From norbert.schade at SigmaTel.com Tue Apr 25 16:14:01 2006 From: norbert.schade at SigmaTel.com (Norbert Schade) Date: Wed May 6 14:05:03 2009 Subject: UPD> latest news on UPDF Message-ID: <254C2F467935F44EAA8E5D5AFE97C3D60CC54699@SIGMAIL1.sgtl.sigmatel.com> Hi everybody, I wonder who is still on the reflector. Thought i'd share some news on the use of UPDF. Some of you may remember that i joined Oasis Semiconductor in 2004 (BTW: Oasis has been acquired by SigmaTel in September 2005. but our host software department was not affected too much). Pretty soon after i joined the group we decided that the set of UPDF schemas could help us well in some areas. We started using it as part of our specifications to avoid ambiguous descriptions of driver features and according parameters. That proved to be very reliable and we are still doing it today. A bit later we thought about using the same xml instances we already got due to the specifications in the real drivers. Ok, a larger effort. And we needed some time. Guess what? We have it working. We are making extensive use of the PWG schemas with focus on the UPDF schemas in our print and fax drivers. Even in our scanner drivers we use the string handling as designed in UPDF. If anybody wants to know further details, i'd be quite open to talk it over. Just to mention two cute issues we now love to have: - string handling we can change any string in any of our xml locale instances and immediately validate it in the corresponding UI - without re-compilation. So we can easily simulate a translator's job at the customer's site. No translator has to deal with C code or header files. Any common XML editor will do. Even standard text editors are ok (however i would not recommend them, as i love the validation feature of the xml editors). - Device description it's convenient to add another media size record to the xml based device description or just change its values and see it used. I can even do that after installation. The biggest advantage is that we can easily agree on unambiguous parameters with customers. They don't have to understand any source code to see how it's used. I like it. Ok, may be that's not too much of a surprise. As a side effect we could prove that all schemas are perfectly usable for driver development - with one little exception. And it's certainly not the typical day-by-day use. But i will explain that in a separate email in a minute. Other than that everything is just fine. Our drivers have passed a number of QA cycles in the last half year. So we are confident we have thoroughly investigated all circumstances. we have drivers now based on the Semantic Model and the UPDF schemas under Windows platforms starting from 98SE up to XP. And if at any time we would face an operating system that makes a more intense use of xml to describe device capabilities, i wonder, if i could actually enjoy that. what platform could that be :>))) Just thought this might be of interest to the group. Regards Norbert Schade Norbert Schade Host Software Manager SigmaTel, Inc. 201 Jones Road Waltham, MA 02451 USA tel. 1-781-370-8929 fax. 1-781-370-8990 email:norbert.schade@sigmatel.com This email message and any attachments are confidential, proprietary, and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Oasis Semiconductor, Inc. immediately -- by replying to this message and/or calling 781-370-8989 -- and immediately destroy all copies of this message and any attachments. Furthermore, you are hereby notified that any copying, disclosure, dissemination, or distribution of this email communication is strictly prohibited. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.pwg.org/archives/upd/attachments/20060425/878710cf/attachment.html From harryl at us.ibm.com Tue Apr 25 23:24:05 2006 From: harryl at us.ibm.com (Harry Lewis) Date: Wed May 6 14:05:03 2009 Subject: UPD> latest news on UPDF In-Reply-To: <254C2F467935F44EAA8E5D5AFE97C3D60CC54699@SIGMAIL1.sgtl.sigmatel.com> Message-ID: Norbert, thanks for sharing these experiences with the PWG. I am very glad to see some useful application of UPDF, especially considering all the effort you and others in the PWG put into it. I'm sure you are aware of the recent OSDL print summit. It seems like UPDF might be a technology they would like to investigate as they attempt to migrate Linux off the traditional use of PPDs. ---------------------------------------------- Harry Lewis IBM STSM Chairman - IEEE-ISTO Printer Working Group http://www.pwg.org IBM Printing Systems http://www.ibm.com/printers 303-924-5337 ---------------------------------------------- "Norbert Schade" Sent by: owner-upd@pwg.org 04/25/2006 02:14 PM To cc Subject UPD> latest news on UPDF Hi everybody, I wonder who is still on the reflector. Thought i?d share some news on the use of UPDF. Some of you may remember that i joined Oasis Semiconductor in 2004 (BTW: Oasis has been acquired by SigmaTel in September 2005. but our host software department was not affected too much). Pretty soon after i joined the group we decided that the set of UPDF schemas could help us well in some areas. We started using it as part of our specifications to avoid ambiguous descriptions of driver features and according parameters. That proved to be very reliable and we are still doing it today. A bit later we thought about using the same xml instances we already got due to the specifications in the real drivers. Ok, a larger effort. And we needed some time. Guess what? We have it working. We are making extensive use of the PWG schemas with focus on the UPDF schemas in our print and fax drivers. Even in our scanner drivers we use the