IPP> global media; comment on yesterday's proposal

IPP> global media; comment on yesterday's proposal

don at lexmark.com don at lexmark.com
Sat Apr 28 01:24:15 EDT 2001



This WHOLE argument goes away because Letter.2159-2794 is NOT one of the
standardized names.  Nor is om_letter_2159-2794 nor any other variation.  A
driver can do whatever it wants INTERNALLY but the actual paper size is and will
always be forever more na_letter_8.5-11.  Any time a reference is made to this
paper size and stored away for exchange with another system it MUST be referred
to my the standardized name .... na_letter_8.5-11

**********************************************
* Don Wright                 don at lexmark.com *
* Chair, Printer Working Group               *
* Chair, IEEE MSC                            *
*                                            *
* Director, Strategic & Technical Alliances  *
* Lexmark International                      *
* 740 New Circle Rd                          *
* Lexington, Ky 40550                        *
* 859-232-4808 (phone) 859-232-6740 (fax)    *
**********************************************





"Norbert Schade" <norbertschade%oaktech.com at interlock.lexmark.com> on 04/26/2001
04:49:42 PM

To:   "IPP Group" <ipp%pwg.org at interlock.lexmark.com>
cc:    (bcc: Don Wright/Lex/Lexmark)
Subject:  IPP> global media; comment on yesterday's proposal



I have my problems with the new proposal.
I am going to rephrase my previous statements commenting that proposal.

Splitting the media size name into three components (unit, name, dimensions) is
a very new idea.
My main problem with this proposal is the first component.
In Ron's current version of the spec we have two units: inch/1000 and mm/10. We
have implemented that version to learn about problems.
With the new proposal there is the danger to have an even bigger number of
units.
Supporting more than one unit is a serious problem for any driver. Ask any
driver developer. It's not about what unit I want to show in the UI. It's about
necessary conversions when dealing with applications. Please study Mark's
feedback from 4/20. I repeat it in easy words (I hope).

Scenario excerpt
1. Workstation 1 with driver 1
Driver 1 is supporting a media size 'Letter.2159-2794' (the developer of the
driver has chosen the metric way). You could do the sample with any other size.
2. User 1 sitting at workstation 1 writes one page of text with application xyz
and saves the document.
this means that the size information 'Letter.2159-2794' is saved in the document
file as well in many, many applications.
3. User 1 sends his document to user 2.
4. User 2 sitting at workstation 2 with driver 2 (different from driver 1) opens
the document. This second the driver 2 is already involved.
5. Imagine driver 2 is not supporting 'Letter.2159-2794', but
'na-Letter.8500-1100' instead, which in fact is the same size with a different
name.
Now it's the question what is driver 2 doing.
It could start some investigation to match or emulate the required size. -> bad
performance.
The same situation will happen again when printing. It will happen very often,
repeatedly.

So we already have a problem with two units. If we now open a gate to be able to
define even more units, it will be aweful code and a terrible performance. Every
driver developer should be able to prove that.
However everything would be fine, if there'd be one and one only unit.
Make it small enough that any rounding for a UI string or whatever is needed,
can be done properly. Our proposal within UPDF was mm/1000, which is certainly
small enough (and used in the industry anyhow).

I treated strings like 'jis' or 'iso' just as parts of the name to make it more
apparent. 'na' was the only exception so far.

If all names are unique (I think they are in Ron's current concept), I don't
have a problem splitting the name and the dimensions into two components. In
that case we may even work with the name only and handle the dimensions with an
include file.
I thought the idea of combining the name and the dimensions is ok, as we need it
for custom size anyhow.
BTW: I am happy to have proper keywords, but my drivers certainly will never,
never, never show them in the UI. Be also sure that in UPDF we are providing the
chance to assign a proper human readable UI string to it.

So from a driver's point of view the easiest case is to work with 1 unit
(mm/1000), remove the prefix 'na-' and convert all the dimensions.
This ensures a good performance, consistent routines and readability.
Whatever the internal unit of a driver is, it most probably has all converting
routines available to work with 1 unit, but not all necessary functions to match
between different units.

I would be very surprised if Mark does not feel very, very similarly, although I
have been told differently today. Unfortunately I couldn't get hold of him on
his trip today.

I call this proposal '1unit mm/1000, unchanged naming', where unchanged naming
means no separate components, but converted dimensions into that 1 unit. I do
not insist on unchanged naming, but I haven't seen the big advantage of it so
far.

Regards
Norbert Schade
Principle Software Engineer
Host Software Group
Oak Technology, Inc.
10 Presidential Way
Woburn, MA 01801
USA
Phone: 1-781-638-7614
Fax: 1-781-638-7555
email: norbertschade at oaktech.com
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