can reach agreement.

MOTION: Paul Moore made a motion to adopt the existing PWG Process document except for Section 8 (i.e. Section 8 will be removed.)

DISCUSSION: It was suggested that the Motion be amended to have the Process document include a reference to the separate IP Document. This suggestion was rejected.

VOTE: The motion passed without objection. The existing PWG Process document will have Section 8 removed and other Sections are adopted as is.

3. Internet Printing Protocol Documents

Later in the day, during the IPP meeting, the PWG members voted on an issue regarding the current status of the IPP documentation.

Carl-Uno explained that the IETF Steering Group (IESG) has requested the IPP Working Group to submit new drafts to the IETF. They have said that the IPP documents must be updated to include the IPP scheme. They have also said that we need to write a more detailed document specifying the URL scheme that incorporates parameters for supporting secure connections.