Harry,
These Media Size Self Describing Names are really keywords, just as in IPP.
A "." is a legal character in an IPP keyword. Neither a client nor a
Printer need parse the names. They are just keywords for program to program
communication. Typically a client would look up the names that it gets from
the Printer in the client's localization data base, as for any keyword, and
display the list in the locale of the user. The current IPP standard has a
list of media size keywords (without the size dimensions) for use with the
"media", "media-supported", "media-default", and "media-ready" Job Template
attributes. The PWG Media Standardized Names standard is just adding more
keywords that can be used by any number of standards, such as IPP, UPnP,
....
I agree with Don that these names (keywords) are just a list. However, they
also happen to have the dimensions in them, so that if a client gets a name
from the Printer's supported list that the client doesn't have in its
localization list, the client can still display the name (in English) and
the units the way the user wants to see units (inches or mm).
If we were just to assign OIDs, the client that got an OID from a Printer
that wasn't in the client's localization data base would be sunk. Such a
client would neither be able to display the English size name nor the
dimensions to the user. So don't our Media Size Self Describing Names
really have an advantage over OIDs?
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 07:44
To: don at lexmark.com
Cc: ipp at pwg.org
Subject: Re: IPP> Media Standardized Names
Then, what we're really building is a "Media Name Registry" which can
later become part of a fully described syntax. In that case I think the
registry is overly complicated with dot parsing rules and tricky prefix
overloading. Why not just assign OIDs?
----------------------------------------------
Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
----------------------------------------------
don at lexmark.com
Sent by: owner-ipp at pwg.org
04/20/2001 06:05 AM
To: ipp at pwg.org
cc:
Subject: IPP> Media Standardized Names
Whoaaa...
I think we are once again forgetting the intent and purpose of this
standard and
attempting to make it all things for all people (or drivers or whatever.)
The original purpose of this standard was to create a list of media NAMES
that
would easily be parsed and the relevant information presented to the user.
So
when the printer told the system it had:
na-letter.8500-11000
the system could tell the user there was
Letter (8.5 X 11)
available.
Or, if was a CAD application, it would know that the user would want to
see that
presented as
A Size (8.5 X 11)
because the CAD application has a TABLE that matched the
na-letter.8500-11000 to
a name its users preferred called "A Size"
A list of standarized names is simply that.... a list. It helps us
printer
geeks know what the media is and translate it for the user to whatever
format
the user expects. (I seriously doubt is any "normal" user would want to
know
that the media loaded was:
tw-letter.12240-15840
(assumimg tw to be the abbreviation of twips))
We could just have easily standardized the names to not include the
dimensions
but we chose to standardize the name to include the natural and normal
units and
dimensions that piece of media is know by (to most people.) Conversions
to
other units are OUTSIDE the scope of this standard and are to be handled
internally by any application using the NAMES. Remember, it is only a
NAME.
Your NAME doesn't include information that completely describes you.... it
is
simple a short-hand way of talking about a complete person. That is all
this
is. Sorry if is doesn't provided infinite amounts of information or an
infinite
number of ways of encoding the same information but it is just a NAME.
Harry and others are of course free to create an XML encoding that
COMPLETELY
describes EVERY characterisic of media (and I do mean every) but this
standard
was not intended to do that.
**********************************************
* Don Wright don at lexmark.com *
* Chair, Printer Working Group *
* Chair, IEEE MSC *
* *
* Director, Alliances & Standards *
* Lexmark International *
* 740 New Circle Rd *
* Lexington, Ky 40550 *
* 859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax) *
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