> No, you are making too many consclusions here. No once said having just
> a plain browser and a plain Web server can magically realize IPP! On the
> server side, you will obvisouly have to implment a CGI, ISAPI, etc. On
> the client side you will have to add a driver. But the argument is that
> using the existing "stock" Internet client and server software makes
> implementing these components far easier than diving down to TCP
> programming.
OK, so what you are saying then is:
- A specialized print client is required on the client side
- A specialized print server is required on the server side
And why do you think again that using HTTP is such a great idea?
Come on people, it should be totally obvious by now that the
modifications necessary to "stock" software is just as much, if not
more than writing the driver to use a socket directly PLUS you have to
consider all the possible corner cases of what happens with special
HTTP handling (like caches) and new versions of HTTP.
I am not sure why Babak keeps arguing that implementing to a socket
API is so much harder than some other, higher level API. If that's the
case for the particular platform he is concerned about, then one must
wonder about the platform he is using. Without diving into the "NT
print servers are going to take over the World"-discussion, I do want
to point out that at least one developer of printer drivers (Hi
Angelo!) is perfectly happy to write to the socket layer since the
much touted development tools simply are not available in that case.
I would really appreciate it if people could comment on the proposed
TCP socket mapping I sent out earlier this week.
Thanks.
--
Alex Bochannek Phone & Fax : +1 408 526 51 91
Senior Network Analyst Pager : +1 408 485 90 92
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