string handling as designed in UPDF. If anybody wants to know further details, i?d be quite open to talk it over. Just to mention two cute issues we now love to have: - string handling we can change any string in any of our xml locale instances and immediately validate it in the corresponding UI ? without re-compilation. So we can easily simulate a translator?s job at the customer?s site. No translator has to deal with C code or header files. Any common XML editor will do. Even standard text editors are ok (however i would not recommend them, as i love the validation feature of the xml editors). - Device description it?s convenient to add another media size record to the xml based device description or just change its values and see it used. I can even do that after installation. The biggest advantage is that we can easily agree on unambiguous parameters with customers. They don?t have to understand any source code to see how it?s used. I like it. Ok, may be that?s not too much of a surprise. As a side effect we could prove that all schemas are perfectly usable for driver development ? with one little exception. And it?s certainly not the typical day-by-day use. But i will explain that in a separate email in a minute. Other than that everything is just fine. Our drivers have passed a number of QA cycles in the last half year. So we are confident we have thoroughly investigated all circumstances. we have drivers now based on the Semantic Model and the UPDF schemas under Windows platforms starting from 98SE up to XP. And if at any time we would face an operating system that makes a more intense use of xml to describe device capabilities, i wonder, if i could actually enjoy that. what platform could that be :>))) Just thought this might be of interest to the group. Regards Norbert Schade Norbert Schade Host Software Manager SigmaTel, Inc. 201 Jones Road Waltham, MA 02451 USA tel. 1-781-370-8929 fax. 1-781-370-8990 email:norbert.schade@sigmatel.com This email message and any attachments are confidential, proprietary, and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Oasis Semiconductor, Inc. immediately -- by replying to this message and/or calling 781-370-8989 -- and immediately destroy all copies of this message and any attachments. Furthermore, you are hereby notified that any copying, disclosure, dissemination, or distribution of this email communication is strictly prohibited. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.pwg.org/archives/upd/attachments/20060425/4cb48758/attachment.html From norbert.schade at SigmaTel.com Wed Apr 26 10:46:40 2006 From: norbert.schade at SigmaTel.com (Norbert Schade) Date: Wed May 6 14:05:03 2009 Subject: UPD> UPDF: change request in schema Message-ID: <254C2F467935F44EAA8E5D5AFE97C3D60CCBFE9B@SIGMAIL1.sgtl.sigmatel.com> I told you about a change request we have in mind for one line in the main UPDF.xsd schema. Some background: I could use all schemas unchanged, as long as i did not use a generic feature, which described a variable value. In simple words that's something like copies (no enumerated records, but a rather general description of parameters). While copies themselves is a predefined feature, you could well use a similar feature description for contrast, brightness, etc. i guess you get the idea. More to the point now: When you open the UPDF schema (UPDF.xsd) and search for the GenericFeature description (in my editor that's in line 1437), you will eventually see an attribute "NonDominantRepresentative" (line 1455) assigned to it. This attribute makes a lot of sense when the feature is described by a number of records. Each of these records has an ID. In this case you refer to one of them in this attribute. When you have a generic feature of the type VariableValue, you only have one record. And more important: this record does NOT have an ID. So you cannot refer to that record. Does not make sense either, if you only have one anyhow. The "NonDominantRepresentative" attribute is required though. I declared the attribute optional and everything i wanted to do worked fine. So the one and only request change i would have is to fix that problem. I'd like to take a couple of hours and reflect on it whether a change from 'required' to 'optional' is the best fix. The question i have is: am i entitled to do that and replace the corresponding line(s) without having to start a whole 'last call' procedure? I assume you trust me that i have the necessary expertise to deal with the issue. On another note i'd like to share is that UPDF is a good preparation when you are dreaming of having one device description for various platforms. Lately quite some people in our industry have to deal with Vista and the way they use xml there. I dare to say that i feel quite familiar with the challenge we are facing there. With drivers on previous platforms we could hardly be positioned better to enter that realm. Norbert Norbert Schade Host Software Manager SigmaTel, Inc. 201 Jones Road Waltham, MA 02451 USA tel. 1-781-370-8929 fax. 1-781-370-8990 email:norbert.schade@sigmatel.com This email message and any attachments are confidential, proprietary, and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Oasis Semiconductor, Inc. immediately -- by replying to this message and/or calling 781-370-8989 -- and immediately destroy all copies of this message and any attachments. Furthermore, you are hereby notified that any copying, disclosure, dissemination, or distribution of this email communication is strictly prohibited. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.pwg.org/archives/upd/attachments/20060426/8f06626d/attachment.html