Apologies to Harry for jumping in on this one...
>Do you anticipate that printer URLs will become a mechanism for party-to-party
>communication, like FAX is now?
If IPP is to become a method to send documents over the Internet then certainly
the IPP URL would be a good way to refer to a receiving device.
>If so, then what is the difference between a printer and a FAX?
Very little, and that's one of the attractions of IPP as a communication
mechanism. There are some legal ramifications to offering a "fax" service that
aren't present for printers, such as watermarks and proof of delivery, but
they're minor issues as far as the protocol is concerned.
>Doesn't "printer" imply a device that I use to create a physical _copy_ of
>my document, while a FAX implies that I want to electronically _transmit_ my
>document to someone else? IOW, many FAX devices nowadays contain no paper -
>received FAXs are displayed electronically.
Not at all. Traditionally, users have assumed that if they send a fax then it is
being printed on a fax machine at the receiving end, but we know this may not be
the case. In the same way, an IPP server (the receiving end in our case) may be
embedded in the printer or it may be a separate server - running on an NT box,
for instance. The IPP server could quite easily forward the received job on via
email or some other printing protocol rather than printing locally. I've often
thought that rather than using a simple URL like:
ipp://ipp.peerless.com
for a company IPP-based fax machine, something like:
ipp://ipp.peerless.com/nick
would allow a more flexible scheme where the ipp server might just print it on
its printer with maybe a cover page telling me it's mine, or might be more
advanced and able to read our network directory to resolve the name and forward
the received document on to a printer (or email) nearer me.
Cheers,
Nick Webb
Peerless Systems Networking
(650) 569 4421
www.peerless.com