Outstanding comments, indeed. As a real (protocol) implementor, I think
some folks may be sweeping a LOT of implementation realities under the
carpet in trying to leverage HTTP support.
...jay
> Since I'm a real (printer) implementor I guess it's time I chimed in. I
> believe there are many among us who are currently involved in web
> based application development. As such, we are predisposed to think
> that developing on top of HTTP is the way to go since we are currently
> more comfortable with it. However, so called "low level sockets
> programming" is not as bad as it is being made out to be. There are
> well defined APIs for TCP level programming on EVERY major OS (what do
> you think web browsers/servers use anyway?). Furthermore, having
> recently implemented an embedded web server, I can tell you that there
> is no such thing as CGI or ASAPI for low end embedded systems. For
> these systems (and I mean real printers here) it's all C code and
> there is no advantage to building on HTTP rather than TCP.
>
> Angelo Caruso
> Xerox Corp.