Tom,
I guess I will try again. Why do we feel obligated to make the enums
mandatory or conditionally mandatory? I do not think that the
unfortunate fact that we made one object mandatory on the printer MIB,
and a very particular set-only object at that, has set sufficient
precedent.
The question of which state values are mandatory and which are
conditionally mandatory has been argued to death. One of the reasons
is, I believe, that the reason/justification for making any state
mandatory is not understood.
What is the reason for making state values mandatory? Or conditionally
mandatory?
What does it mean to have state mandatory, or conditioanlly mandatory?
1. Does it mean that every job must go through every mandatory
state?
2. Does it mean that the hardware be capable of putting a job in
each the "mandatory" state?
3. Does it mean that, if a job is in a "mandatory" state, the
equipment must report it?
Calling on the IETF definitions for mandatory and conditioanlly
mandatory doe not answer these questions.
Bill Wagner, Osicom/DPI
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: JMP> jmJobState and jmJobStateReasonsTC [ISSUE: Are ther
Author: Tom Hastings <hastings at cp10.es.xerox.com> at Internet
Date: 6/2/97 6:09 PM
At 07:39 05/28/97 PDT, Ron Bergman wrote:
snip..
>>RB> Tom, I still have a hard time justifying that enums for an object
>RB> are "mandatory" or "conditionally-mandatory". It made some sense
>RB> for the Attribute Table but for objects in the Job State Table this
>RB> generating significant confusion. I still prefer that the *object*
>RB> jmJobState be "mandatory" and the enums for the object are implied
>RB> to be "conditionally mandatory".
So some say make all the job state enums mandatory and some say make
them all conditionally mandatory.
As I've tried to reason before, the 'completed' state is one of the
most important states to make mandatory, not conditionally mandatory.
Most printers today do not have a 'completed' state, at least not one
that lasts for a human perceptable time. So if JMP doesn't make the
'completed' state mandatory, no one need implement it.
Doesn't that make sense to include 'completed' in the conformance
ASN.1 at the back, like we did for Reset in the Printer MIB?
Tom