Stuart,
Of course you are right. It is the difference between a logical
consideration and a popular perception. I agree that "needs
attention" is not a state, it is a condition that may associate with
any printing job state. But the distinction might not be obvious to a
casual user. On another semantic difference of opinion, I think that
processing is probably more applicable popularly than printing,
because the common user might get concerned is his status is printing
when the printer is grinding away on a recursive fish file.
But it seems that this probably should be of more concern to the IPP,
when it appears that the actual phases might be seen by the user, than
with the Job Monitoring MIB, where a specific user interface will be
present to put the information in appropriate terms.
Also, I suggest that, particularly if the Printer MIB is not
supported, some interesting information may be lost by not indicating
the printing state at which the job needs attention.
Regardless, I suggest that if the intent is to convince IPP to go with
the popular terms, it must be on the basis that these will better
serve the user, even if they are logically incorrect. (Who ever said
users had to be logical?)
Bill Wagner, Osicom/DPI
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re[2]: JMP> HELD vs NEEDS-ATTENTION
Author: STUART at KEI-CA.CCMAIL.CompuServe.COM at Internet
Date: 5/23/97 4:04 PM
I agree that "Needs Attention" is an important state which should not be
removed from jmJobState, but I think it is very important to have alignment
with IPP. So we just have to get IPP to come around to our way of thinking
:-)
Ron, you didn't mention that the IPP job states do not include held
(pending, processing, cancelled, aborted, and completed). I believe there
is also an important distinction between held and pending and that there
should be both held and pending states.
I think the jmJobStates of Held, Pending, Processing, Needs Attention,
Cancelled, and Completed are the best at providing the necessary
information WITH A SINGLE OBJECT. As Harry has said, most printer agents
can tell the whole story (as they know it) with just these job states. The
JobStateReasons are things the printer agent typically doesn't know about.
Perhaps IPP is hung up on the semantics such as that a hold is really a
reason it is pending. I can perhaps see the theoretical justification for
having held as a reason for the state pending. But, I believe users, as
opposed to us grizzled standards developers, would immediately see the
utility of having held as a separate state from pending, with pending
applying only to jobs that are waiting and have not been put on
administrative hold. The user may then choose to see the reason why it is
held or pending. This same arguement applies to the Needs Attention state
as opposed to making Needs Attention a reason under the one of the other
states. It is just more useful to have Held and Needs Attention as job
states rather than reasons!
Stuart Rowley
Kyocera Electronics, Inc.
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
I agree with all the changes proposed for alignment of the IPP and
JMP job states except for the removal of "Needs Attention". This
should be the most important state to indicate to a user since
unless he takes action the job may never complete. I would think
that this would also be very important for IPP as well.
I also agree with Harry that "requiredResourcesNotReady" and
"serviceOffLine" apply better to "Needs Attention" than "Held".
(I also agree with Harry that "Printing" is a better description
for a user than "Processing". Since this is an enum, a user or
management ap can display whatever text that is deemed
appropriate. So I will vote to keep "Processing" unless there
is very strong support for "Printing".)
(Didn't we discuss "serviceOffLine" in a previous meeting and
determined that no one except Dataproducts has ever implemented
such a capability? I also indicated that I had recently deleted
the feature because I felt it was "stupid".)
Also, I agree with Jay that "Needs Attention" should apply to all
conditions, other than "Held", that prevents the job from printing.
"Held" only implies an administratively set condition.
Tom, since I could not participate in the Wednesday conference call,
could you explain why "Needs Attention" was not accepted by IPP?
It is very critical that JMP and IPP agree in this area and I would
hope this can be resolved quickly.
Ron Bergman
Dataproducts Corp