Paul,
On Jul 3, 2013, at 5:22 PM, Paul Tykodi <ptykodi at tykodi.com> wrote:
> ...
> On the other hand, should we ultimately decide to remove the Copy Service from the model as part of publishing SM 2.0, I would imagine that vendors who have expended effort to become compliant with a PWG specification (Copy Service 1.0) that in a short time lost its relevance might wonder whether the effort they expended to conform with a PWG specification that disappeared so quickly was warranted. By extension, this could quickly become an investigation into whether conforming to any PWG standards was warranted.
Every standards organization has a history of introducing major changes that affect shipping and in-development products. Every vendor knows (or should know) that new technology or methods are developed on a daily basis, and it is up to every vendor to choose which new technologies or methods they will adopt. So to say that "if the PWG obsoletes recent specifications for SM 2.0 then vendors will jump ship and go elsewhere" is a specious argument - vendors will choose to adopt (or not) our standards for their own reasons, and we can't be ruled by fear that changing direction after putting out a standard is going to make people run away from the PWG.
Our job as a standards organization is to a) define the best standards we can and b) make changes as needed to solve existing and new problems for the printing/printer industry. If that means we need to change direction from time to time, so be it. We, as the collected "experts" in our field, should we able to define what is technically the correct solution for all of our members - that includes business requirements, not just the technical requirements we usually talk about.
In this case we have identified issues with the Copy service (works differently than all other Job-based services) and FaxOut/EmailOut (insufficient support for hardcopy documents) that we need to work through collectively. If, collectively, we decide that Copy service is or is not needed, then that reflects the will and desire of each of our members. Similarly, we will collectively decide what to do with hardcopy documents. This will produce a new standard that reflects our best understanding of the model and semantics of an imaging device as a whole. To do any less would mean we are not living up to our charter as a standards organization.
But in any case, nothing prevents a vendor from continuing to use SM 1.0 + Copy Service indefinitely - we don't (and can't) enforce use of the latest specs.
> For this reason, I think that it was useful for Pete to bring this element into the discussion for further consideration as we continue with the SM 2.0 project.
Absolutely, and I'll reiterate that *I* have only brought up the *question* of whether we need a separate Copy service and the *issue* that hardcopy document support needs to be fixed/normalized in SM 2.0. My goal is not to specifically kill the Copy Service but to unify the SM so that we support hardcopy documents the same way across the model and expose the "optimal" set of services needed. There are valid arguments on both sides and we need to work through the details to determine whether a Print Service w/AddHardcopyDocument operation or a separate Copy Service with Jobs and Documents is the "right" way to go long-term.
_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.pwg.org/pipermail/mfd/attachments/20130704/c2581a6f/attachment-0002.html>