Minutes: XHTML-Print working group meeting

August 27, 2002

Santa Fe, NM

Recorded by Elliott Bradshaw

In attendance:

Harry Lewis, IBM

Don Wright, Lexmark

Hitoshi Sekine, Ricoh

Peter Zehler, Xerox

David Hall, HP

Elliott Bradshaw, Oak Technology

Jim Bigelow, HP

Fumio Nagasaka, Epson

Shivaun Albright, HP

Jerry Thrasher, Lexmark

Shigeru Ueda, Canon

Kenichi Takeda, Ricoh

Atsushi Uchino, Epson

Rod Acosta, Agfa Monotype

Ron Bergman, Hitachi

Gail Songer, Peerless

Ted Tronson, Novell

Jeff Christensen, Novell

Yiruo Yang, Epson

Bill Wagner, NetSilicon

Administration

Jim Bigelow has assumed the role of Editor for the spec. Don Wright remains Chair of the group. Elliott Bradshaw agreed to be Recording Secretary.

Minutes from the June meeting were approved.

Action item review: the following items from June were not closed:

• Action Item<open>: Jacob Refstrup will locate and make available a version of a tool to find and mark differences between two html documents.

• Action Item<open>: Melinda Grant asked how to keep the conformance section of the document (Section 2.3) in step with w3c specs. The discussion that followed weighted the value of a stable specification against the redundancy of restating other specifications. Therefore we should:

1. Do more research on how the w3c documents handle this issue.

2. Weight the pros and cons of two techniques:

§ Restate the conformance requirements in force at the time the spec is issued with changes and requirements necessary for XHTML-Print.

§ Simply refer to basic conformance requirements inherited from referenced documents and only state the exceptions, changes, and XHTML-Print requirements.

• Action Item<open>: Canon will bring up the issue of image rotation with the w3c so that a w3c approved method can created and used in the XHTML-Print specification. In the interim the processing of EXIF marker will be optional.
• Action Item<open>: The interaction with EXIF markers and a not yet developed CSS property for specifying the orientation/rotation of the images was discussed. What if the EXIF marker exists and the CSS property is or is not there? We should post the issue for discussion of the PWG XP mailing list for 2 weeks.

Review of CSS Print and XHTML-Print specifications

1. XML lists a small number of builtin character entities, while XHTML lists a much larger set. Decision: update the XHTML-Print spec to reference the XHTML set as required.

2. Jim proposed a document that shows how a browser can incorporate form data in a single data stream to send to the printer. Decision: incorporate this as an informative appendix.

3. Some attributes overlap functions of CSS properties (e.g. height and width). Elliott had proposed to omit these from the list of required support for attributes. Decision: they should be included after all, with a note that CSS properties take precedent. We need to support all the attributes from XHTML, with the exception of those that mean nothing in a printing environment. Elliott to locate other duplicate attributes and bring them back.

4. XML prevents using minimized attributes. E.g. the client must say selected=”selected” rather than just selected. The current draft reinforces this. Decision: OK.

5. We reviewed the proposed support for CSS selectors, which is the same as for CSS Mobile. Decision: OK as is, but clarify confusing text about “div.warning”.

6. The current draft has some differences in property support compared to V.95. Decision: edit this to show the same level of support as in V.95.

7. xml:lang could be listed as “conditionally required” for printers that implement language-based extensions Decision: do this.

8. We discussed counters. Decision: only the single counter named "pages" is required. Clarify this in the spec.

Process

Don would like a detailed review of the next drafts of these two documents at the November meeting, with a goal of approval. After this, a group of companies who are also W3C members will submit them to the W3C. We agreed to proceed even if the CSS rotation property has not been defined.

Action Items

1. Jim/Elliott: produce updated drafts with changes listed above, in time for a 1-month review before next meeting.

2. Jim: Determine how to handle conformance statements with W3C documents.

3. Jim: Follow up with Jacob on CSS rotation and running headers/footers.